A senior Ukrainian defence official told New Scientist that fully autonomous drones killed soldiers in a test two years ago. The claim cannot be independently verified — no military confirmation, casualty figures, or corroborating sources exist, and the official remains unnamed. What we do know is that Ukraine has deployed increasingly autonomous, AI-guided drones that can patrol areas, recognize targets using onboard machine vision, and complete attacks with minimal human input. These systems have likely killed soldiers in combat. However, it's not clear whether this represents the first use of fully autonomous lethal weapons, or whether the specific test described by the official actually happened as reported. Independent verification from Ukrainian or NATO sources hasn't confirmed the details of the alleged test or established exactly how autonomous these systems were when they operated.