UN Security Council Panel of Experts report

For First Time, Drones Autonomously Attacked Humans: UN Report Skip to Content Science 
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 Getty Images, Mehmet Kaman 3 min read Imagine a few years from now, U.S. supply troops have just wrapped up a field exercise in Poland, showing solidarity with the country in the face of saber-rattling from nearby Russia . As the sun sets, GIs rest next to their trucks, knowing the Russian 18th Guards Motor Rifle Division is encamped just a few miles away.

 The soldiers hear a faint buzzing in the distance and see a dark cloud crossing the horizon. Suddenly, a solitary scout drone swoops low over the Americans—it’s seen them. Like a predator catching the scent of prey, the cloud stops dead in its tracks, then rushes toward the soldiers with astonishing speed. Following programming orders, each of the 60 drones scans the ground below and picks its target, while AI ensures no two drones aim for the same vehicle. The drones arm their explosive payloads just as the first bursts of gunfire begin lancing out from the American position.

 “The first use of autonomous weapons in war won’t be heralded with a giant fireball in the sky. It may just look like an ordinary drone.” Sometime around March 2020, this longstanding trope of science fiction—autonomous attack drones eliminating human beings on the futuristic battlefield—crossed over into science fact. That’s when, during the Second Libyan Civil War, the interim Libyan government attacked forces from the rival Haftar Affiliated Forces (HAF) with Turkish-made Kargu-2 (“Hawk 2”) drones, marking the first reported time autonomous hunter killer drones targeted human beings in a conflict, according to a United Nations report. 

 Unmanned combat aerial vehicles , loitering munitions, and the Kargu-2 “hunted down and remotely engaged” HAF logistics convoys and retreating fighters, the UN report found. The autonomous drones were programmed to attack targets “without requiring data connectivity between the operator and munition,” meaning they located and attacked HAF forces independent of any kind of pilot or control scheme.

 The Kargu-2 is a quadcopter drone developed by STM, a Turkish defense contractor. The drone features sensors and an electronic brain, and is designed to carry a weapons payload. In marketing materials, STM explicitly says Kargu-2 is capable of carrying out an autonomous attack.

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 Here’s how it works: The drone operator loads a set of target coordinates into the Kargu-2’s software. The drone then takes off and travels to the coordinates, searching for objects on the ground that fit the profile of preferred targets. Once the drone identifies a target, it swoops down on the target at high speed and detonates an onboard explosive package, with an effect similar to that of a shotgun blast.

 “The first use of autonomou

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