The Fourth Law Puts AI in Control of Ukraine's Drone Strikes

Ukrainian defense firms are shifting control of the final phase of drone strikes to onboard computers.

Yaroslav Azhnyuk, a 37-year-old computer scientist, leads The Fourth Law and Odd Systems. These two Kyiv-based companies are among the top producers of autonomous drones in the country. Dozens of Ukrainian military units currently operate their system, the Lupynis-10-TFL-1.

The technology combines a standard first-person-view drone with a microcomputer and thermal cameras. The drone operates under human guidance until it is within 500 meters of the target. At that point, the onboard artificial intelligence takes over. The system uses a deep-learning neural network trained on hours of combat footage to identify vehicles, light armored tracks, tanks, and flying objects.

Azhnyuk explains that the AI is distinct from the large language models that power chatbots or the self-driving software in consumer cars. Instead, it uses simple image recognition tools to allow the drone to navigate, choose a target, and fly toward it without human input. The goal is to close the speed gap between human reaction time and machine processing.

"When the other side has orders of magnitudes higher capabilities, it gives you an asymmetric advantage," Azhnyuk says. "It can make you 10,000 times more effective."

The company named its drone after Anatoliy Lupynis, a 20th-century Ukrainian poet and political activist who spent decades in Soviet prisons. The Fourth Law names its weapons after Ukrainian intellectuals persecuted by Russia in the last century. "Their ideas are still with us," Azhnyuk says. "And now they're fighting back."

Testing takes place in fields outside Kyiv, where security protocols limit the disclosure of locations. A team member using the call sign Stab demonstrates the system using a dilapidated car as a target. A pilot, known as Professor, guides the drone with a control stick. Once the AI locks onto the car, indicated by a red flash on a video monitor, the pilot releases the stick. The drone flies itself to the impact point. Stab notes that the drone is difficult to jam because it does not rely on a continuous external signal for guidance in the final phase.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has warned that AI could lead battlefield decisions as early as next year. While some worry about the ethics of autonomous weapons, Azhnyuk argues that humans still make the final call. Humans select the target, and safeguards prevent the drones from acting independently. "Any kind of tool can be used for good or for bad," he says. "And in the end, it's the human that decides how to use that tool."

Azhnyuk compares the current technology to calculators rather than the Terminator. He acknowledges that future drones may designate targets on their own, but for now, the focus is on immediate defense. Russian forces are already using similar AI technologies in offensive scenarios. Azhnyuk argues that Ukraine must match that capability to survive. "Our adversaries are using the very same technologies," he says. "And if they use AI for decision-making in an offensive scenario, and if we refuse to use AI in decision-making in a defensive scenario, we've lost, right?"

The company aims to reduce the time between detection and engagement from minutes to microseconds. Azhnyuk states that if Ukraine loses the conflict, there will be little room to debate the ethics of the technology. "The most important thing," he says, "is don't die."