Mercenaries from Russian paramilitary organisation Wagner Group are reportedly secretly developing "swarm drones" in an arms deal with Chinese spies. The explosive-tipped and bomb-dropping drones from China would be deployed in large numbers with the ability to devastate multiple targets of civilians or troops.
The project has been involved in secretive meetings between Chinese cyber experts, the Wagner Group and spies from both countries, the Mirror reports. The developments contradict Beijing's claims that it is not involved in the Ukraine war, which is gradually becoming a conflict between the west and east.
Over 2,500 helicopter-style DJI Mavic2 drones were transported from Beijing to Moscow in a deal between Wagner officers, Moscow and Beijing. The drone plans emerged amid Ukrainian forces arriving in the UK to undergo intensive training in how to operate Challenger II tanks.
An intelligence report seen by the Daily Mirror reveals: "The group is attempting to develop a swarm platform for coordinated autonomous drone orchestration using the 2,500 delivered recently from China. The communications channel between the Wagnerites and the Chinese Communist Party is in two cloaked networks, one in Russia and one in China. That network is responsible for the clandestine shipments of war materials being used against Ukraine, regardless of how much the Chinese deny it."
A swarm network is one in which large numbers of aerial robots directed by artificial intelligence can storm one common goal together, which would be either to cause maximum destruction or create a mass aerial spy ring that can fed a large amount of targets back to artillery or air-attack controllers at one time. A Wagner Group IT research and development office is now located in Vladimir Putin's hometown of St Petersburg to develop China-style "bot farms" and the new warm drone technology.
One arms expert said: "This swarm drone technology is at the centre of the new arms race - and Russia is throwing everything it has at it. By using artificial intelligence it could launch a swarm of drones, which would be much harder to defend against, having it a specific mission.
“The swarm would then be able to either feed mass surveillance imagery back to a base in real-time so that it can be targeted or attack with bombs or both."
