674
Ukraine said it captured a Russian position using only ground robots and drones, no infantry, for the first time
(www.businessinsider.com)
this post was submitted on 14 Apr 2026
674 points (99.1% liked)
World News
55513 readers
2555 users here now
A community for discussing events around the World
Rules:
-
Rule 1: posts have the following requirements:
- Post news articles only
- Video links are NOT articles and will be removed.
- Title must match the article headline
- Not United States Internal News
- Recent (Past 30 Days)
- Screenshots/links to other social media sites (Twitter/X/Facebook/Youtube/reddit, etc.) are explicitly forbidden, as are link shorteners.
-
Rule 2: Do not copy the entire article into your post. The key points in 1-2 paragraphs is allowed (even encouraged!), but large segments of articles posted in the body will result in the post being removed. If you have to stop and think "Is this fair use?", it probably isn't. Archive links, especially the ones created on link submission, are absolutely allowed but those that avoid paywalls are not.
-
Rule 3: Opinions articles, or Articles based on misinformation/propaganda may be removed.
-
Rule 4: Posts or comments that are homophobic, transphobic, racist, sexist, anti-religious, or ableist will be removed. “Ironic” prejudice is just prejudiced.
-
Posts and comments must abide by the lemmy.world terms of service UPDATED AS OF OCTOBER 19 2025
-
Rule 5: Keep it civil. It's OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It's NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.
-
Rule 6: Memes, spam, other low effort posting, reposts, misinformation, advocating violence, off-topic, trolling, offensive, regarding the moderators or meta in content may be removed at any time.
-
Rule 7: We didn't USED to need a rule about how many posts one could make in a day, then someone posted NINETEEN articles in a single day. Not comments, FULL ARTICLES. If you're posting more than say, 10 or so, consider going outside and touching grass. We reserve the right to limit over-posting so a single user does not dominate the front page.
We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.
All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.
Lemmy World Partners
News !news@lemmy.world
Politics !politics@lemmy.world
World Politics !globalpolitics@lemmy.world
Recommendations
For Firefox users, there is media bias / propaganda / fact check plugin.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/media-bias-fact-check/
- Consider including the article’s mediabiasfactcheck.com/ link
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
The age of drone on drone violence will make war more palatable to citizens.
I really, honestly hope you are right. Sadly, I think you are wrong. I've recently been exposed to the concepts of "human safari" and "drone siege" and they aren't pretty. "Drone on drone" might be just the preamble of these.
No preamble, unfortunately. The Russians are doing these "human safaris", which are, of course, clear as day war crimes, to train their drone pilots.
Also to terrorize and wear out the civilian population of course, which is the Russian way of war.
AI drones are coming along, but these won't only be used on other drones or robots, that much we can know already.
Indeed, I meant that in a hypothetical "drone vs drone" war, after the drones win the attacks on civilians and sieges will most likely come after.
I do not mean it will be tolerable to be near. I mean citizens of nations who choose war will tolerate it more if their own soldiers are not dying in war. If war requires less people and more "stuff" to wage, citizens will feel less motivation to speak out against it. It will make waging war more of an option not less of one, if only equipment is being lost.
Possible. It does seem like drones fighting drones should mean less human casualties, which has both a humanitarian side and an escalation risk side.
Then again a lot of people have thought their weapons would make war less deadly, and been very wrong, including the case of WWI-era artillery.
They "accidentally" told the drones/robots to attack the schools and hospitals. "We would never do that on purpose"
"Well why were the terrorists using school children as human shields!"
I doubt it will ever stop
This, but also if you aren't putting your soldiers at risk then war becomes more palatable (and thus more likely). For example, I doubt Trump would have attacked Iran if he had been quoted 1000+ American causalties in the first week.
No one will give a shit about robots dying. The drones will either be attempting to war crime civillians or intercept said war crime robots.
And drone intercept rates arent even close to that not being scary.
Yes, but human soldiers doing atrocities is nothing new (unfortunately). There's no obvious reason to think drones will make that particular aspect of warfare worse.
People will give a shit about the robots dying once their side starts running low.
When shit turns into Helm's Deep, when the robots are taking out the last of your defenses, you'll give a shit lol.
Think of the drones and robots less like soldiers/planes and more like a thousand points that make up a force field. As that field decays, so does your protection beneath it.
I think you're overestimating the defensive capabilities we have. Drones has been so successful in warfare specifically because there is no good counter, and numbers can be used to overcome more effective countermeasures.
Helms deep had walls which were impassable before breaching. Drones leak through defenses like a sieve.
Dude, I am not talking about capabilities we have. We're talking about massive drone-on-drone wars, not today.
So thank you for contributing to some other conversation, but your comment does not exist in the same universe as mine.
That world is here and now. The only futuristic or scifi element is the perfect defense.
Yeah, destroying inanimate robots isn't really going to get your enemy to capitulate. Like shooting Iran's missiles out of the sky isn't going to change their plan.
People need to die in warfare for it to matter. Economic and infrastructure targets are really only useful in reaching that goal of killing.
Until the drones start getting used on civilians. Which is absolutely going to happen and soon.
It's been happening for a good 20 years already. Do you think US drone strikes were all military targets? Do you think both russia and ukraine didn't absolutely dronefuck multiple population centers? Do you think israel didn't use drones to carry out its genocides? There are probably tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of dead civilians due to drone strikes already.
You're not wrong but I was specifically referencing the ground based drones with my comment. Apologies that wasn't clear.
Ah yeah, that makes sense. But I feel like it may be a bit easier to run away from a ground-based drone than it is from an aerial one. For one, they're much slower so you'd probably have a more advanced warning.
It’s been happening for ages already. What reality do you people live in?
"Whaddya mean, 'you people'?"
We should probably secure rights to EMPs for self defense.
The thing I fear is that this just becomes a ridiculously futile war of resource attrition. It all comes down to who has more metals and chips and armaments to keep throwing at the other's pools of the same until one gives up. What a waste...
...But then again, writing this, I realize that's almost already how they treat human soldiers so...what will change, I wonder?
Exactly. We're already there with which side has more human resources. Meanwhile asymmetric warfare is an escalation of technology and the resources to produce them. Sure, you can tip the balance of power on the battlefield with very clever use of resources, but it's ultimately a contest of who is willing to dump the most into the conflict.
It could also be argued that technological warfare in a global economy makes resource blockades even more important. Nobody is 100% reliant on their homeland resources anymore. To effectively siege your opponent, you have to cut off everything that can fuel their ability to make war. That can be a huge perimeter in some cases.
What will change?
It's easier to convince young people to hump soldiers into their partners than it is to create more rare earth elements.
How long until inter-country conflicts are settled by robot battles and we're basically living the plot of Robo Jox?
As hard as that shit goes, we will probably never see an age of human piloted robots.
might lead to faster extinction via other methods tho...
Would be super interested to see the camera feed from all the drones involved.