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The AI drone swarms coming soon to Europe’s battlefields

Flocks of autonomous attack drones are being tested by Nato and China, and seeing
action in Ukraine. New defences are needed to stop them. For many years,
the prospect of artificial intelligence-powered drone swarms has been a
nightmare looming on the fringes of modern warfare.

Now, as a strike test video released a few months ago by the German-American defence technology company Auterion illustrates, it is increasingly encroaching
onto the battlefield and worrying Europe’s defence planners and national
security officials. In the United States, military contractors have
demonstrated autonomous networks of more than a hundred drones and the
Pentagon is aiming to create a “swarm of swarms” capability with as
many as 500 units.

“This becomes, just by its pure scale, a new type of
weapon of mass destruction,” he said. “If you really come to a point
where you have 10,000 drones that operate fully autonomously — detecting
targets, tracking, executing — that is a whole new type of capability.”

August 14, 2026 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | EUROPE, weapons and war