May 2, 2026
The Deputy Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine emphasized that the future of the battlefield lies in the full integration of systems and automation of decisions, where speed and accuracy will determine the advantage over the enemy and help a person quickly make effective decisions.
The integration of artificial intelligence algorithms has become the main direction in the military sphere. In particular, in the Pentagon, AI is fully involved in performing complex tasks, while the Americans are afraid of falling behind the Chinese in this sphere.
In Ukraine, this process already find a clear vector of defvelopment, as the Deputy Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, Brigadier General Andriy Lebedenko, said during his speech at Drone Autonomy 2026, a focused industry event dedicated to the real-world development and deployment of autonomous drone systems and AI in defense, in Lviv this week.
“We have begun active work with Command & Control systems. Headquarters of various levels must be integrated into these modern control processes – both people and weapons. We need these changes now,” said Andriy Lebedenko.
It was emphasized that the integration of modern control systems and AI agents is not a prospect of the future, but an urgent need today and work in this direction is already underway. This is a cardinal increase in the speed of decision-making, accuracy of planning and efficiency of command of troops at all levels. They should work not only on a separate request, but in real time, promptly analyze the situation on the battlefield and provide proposals to leaders for decision-making.
“In the example of any headquarters – from battalion to corps and above – you can see how everyone is engaged in planning and processing large data sets. This is an assessment of the enemy and their own forces, their numbers, training, support, weapons. Now people do it all. Now imagine that all these processes are processed by artificial intelligence in a matter of seconds, providing an almost instant result. This is data analysis with a depth of months and years. We no longer spend hours or days – only minutes, receiving our own high-quality, verified concentrate of information that can model the future battle and scenarios for its development,” said the Deputy Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
Another direction is the integration of different types of systems on the battlefield, when it is necessary to combine a huge array of data from different sources, identify real threats and distribute means of destruction.
Deputy Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine described the situation on modern battlefield in Ukraine: “Take, for example, Kharkiv, a city located close to the border, where the time from detection to destruction of air targets is minimal. It is impossible to detect all drones with one radar. It is necessary to combine all sensors into a single system. In the case of massive enemy air attacks, it is difficult for a person to quickly process a large array of data: identify targets, determine priorities and choose means of destruction, etc. This is where algorithms and neural networks should come to the rescue. They are able to instantly analyze information and set tasks for the appropriate means of destruction. This is the ideal model that we strive for, and we already have all the prerequisites for its implementation.”
“We already have our own complexes of drone interceptors, for which in the future it will be enough to obtain the exact coordinates of the target. Also, systems are used today that effectively filter sensor data and filter out up to half of false targets,” Andriy Lebedenko emphasized.
Recall that agent-based AI is a new generation of these algorithms that allow them to autonomously perform complex tasks with an end goal and directly interact with other digital systems through an application programming interface (API). This critically distinguishes them from generative AI, which can only perform a specific task.
I certainly hope that the secrets surrounding this technology will be preserved for as long as possible, at least until the russian terrorist federation is defeated.