The head of the "Come Back Alive" fund, Taras Chmut, talked about the role of artificial intelligence on the battlefield and shared his views on mobilization in Ukraine. In his opinion, the mobilization age should be lowered to 20 years. He shared this in an interview with Roman Kravets.
According to Chmut, former Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, Valeriy Zaluzhnyy, considered unmanned technologies in general, and FPV (First Person View) in particular, as a technology that could compensate for the difference in capabilities between Russia and Ukraine on the battlefield.
"Zaluzhnyy saw tremendous potential in this technology, thanks to which we could neutralize the Russian numerical advantage in manpower, equipment, weapons, and tactical depth, gaining time. For this purpose, he wanted to establish a command of unmanned forces, he wanted to form 100 companies of so-called 'Brave ones'—units of strike unmanned aviation complexes, he wanted to form the same drone army—millions plus FPV and products of other platforms," said Taras Chmut.
He also emphasized the role of artificial intelligence on the battlefield and stated that it "transforms the application of certain weapon systems." However, Taras Chmut believes that AI cannot change the course of the war, at least not in the short term.
According to him, there are currently many teams working on optical navigation systems, auto-tracking systems, recognition, and target designation.
"Incidentally, what else can be done? For example, automate the use of FPV and minimize the human factor there. But at each stage, there are a lot of questions, problems, and it's not as straightforward as it might seem," Chmut noted.
Taras Chmut, says that currently, the Armed Forces lack people, and they are the "number one priority."
"No people—no everything else. If there were enough people, the war would be completely different now," says Taras Chmut.
Among the major problems of mobilization in Ukraine, he notes the "incorrect information policy on this issue."
"In many matters, we allow Russian and internal bot farms, some pseudo-activists who distort reality, to work," Chmut believes.
According to him, in Ukraine, there is often no proper punishment for abuse in the context of mobilization, hindering recruitment, and decentralizing basic military training.
At the same time, he says that it is necessary to find a "golden mean" between supporting the economy and mobilizing specialists.
"If these are top programmers, they should not be machine gunners. They should create top products for the Defense Forces," says the head of the "Come Back Alive" fund.
Commenting on the law reducing the mobilization age from 27 to 25 years, recently signed by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, Taras Chmut noted that if Ukraine wants to survive, it must "face the war, accept it as a reality, and start doing something about it."
"Now I will say a terrible phrase, after which this interview will change everything around. But in my opinion, mobilization should start from the age of 20 already. We have wasted too much time," said Taras Chmut.
At the end of the interview, he responded to a request to draw an analogy between the Russian war against Ukraine and a football match. And if in the previous interview Chmut said it was the 30th minute and the score was 2-2, now it's already: "3:2 in favor of the Russians. It's the 45th minute."
"Time to start speaking and living with reality—a grim, unpleasant reality—we won't win this war. But we haven't lost it yet. There's still time, there are still people, we can still come together and change everything. It's not too late," commented Taras Chmut on the release of this interview on his social media channels.
