The Ukraine-Russia conflict has been going on for more than two years and one strange phenomenon emerging from the battlefield is the footage of drone attacks on Russian soldiers. Ukrainian FPV drone units are used to destroy tanks, armored vehicles, rocket launchers, and hunt down Russian soldiers in the field. It has proven to the world that drones are very effective on the battlefield but also a weapon that can destroy enemy morale as gruesome videos of deaths are shared on social media.
All of the footage of Ukrainian drone attacks now has a secondary function of training artificial intelligence (AI) models. According to a Reuters report, Ukraine has 2 million hours of video footage, or 228 years, that is currently training AI models that will then be used to detect the presence of enemy weapons and troops. Every day, 6 terabytes of video data is added to the database to train AI models.
The OCHI system currently in use monitors the operations of 15,000 drones on the battlefield. When paired with AI, it can then notify operators of the presence of an enemy attack without humans having to do manual monitoring.
In the future, the AI developed could provide tactical advice, target detection, control drones in groups and see the effectiveness of weapons systems used. Ukraine said several allied countries have expressed interest in using the AI it developed for its own weapons systems.