FORT BELVOIR, Va. — With a stiff gait, a drone dog navigated a makeshift minefield at a U.S. Army testing site in Virginia, shuddering as it approached a plate-sized disc meant to simulate an antitank explosive. On its back it carried a stack of cameras, GPS devices, radios and thermal imaging technology that military developers hope will help it detect mines at close range, sparing humans that dangerous task.
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The dog seemed to know when to stay away from the simulated mine, given the artificial intelligence built into its system to identify threats. “It generally does, but sometimes it doesn’t,” said Kendall V. Johnson, a U.S. Army physicist, during a demonstration of the technology. “That’s something we’re currently working on.”
The drone dog is among the emerging technologies in mine warfare, a field that has barely changed in 50 years. But just as drones have proven to be an important offensive weapon in Ukraine, they can also provide defense, with safer ways to detect and remove landmines.
“Drones have been a huge force of destruction in this war, and I quite like the symmetry of drones’ potential to provide part of the solution,” said Colin King, a weapons specialist who co-founded British firm Fenix Insight to help detect and destroy munitions.
As is the case in so many areas today, artificial intelligence is driving progress. For example, Fenix has developed software that allows drones to not only detect and identify types of landmines, but also predict where they might be. It does this based on intelligence reports from open source and on social media of conflicts around the world where military units have laid mines or where rockets have launched dispersible munitions.
In January, King paired the software with a drone from another British company, Ace High Drone Specialists, and tested it with Ukrainian forces in Kherson, where it located multiple Russian-designed TM-62 anti-tank landmines half-buried in grass and dirt.
After more than 10 years of war, Ukraine is one of the most heavily mined countries in the world. Experts estimate that about a third of its territory needs to be cleared of mines.
Landmines thwarted Ukraine’s attempts last summer to oust Russia from its eastern Donbas region.
Russian forces frequently seek to trap the Ukrainians by firing mine-carrying missiles behind front lines, cutting off supply and retreat routes. This is where an AI-equipped drone can quickly help choose a route by locating mines to avoid.
“Knowing where the hell things are is a big problem,” King said. “Locating them is critical to pinpointing danger areas and initiating cleanup.”
Military developers at Fort Belvoir focus on detecting mines, not necessarily defusing them. But as technology advances, it may not be long before drones can find and detonate landmines.
“I can definitely see a future where a drone can find a mine, and then someone will click a button and say, ‘Yeah, that’s a mine,’ and click another button to get rid of the mine,” Johnson said.
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