This military drone with AI attacks enemies without operator's command; in high demand, says firm | KARGU

A military drone, capable of firing weapons and targeting enemies using artificial intelligence, and without specific commands, is in high demand. This is what the general manager of Turkish defence equipment company STM claimed recently.

STM's Ozgur Guleruz claimed that at least 20 countries are interested in buying the KARGU Rotary Wing Strike UAVs (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles). The KARGU drones have reportedly been in service with the Turkish military since 2018, but gained fame in defence circles after an incident in 2020.

The drone had been deployed in Libya in 2020, when it reportedly attacked a soldier without any command from its operator. The KARGU drone attacked the soldier from Khalifa Haftar's forces without any command as it was in a "highly efficient autonomous mode" which implies artificial intelligence, as per a bulgarianmilitary.com report, quoting a UN document.

This was widely described as the first case of a drone attacking a human fully autonomously.

The KARGU drone is a small, portable, rotary-wing kamikaze drone, with two control modes: autonomous and manual. It is programmed with artificial intelligence with integrated machine learning algorithm.

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The drone has a 5 km operational range, and can be used for both day and night operations, for tracking moving targets, and navigation, among others. The KARGU offers different ammunition options, in-flight mission abortion, and also emergency self-destruction, as per bulgarianmilitary.com.