{"text":[[{"start":6.3,"text":"The writer is a columnist at Le Monde"}],[{"start":9.55,"text":"When Vladimir Putin brought high-intensity war back to Europe by invading Ukraine in 2022, he also brought back memories of the devastating human cost of previous conflicts. Surely, in the digital age, this one would be different. But soon enough, experts described the war in Ukraine as a mix of the first world war with trenches, the second with tanks, and a war of the future with 21st-century technology. "}],[{"start":35.400000000000006,"text":"Now in its fifth year, the conflict has taken another turn. Tanks are gone, and have been replaced with drones and robots. Drones do everything: deliver food and explosives, move equipment, destroy targets, kill. For the first time ever, Russian soldiers have surrendered to drones on the battlefield. In record time, drones and AI have revolutionised the art of war."}],[{"start":59.300000000000004,"text":"But there is a catch. While one might expect such technological advances to minimise casualties and lead to a cleaner war, the exact opposite is happening. "}],[{"start":69.5,"text":"The level of losses on either side is staggering. Armed drones and AI have transformed the frontline into a treacherous, completely transparent kill zone, about 20 miles deep, making the evacuation of wounded soldiers extremely difficult. "}],[{"start":84.5,"text":"As a result, says the French historian Stéphane Audoin-Rouzeau, the ratio of fatalities to injuries on the frontline is now close to that of the Great War. Advances in military medicine, particularly in the second half of the 20th century, brought this ratio down from one fatality to 2 to 3 injuries to close to one to 10 in the Afghanistan war. But in Ukraine today, Professor Audoin-Rouzeau told me, this ratio is closer to one fatality to 3 to 4 injuries, which he sees as a “massive regression.” "}],[{"start":117.25,"text":"The use of helicopters to evacuate wounded soldiers was hailed as a formidable innovation, enabling medics in the Vietnam war, in their race against time, to make the most of what they called the “golden hour”, a crucial timeframe to save lives. But helicopters cannot fly in a sky saturated by drones. Evacuations of casualties across Ukraine’s kill zone can take days, even when carried out by wheeled land drones."}],[{"start":143.6,"text":"Doctors visiting hospitals behind the frontline talk about mass amputations as the sole remedy for injured limbs left with a tourniquet for days, as well as facial injuries reminiscent of the first world war. One doctor told me about witnessing 23 casualties brought within 24 hours to a hospital in Dnipro earlier this year, with exhausted surgeons immediately performing amputations. "}],[{"start":166.79999999999998,"text":"There is another dimension to the dehumanisation produced by the drone war. Soldiers are having to spend weeks, even months, stuck in dugout shelters to hold a position, without rotation because of a shortage of troops, relying on supplies brought by drones. "}],[{"start":181.79999999999998,"text":"All this is happening while western military officials flock to Kyiv to learn about the drone revolution which, ironically, came about because their very countries were unable, or unwilling, to deliver the quantity of shells and artillery Ukraine needed to fight Russian forces. They are briefed by brilliant young Ukrainians about the latest software to improve the performance of soldier-designed devices or innovations to speed up the delivery process — fast adaptation is essential in this new art of war."}],[{"start":211.99999999999997,"text":"“Technological advance leads to a new threshold of efficiency of war,” noted Admiral Pierre Vandier, Nato’s Supreme Allied Commander Transformation, in a talk organised recently by the journal Le Grand Continent. Vandier also visited Kyiv two months ago to have a closer look at what this war means in terms of technological progress and what lessons Nato should draw from it. Among the takeaways posted on social network X, he mentioned “rapid adaptation on both sides” and pointed out that “first-generation robotics have dramatically increased the lethality of the kill zone, now reaching WWI-like attrition figures on the enemy”."}],[{"start":248.34999999999997,"text":"Ukrainian defence minister Mykhailo Fedorov has set a target of 50,000 casualties a month as the cost of war that Russia cannot sustain. Western estimates put the current level of Russian losses at 35,000 per month. Ukraine’s figures are not known but the human toll is visible enough. As impressive as the speed of drone and robotics development may be, what both sides are mostly fighting, in the words of Audoin-Rouzeau, is “a dirty, horrific war”."}],[{"start":286.1499999999999,"text":""}]],"url":"https://audio.ftcn.net.cn/album/a_1779347606_1553.mp3"}