Kargu (combat drones)

2021: Tracking down and attacking an enemy without human intervention

At the end of May 2021, it became known that the Kargu-2 combat quadcopter first tracked down and attacked the enemy without an operator team. At the time of the attack, the drone was in the air in completely autonomous mode.

According to the report of the UN Security Council expert group, this case of the combat use of a drone occurred in March 2020 in Libya. The Rapporteur reported that the rebels in Libya were bombed with "unmanned aerial vehicles and lethal autonomous weapons systems" during a clash between the Libyan government and forces loyal to Khalifa Haftar, commander of the breakaway faction of the Libyan National Army. Equipped with weapons, the drone pursued the goal autonomously, using on-board cameras and machine learning, and did not receive commands from the operator. Other details of the incident are not reported. It is unclear whether there were casualties as a result of the drone attack.

Kargu-2 combat drones began to track down and attack the enemy without human intervention

If it is confirmed that drones killed people, this will be the first case of using autonomous AI weapons to kill, said Zachary Kallenborn, a specialist in the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Anti-Terrorism Policy.

From the open data it is known that the release of the Turkish quadracopter Kargu-2 began in 2019. The weight of the drone is 15 kilograms, it can be in the air for up to 30 minutes, patrolling certain territories, as well as independently detect and hit various targets. Control is carried out by the operator through closed digital communication channels, but the drone is able to automatically fly out and sit down at a given point. The operator can cancel the attack of the quadcopter or redirect it to another object, but in general the drone independently determines the targets for the attack.^[1]

Notes