UK, Ukraine sign AI defence partnership linked to battlefield technology

LONDON, Aug 24 (Reuters) - Britain said on Monday it had signed a partnership with Ukraine to jointly develop artificial intelligence tools for defence and security, giving British researchers access to a Ukrainian battlefield data platform used to train military AI systems.

Prime Minister Andy Burnham and President Volodymyr Zelenskiy signed the agreement in Kyiv, making Britain the first international partner to access Ukraine's Avengers AI Labs, a government statement said.

Avengers Labs was built around an annotated dataset of 5 million battlefield images, Ukraine's Defence Ministry said earlier in August, largely drawn from the military's DELTA combat system – a domestically developed battlefield management and situational-awareness system.

The platform uses data collected from cameras and sensors across Ukraine's battlefield, including information on tanks, artillery systems, drones and other military targets.

The Ukrainian ministry said AI models trained on the data were already being used in an automated target-detection system that analyses more than 100,000 drone video feeds each month and can identify about 70% of enemy targets in real time.

Under the deal, Britain and Ukraine will collaborate on pilot projects including technology that uses fibre-optic cables as AI-enabled sensors to help protect military facilities, and research into low-power AI chips for drones and autonomous systems.

The British government said the partnership would initially focus on defence and national security projects bringing together researchers, engineers, technology companies and military experts from both countries.

Burnham on Monday visited Ukraine for his first trip abroad since becoming prime minister, where he had talks with Zelenskiy and co-chaired a meeting of the "Coalition of the Willing."

His office had earlier announced Britain would allow missile maker MBDA to release classified information on British-made components used in the SCALP long-range cruise missile to help establish assembly lines in Ukraine.

(Reporting by Sam Tabahriti, Editing by Paul Sandle)