“I am absolutely convinced that robots and drones should be doing the fighting wherever possible,” he said in an interview published on July 31.
“That is how we preserve the lives of our soldiers.”
He said Ukrainian drones now account for about 95% of the losses inflicted on Russian forces along the front, far surpassing the effectiveness of snipers, howitzers, tanks, and other conventional weapons combined.
Fedorov said much frontline infantry could be replaced by sensors, automatic-turret machine guns and drones. He predicted that only armies equipped with inexpensive, “smart” mass-produced weapons would survive the new era of warfare.
He said the battlefield is moving toward robotization and
remote drone piloting, which he said will better protect soldiers. The next
stage, he said, will be autonomous systems that attack targets, eventually
evolving into “battles of autonomous drones controlled by artificial
intelligence.”