Russia plans to equip Geranium AI to crush Ukrainian air defenses — Guardian

Russia is going to equip kamikaze drones "Geranium-2", which on the Ukraine is called "Shaheds", artificial intelligence to crush the enemy's air defenses. It is reported by the British The Guardian with reference to the Ukrainian military.

"According to Ukrainian military sources... efforts are being made to introduce artificial intelligence to try to create a "swarm of drones" with which the "Shaheds" communicate and coordinate attacks in such a way as to crush the air defenses. However, it is unclear how effective this technology can be," the newspaper writes.

Russia is constantly modifying UAVs, trying to make them more efficient, the newspaper reports. This month, the Ukrainian military published a video of a Russian drone with a thermobaric warhead, which "when detonated creates a cloud of fire with a temperature of about 2,000 °C and is considered especially deadly if it explodes inside buildings."

It is noted that to shoot down drones "Shahed-136" ("Geranium") also quite problematic. They are relatively inexpensive, the price is several tens of thousands of dollars a piece, it is impractical to use Patriot missiles worth about $ 4 million each to shoot them down. Instead, the Ukrainian Armed Forces often use machine guns mounted on trucks to disable them with small arms fire, and also try to develop cheap FPV drones up to $ 1,000 capable of destroying Shahed. However, in the latter case, "the task is complicated by the fact that the turbulent airflow caused by the "Shahed" in flight significantly affects the piloting of a smaller FPV drone," the publication emphasizes.