The public procurement platform Prozorro has already launched a tender for the purchase of the first 10 thousand FPV drones using artificial intelligence technologies for the needs of the Ukrainian army. This was announced by Minister of Digital Transformation Mykhailo Fedorov in an exclusive commentary to Radio Liberty, UNN reports.
According to him, such drones will become cheaper in the future due to the competition of manufacturers for government orders.
"The first tender for FPV drones (using artificial intelligence - ed.) was recently launched on the closed module of Prozorro for the first 10 thousand, and more than 10 companies have already applied. This is what leads to competition on Prozorro and to a price reduction. So I would not say that they are much more expensive [than drones without AI]: one drone will cost a few hundred dollars more. And then the price will go down. Maybe the difference will be tens of dollars," Fedorov said.
He added that when it comes to longer-range drones rather than FPV, the cost difference between conventional drones and those using artificial intelligence may be greater, but he predicts that it will also be reduced by manufacturer competition.
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Ukrainian drone operators are losing thousands of drones every month due to Russian jamming devices, according to a report by the UK's Royal United Kingdom Institute for Defense Studies.
The priority for Ukrainian developers is now to "minimize the impact of EW," according to the Ukrainian state initiative Brave1.
"Drones equipped with artificial intelligence (AI) guidance modules do not need to communicate with the operator at the stage of firing," a Brave1 representative said in an interview with Radio Liberty earlier. "The operator fixes the target, after which the AI takes over the guidance process, making it invulnerable to enemy electronic warfare.
Such semi-autonomous drones can negate the impact of EW. As soon as the AI tracking system takes over, the drone can interrupt the vulnerable radio signal between it and the controller and make its own "decisions.