Ukraine Amasses Vast Drone Footage to Train AI for Battlefield Decision-Making

Ukraine collects vast war data trove to train AI models

Oleksandr Dmitriev, founder of OCHI, a non-profit Ukrainian digital system which centralises and analyses video feeds from over 15,000 drone crews working on the frontlines, told Reuters his system had collected 2 million hours, or 228 years, of battlefield video from drones since 2022.As the future of warfare pivots towards artificial intelligence, Ukraine is sitting on a valuable resource: millions of hours of footage from drones which can be used to train AI models to make decisions on the battlefield. AI has been deployed by both sides on the battlefield during Russia's invasion of Ukraine to identify targets, scanning images far quicker than a human can. Oleksandr Dmitriev, founder of OCHI, a non-profit Ukrainian digital system which centralises and analyses video feeds from over 15,000 drone crews working on the frontlines, told Reuters his system had collected 2 million hours, or 228 years, of battlefield video from drones since 2022. That will provide vital data for AI to learn from. "This is food for the AI: If you want to teach an AI, you give it 2 million hours (of video), it will become something supernatural." According to Dmitriev, the footage can be used to train AI models in combat tactics, spotting targets and assessing the effectiveness of weapons systems. "It is essentially experience which can be turned into mathematics," he said, adding that an AI program can study the trajectories and angles at which weapons are most effective. The system was originally made in 2022 to give military commanders an overview of their areas of the battlefield by showing them drone footage from all nearby crews side by side on one screen. After the system was rolled out, the team running it realised that video being sent back by drones could prove useful as a record of the war - so they began to store it. On average, Dmitriev said five or six terabytes of new data were added every day from the fighting. Image quality Dmitriev said he was talking with representatives from some of Ukraine's foreign allies that had expressed interest in his OCHI system, but declined to provide details. Samuel Bendett, adjunct senior fellow at the U.S.-based Center for a New American Security, said such a vast pool of data would be extremely valuable in teaching AI systems to identify what exactly they are seeing, and what steps they should take. "Humans can do this intuitively, but machines cannot, and they have to be trained on what is or isn't a road, or a natural obstacle, or an ambush," he said. Kateryna Bondar, a fellow at Wadhwani AI centre at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, said the size of the data set and the image quality were important, as AI models learned to recognise targets based on shapes and colours. Bondar said that the dataset was valuable in the context of training to fight Russia. However, she said U.S. officials and drone makers prefer a dataset that trains AI systems to operate in the Pacific against a potential Chinese adversary. "(They want) systems ready and able to fight against China because that's the main priority for the U.S. right now, rather than getting a lot of footage of Ukrainian fields and forests." Ukraine also has another system, called Avengers, developed by its defence ministry, which centralises and collects video from drones and CCTV. The ministry declined to provide information about this system. However, it has previously said that Avengers spots 12,000 Russian pieces of equipment a week using AI identification tools. Thousands of drones are already using AI systems to fly themselves into targets without human piloting, and Ukraine is using AI technologies to help demine its territory. Ukrainian companies are developing drone swarms, where a computer system will be able to execute commands for an interlinked cloud of dozens of drones. Russia has also touted its use of battlefield AI, most notably for target recognition in Lancet strike drones, which have proved lethal against Ukrainian armoured vehicles.

Ukraine collects vast war data trove to train AI models

KYIV (Reuters) - As the future of warfare pivots towards artificial intelligence, Ukraine is sitting on a valuable resource: millions of hours of footage from drones which can be used to train AI models to make decisions on the battlefield. AI has been deployed by both sides on the battlefield during Russia's invasion of Ukraine to identify targets, scanning images far quicker than a human can. Oleksandr Dmitriev, founder of OCHI, a non-profit Ukrainian digital system which centralises and analyses video feeds from over 15,000 drone crews working on the frontlines, told Reuters his system had collected 2 million hours, or 228 years, of battlefield video from drones since 2022. That will provide vital data for AI to learn from. "This is food for the AI: If you want to teach an AI, you give it 2 million hours (of video), it will become something supernatural." According to Dmitriev, the footage can be used to train AI models in combat tactics, spotting targets and assessing the effectiveness of weapons systems. "It is essentially experience which can be turned into mathematics," he said, adding that an AI program can study the trajectories and angles at which weapons are most effective. The system was originally made in 2022 to give military commanders an overview of their areas of the battlefield by showing them drone footage from all nearby crews side by side on one screen. After the system was rolled out, the team running it realised that video being sent back by drones could prove useful as a record of the war - so they began to store it. On average, Dmitriev said five or six terabytes of new data were added every day from the fighting. IMAGE QUALITY Dmitriev said he was talking with representatives from some of Ukraine's foreign allies that had expressed interest in his OCHI system, but declined to provide details. Samuel Bendett, senior fellow at the U.S.-based Center for a New American Security, said such a vast pool of data would be extremely valuable in teaching AI systems to identify what exactly they are seeing, and what steps they should take. "Humans can do this intuitively, but machines cannot, and they have to be trained on what is or isn't a road, or a natural obstacle, or an ambush," he said. Kateryna Bondar, a fellow at Wadhwani AI centre at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, said the size of the data set and the image quality were important, as AI models learned to recognise targets based on shapes and colours. Ukraine also has another system, called Avengers, developed by its defence ministry, which centralises and collects video from drones and CCTV. The ministry declined to provide information about this system. However, it has previously said that Avengers spots 12,000 Russian pieces of equipment a week using AI identification tools. Thousands of drones are already using AI systems to fly themselves into targets without human piloting, and Ukraine is using AI technologies to help demine its territory. Ukrainian companies are developing drone swarms, where a computer system will be able to execute commands for an interlinked cloud of dozens of drones. Russia has also touted its use of battlefield AI, most notably for target recognition in Lancet strike drones, which have proved lethal against Ukrainian armoured vehicles. (Reporting by Max Hunder; Editing by Alison Williams)

Ukraine collects vast war data trove to train AI models

KYIV, Dec 20 (Reuters) - As the future of warfare pivots towards artificial intelligence, Ukraine is sitting on a valuable resource: millions of hours of footage from drones which can be used to train AI models to make decisions on the battlefield. AI has been deployed by both sides on the battlefield during Russia's invasion of Ukraine to identify targets, scanning images far quicker than a human can. Oleksandr Dmitriev, founder of OCHI, a non-profit Ukrainian digital system which centralises and analyses video feeds from over 15,000 drone crews working on the frontlines, told Reuters his system had collected 2 million hours, or 228 years, of battlefield video from drones since 2022. That will provide vital data for AI to learn from. "This is food for the AI: If you want to teach an AI, you give it 2 million hours (of video), it will become something supernatural." According to Dmitriev, the footage can be used to train AI models in combat tactics, spotting targets and assessing the effectiveness of weapons systems. "It is essentially experience which can be turned into mathematics," he said, adding that an AI program can study the trajectories and angles at which weapons are most effective. The system was originally made in 2022 to give military commanders an overview of their areas of the battlefield by showing them drone footage from all nearby crews side by side on one screen. After the system was rolled out, the team running it realised that video being sent back by drones could prove useful as a record of the war - so they began to store it. On average, Dmitriev said five or six terabytes of new data were added every day from the fighting. IMAGE QUALITY Dmitriev said he was talking with representatives from some of Ukraine's foreign allies that had expressed interest in his OCHI system, but declined to provide details. Samuel Bendett, senior fellow at the U.S.-based Center for a New American Security, said such a vast pool of data would be extremely valuable in teaching AI systems to identify what exactly they are seeing, and what steps they should take. "Humans can do this intuitively, but machines cannot, and they have to be trained on what is or isn't a road, or a natural obstacle, or an ambush," he said. Kateryna Bondar, a fellow at Wadhwani AI centre at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, said the size of the data set and the image quality were important, as AI models learned to recognise targets based on shapes and colours. Ukraine also has another system, called Avengers, developed by its defence ministry, which centralises and collects video from drones and CCTV. The ministry declined to provide information about this system. However, it has previously said that Avengers spots 12,000 Russian pieces of equipment a week using AI identification tools. Thousands of drones are already using AI systems to fly themselves into targets without human piloting, and Ukraine is using AI technologies to help demine its territory. Ukrainian companies are developing drone swarms, where a computer system will be able to execute commands for an interlinked cloud of dozens of drones. Russia has also touted its use of battlefield AI, most notably for target recognition in Lancet strike drones, which have proved lethal against Ukrainian armoured vehicles. Reporting by Max Hunder; Editing by Alison Williams Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles., opens new tab Suggested Topics:DisruptedUkraine and Russia at War

Ukraine collects vast war data trove to train AI models

As the future of warfare pivots toward artificial intelligence, Ukraine is sitting on a valuable resource: millions of hours of footage from drones which can be used to train AI models to make decisions on the battlefield. AI has been deployed by both sides on the battlefield during Russia's invasion of Ukraine to identify targets, scanning images far quicker than a human can. Oleksandr Dmitriev, founder of OCHI, a nonprofit Ukrainian digital system which centralizes and analyses video feeds from over 15,000 drone crews working on the front lines, said his system had collected 2 million hours, or 228 years, of battlefield video from drones since 2022.

Ukraine Is Using Millions of Hours of Drone Footage to Train AI for Warfare

The country's defense ministry has said it is able to spot 12,000 Russian pieces of equipment a week using AI identification tools. The ongoing Russia-Ukraine conflict marks possibly the first truly AI war, with both sides having come to rely on small drones to conduct reconnaissance, identify targets, and even drop lethal bombs over enemy lines. This new type of warfare allows commanders to survey an area from a safe distance and has highlighted the importance of lightweight aerial weapons that can conduct precise strikes instead of much more expensive fighter jets. One drone that costs $15,000 can take down a F-16 that costs tens of millions. Reuters has a look at how Ukraine has been collecting vast sums of video footage from drones to improve the effectiveness of its drone battalions. The story includes an interview with Oleksandr Dmitriev, founder of OCHI, a non-profit Ukrainian system that centralizes and analyzes video from over 15,000 drones on the frontlines. Dmitriev told Reuters that the system has collected more than two million hours of battlefield video since 2022. "This is food for the AI: If you want to teach an AI, you give it 2 million hours (of video), it will become something supernatural," he said. The OCHI system was originally built to give the military access to drone footage from all nearby crew on one screen, but the group running it realized that the video could be used for training AI. For an AI system to be effective at identifying what it is seeing, it needs to review a lot of footage; Ukraine probably did not have a lot of battlefield footage before 2022. Now, more than six terabytes of data is being added to the system per day, on average. Ukraine's defense ministry has said that another system called Avengers, which centralizes footage from drones, has been able to spot 12,000 Russian pieces of equipment a week using AI identification. It is not just local Ukrainian companies that are building new AI technology for the battlefield. There is big money to be made in the defense industry, and a slew of Silicon Valley players including Anduril and Palantir, as well as Eric Schmidt's startup White Stork, have begun offering up drone and AI technology to support Ukraine's fight. Of course, the biggest concern of skeptics is that these technologies automate a lot of the fighting and make it somewhat abstract; a military could be apt to allow the drone to strike more indiscriminately when they are at a safe distance and not fearful of return fire. Schmidt has emphasized that the drones offered to Ukraine by his company maintain a "human-in-the-loop," meaning a person is always making the final decision. In a recent interview, Anduril's Palmer Luckey was asked about the use of AI in weapons systems. “There is a shadow campaign being waged in the United Nations by many of our adversaries to trick Western countries that fancy themselves morally aligned into not applying AI for weapons or defense,†he said. “What is the moral victory in being forced to use larger bombs with more collateral damage because we are not allowed to use systems that can penetrate past Russian or Chinese jamming systems and strike precisely.†Jamming systems are able to scramble GPS and telecommunications used to direct precision-guided weapons, but AI-powered drones can operate unmanned and identify targets without an operator giving an order. Recent reports have suggested that the U.S. has fallen behind adversaries including Russia and China in its ability to remotely disable enemy weapons using jamming technology. Russia has repeatedly disabled precision-guided weapons the U.S. has given Ukraine using more advanced jamming technology than the U.S. has. The U.S. could respond by investing more in evading GPS jamming so that it does not have to use more indiscriminate, automated drones. Or it could try and jam the Russians back. Luckey pointedly called out critics who say a robot should never decide who lives and who dies. “And my point to them is, where’s the moral high ground in a landmine that can’t tell the difference between a school bus full of kids and a Russian tank,†he asked. It seems unlikely a school bus would be driving through a battlefield unless it was a booby trap, but whatever. The war has been a slow grind, with both sides making little advance in recent months. Drones have assisted Ukraine, but are clearly not a panacea with both sides having access to them.