Killing machines: how Russia and Ukraine’s race to perfect deadly pilotless drones could harm us all

Cyberdyne Systems approves

Undoubtedly, the most advanced systems in the world are being devised in laboratories in the US and China. A Pentagon programme known as Replicator 1 is due to deliver “multiple thousands” of all-domain autonomous systems by August 2025.

Why is this undoubtedly? Fact is, most other countries right now are lagging behind in this field and without extensive field testing whatever these labs will produce will be years behind state of the art. You can't design these things blind and both US and China actually lack people that have experience in drone warfare or it's years outdated so design decisions beyound basics will be worse, then those that were made with consultations and input from people that actually using the drones. There is no doubt that both US and China can pour a lot of money into it, and make great machines from engineering standpoint and they won't perform as expected. Drone warfare in current form is pretty new and ideas iterate very fast, and army procurement is anything but fast.