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The Daily Star (a not particularly reputable source) has reported that a so-called AI-based "Suicide Drone" has been spotted in Ukraine. (Please excuse all the click-bait. The website is atrocious).

Ukraine’s Internal Affairs Minister Anton Gerashchenko posted a photo of the KUB-BLA device to Telegram. [...]

The six-foot drone is made by by ZALA Aero, a subsidiary of famed Russian arms manufacturer Kalashnikov. After being fired from a portable launcher the KUB-BLA can loiter over a target area for up to half an hour, flying at speeds of around 80mph.

Once it has recognised a suitable target it deliberately crashes into it, detonating its seven-pound high explosive payload.

The images shared by Mr Gerashchenko appear to show a drone that has been damaged or shot down, but have yet to be officially verified.

At a demonstration of the deadly drone in 2019, ZALA claimed that it featured “intelligent detection and recognition of objects by class and type in real time”.

The images of the 6ft drone, which can fly at around 80mph and loiter over its target area for almost 30 minutes, shared by Gerashchenko have not been officially verified yet

Are there any reputable sources for this event? Can it be corroborated?

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  • Sounds like it is click bait to get you to the site.
    – Joe W
    Mar 21, 2022 at 21:31
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    It's tempting to say that the Daily Star is sufficiently unreliable that it doesn't even count as a Notable Source, but here's an article in Wired seeming to make the same claim.
    – IMSoP
    Mar 21, 2022 at 21:44
  • There are probably some exaggerations in there, but apparently one was shot down mil.in.ua/en/news/… There are some bits that match. It's a fairly cheap loitering munition, somewhat similar to the US Switchbalde. 1m wingspan or so.
    – Fizz
    Mar 22, 2022 at 4:51
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    The source you've linked to doesn't say it was aimed at Zelensky, not even that it was shot down in the region of Kyiv, although another source claims the latter. The Ukrainian claim is from over a week ago, by the way. Must have been slow news day that the tabloids only picked it up today. I'm not seeing how it would answerable right now skeptics.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/4829/…
    – Fizz
    Mar 22, 2022 at 5:08
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    I don't see why the "potentially looking for" should be included in the question. It seems to be speculation that's not about the underlying facts.
    – Christian
    Mar 22, 2022 at 19:07

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