The First Avenger: London and Kiev join forces to train military AI

The UK and Ukraine have signed an agreement under which London will have access to millions of personnel from the Ukrainian front in order to train its military algorithms on real combat operations. This data is being turned into a new weapon with the help of AI. What is behind the partnership between Kiev and London in this area and where it can lead — in the material of Izvestia.

Cooperation is reaching a new level

On August 24, British Prime Minister Andy Burnham and Vladimir Zelensky signed a partnership agreement in the field of artificial intelligence (AI). This was reported by the press service of the British government.

"This revolutionary partnership will combine Ukraine's unparalleled operational expertise with Britain's first—class AI ecosystem, giving us the opportunity to develop future technologies that will transform lives here in Britain and save lives on the battlefield in Ukraine," the British prime minister said.

London will now have access to an array of data collected during the fighting in Ukraine. They will be used to train military AI models.

Britain will become the first allied country to gain access to the Ukrainian Avengers Labs combat data platform, which stores video recordings from surveillance cameras and infrared sensors installed along the entire front line in Ukraine.

As explained in the British government, the Avengers AI Labs platform is a real "gold mine" of combat data: the equipment collects information about millions of objects: tanks, artillery installations, air defense systems, infantry, as well as aerial targets, including kamikaze Shahed drones and reconnaissance UAVs.

"This will allow the two countries to accelerate the development of artificial intelligence tools for solving tasks on the battlefield," the document says. The agreement also provides Kiev with access to leading British universities, research centers, technology companies and the world's third largest ecosystem in the field of AI.

You'll give it to me

In March, Ukraine announced that it was ready to provide its allies with access to the dataset, and also offered the opportunity to "train AI models on real data from modern warfare," The Financial Times reported. In return, Kiev hoped to receive "faster progress in the development of autonomous systems and new technological solutions for the front."

Initially, the British-Ukrainian agreement focused on defense and national security. It was planned that engineers, scientists, entrepreneurs and military specialists from both countries would form a joint AI department to solve key tasks in this area. Now the parties do not exclude that in the future the partnership may be extended to other areas of public life, from air traffic control to railway systems.

Andy Burnham called Ukraine one of the world's leading innovators in the field of defense technology. As part of the agreement, several pilot projects have already been launched with the participation of three British startups: Sintela from Bristol, Mind Foundry from Oxford and Skyral from London.

The first development will soon be implemented at one of the UK's defense facilities to protect bases from enemy attempts to obtain intelligence. The second project involves the development of a new generation of low-power AI chips for drones, robotics and autonomous systems. If successful, this technology will form the basis of a new generation of intelligent machines that can work longer, respond faster, and function in environments where traditional systems are powerless.

The agreement also paves the way for localization of production. The Prime Minister announced that London had allowed the MBDA defense company to declassify information about British components for long-range SCALP missiles in order to assemble them directly in Ukraine.

According to Minister of AI Kanishka Narayan, the access of British startups, researchers and engineers to the data of the Avengers AI platform is the next step in deepening the partnership between London and Kiev. He also called the deal "sovereignty in the field of AI in practice," which "includes creating our own capabilities, turning front-line experience into systems that protect armed forces abroad and critical infrastructure at home."

The confrontation will reach a new level

Experts believe that AI technologies are changing the rules of war, and artificial intelligence is becoming a strategic resource, reducing decision-making time. As a British military expert, who asked not to be named, said in an interview with Izvestia, the Ukrainian model specified in the agreement can now detect up to 70% of objects in real time.

— For comparison, a human operator copes with this task by about 40-50% with the same load. Ukraine has not just a video archive, but structured information on which models can be trained from scratch," the specialist explained.

In his opinion, Britain can gain a unique competitive advantage because it has the third largest AI ecosystem in the world.

— London lacked the main thing — real combat data for training military models. The agreement with Ukraine closes this gap. The United States and its allies are already leading in the field of AI development, but they lack combat data to "test" military models," the source said, expressing the opinion that Britain, having access to Ukrainian archives, will be able to create models that will be more experienced than any analogues, since "they will be trained on real It's a war, not a training exercise."

One of the areas of cooperation, according to the military expert, is the development of low—power AI chips for drones and robotics. Modern drones run into limitations: the more powerful the algorithm, the more energy it consumes, and the shorter the flight time. The successful creation of energy-efficient chips capable of processing complex models in real time, in his opinion, will open the era of truly autonomous combat systems. He also added that the creation of an AI center by Ukraine and the UK will develop standards and approaches for the entire Western coalition.

— Britain will benefit from this by strengthening its position as a technological leader. But also Ukraine, because this will allow it to accelerate the development of its own solutions and shorten the path from idea to implementation," the analyst believes.

At the same time, he pointed out serious risks. In particular, we may be talking about data leakage, the possibility of creating systems that will operate beyond human control.