00:00Autonomous drone swarms have officially arrived.
00:03At a Maryland farm, an operator presses a single button
00:06and five autonomous drones instantly take control.
00:10Flying in a tight V formation,
00:13the quadcopters surge forward like guided missiles
00:16and slam into a Cold War-era British tank.
00:20Powered by drone startup Orterian,
00:23AI-driven systems can also use onboard computer vision
00:27to automatically detect and track targets before they lock on.
00:31In Ukraine, Orterian says its technology
00:33has already supported 6,000 autonomous strikes.
00:37Now the US military is testing this software and more
00:40for its new SwarmForge competition,
00:43aiming to deploy swarms numbering in the hundreds next year.
00:47For now, a human operator must confirm a target
00:50before the drone strike,
00:52in line with current US defense requirements.
00:54But the technology now exists to run attacks
00:58entirely without human intervention,
01:01prompting campaigners and the United Nations
01:03to redouble efforts to secure a global ban.
01:07UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres
01:09called machines with the discretion
01:11to take human lives morally repugnant.
01:15I learned that drones equipped with computer vision
01:18are still making targeting mistakes.
01:20But defense officials argue these weapons
01:23could one day be essential for winning wars.
01:26A US defense official told me that in future,
01:29drone-on-drone aerial combat could unfold too quickly
01:32and with too many targets
01:34for a human commander to verify each one.
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