At the end of March, the United States sent about a hundred so-called "kamikaze drones" to Ukraine.
It is drones that fly around in a certain area until they find their designated target.
Then they fly into it and explode.
The drones can be controlled manually and monitored, but this is not necessary.
On April 21, the United States announced that it would send more, and heavier variants, of kamikaze drones.
The drones use artificial intelligence, AI, to find their targets and are relatively light and cheap.
- A human operator starts them and then they can fly on their own, find targets and attack targets on their own, explains Arash Heydarian Pashakhanlou, who researches artificial intelligence and airborne weapons at the Swedish National Defense College in Stockholm.
So a person does not have to approve the attack?
- No, it can fly into the target on its own, explode and destroy the target.
Rapid development
Development has been very rapid in this area in recent years.
Despite this, very little is known outside military circles.
- Those who work with this and are active know about it, but hardly any more, states former lieutenant colonel Jörgen Elfving.
He he a background from the intelligence field and closely follows developments in Ukraine.
According to him, we will see more of this type of independent weapon in the future.
At the same time, he believes that the debate about the ethical and moral will increase.
According to him, there are concerns regarding the criteria for selecting targets.
- There are problems, he states.
Swedish Peace's critical
Some who want to speed up the debate are the organization Svenska Freds.
- This technical development is going very fast and the legislation must keep up.
We do not have time to debate, this is happening now, says Deborah Solomon at Swedish Peace.
Svenska Freds wants it to be ensured that there is always human control of weapons.
That it is ultimately about human dignity.
- A machine should not be allowed to decide over a person's life and death.