The SmartShooter SMASH technology has been supplied to Colchester-based paratroopers this week alongside training on how to use the assistive tech, the BBC first reported this morning (Wednesday 6 March).

According to the Ministry of Defence (MOD), the technology, which is mounted on top of a rifle, provides soldiers situated on the ground with a “high probability” of shooting targets down.

The technology’s producer, SmartShooter, says on its website that SMASH is a “high-tech individual Fire Control System,” and that its “dual-core computer with sophisticated ballistic processing can recognise, track and engage aerial (Drone/UAS [unmanned aircraft system]) and ground targets with unmatched precision.”

Warrant Officer Joe Cooke, who’s at the helm of small arms training for the 16 Air Assault Brigade, told the BBC of the difficulties of downing weaponised drones during conflicts.

He explained that “Our current option to target a drone is to just shoot at it, and they are small and mobile targets that are very hard to hit.”

“We’ve got medics and signallers on this course who, because of their role, don’t use their rifles as much as infantry and they are shooting with an accuracy that they have never achieved before.”

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Weaponised drones bolstered by artificial intelligence are not an uncommon occurrence in today’s conflicts.

Olga Tokariuk, a Ukrainian journalist and researcher, spoke at the recent Data Summit on how AI is changing, and has already changed, the battlefield.

She explained that automated drones have been deployed widely throughout the conflict in Ukraine: “Not just to do reconnaissance,” said Tokariuk, “but also to identify targets and help the operators destroy enemy targets efficiently.”

The last time DIGIT reported on the MOD, technology, and flying targets was in January, when the UK’s first firing of a high-power laser weapon against aerial targets was achieved in a trial in the Hebrides.