Unmanned and unpiloted vehicles are both a dream for military planners and a nightmare for opponents of weaponized robotic systems. For the military such technology doesn’t put a human pilot, soldier or sailor in harm’s way—but it also takes the human factor out of the equation, meaning that the machine could potentially take a human life based on its own determination.

Yet, it hasn’t stopped militaries around the world from employing new advances in artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning to create autonomous weapons. Now the Russian Central Design Bureau for Marine Engineering Rubin is reportedly looking to take this up a notch and is working on the creation of a global network of underwater, surface and air drones.

The Design Bureau’s CEO Igor Vilnit told Russian state media, “In the long term the bureau’s specialists have plans for creating a global network consisting of a large number of deep-diving vessels, autonomous underwater vehicles, gliders, lighting devices, UAVs, and means of communication and other components for conducting large scale research and exploration.”

The post Is Russia Building a Global Network of Drones? appeared first on .