AI in Recent Conflicts: Ukraine, Gaza, and the Houthi Campaign
Key findings
- 01
Constraint, not abundance, drives adoption
Ukraine automated because it was short of soldiers and materiel; the Houthis because they lack ISR and precision-strike infrastructure. In each case AI closes a gap between what a belligerent wants to do and what its people can do unassisted.
- 02
Where AI sits matters more than how advanced it is
Upstream, population-scale target generation raises the sharpest distinction and proportionality questions. Downstream terminal guidance raises narrower concerns about reliability. Kill-chain position predicts the legal stakes better than sophistication does.
- 03
The human is still in the loop, but the loop is shrinking
No confirmed fully autonomous lethal engagement appears in any of the three conflicts. Reported human review of machine-generated targets has nonetheless compressed to roughly 20 seconds in one case.
- 04
Diffusion is outrunning governance
Components, techniques and countermeasures cross the state/non-state divide in weeks. REAIM and the UN processes remain non-binding, and the 2026 target for autonomous-weapons rules is unlikely to be met.
Abstract
This paper examines the use of artificial intelligence across three concurrent conflicts (the Russia-Ukraine war, the Israel-Gaza war, and the Houthi campaign against Red Sea shipping) as complementary case studies spanning state and non-state actors, open-battlefield, urban and maritime environments, and applications ranging from ISR and autonomous navigation to population-scale target generation and asymmetric terminal guidance. Drawing on open-source and investigative reporting, it finds that resource constraint rather than resource abundance has driven most visible AI adoption; that the stage of the kill chain at which AI operates predicts legal and ethical stakes better than technological sophistication does; and that capability and countermeasure diffusion across actors is outpacing the non-binding governance frameworks meant to constrain it. No confirmed instance of a fully autonomous, human-out-of-the-loop lethal engagement appears in any of the three cases, but human review in at least one case is reported to have compressed to a matter of seconds.
In the full report
- 1. Introduction
- 2. Background and Context
- 3. Case Study: Russia-Ukraine War
- 4. Case Study: Israel-Gaza Conflict
- 5. Case Study: Houthi Operations in Yemen and the Red Sea
- 6. Cross-Cutting Technology Themes
- 7. Legal and Ethical Implications
- 8. Policy and Governance Implications
- 9. Comparative Analysis and Emerging Patterns
- 10. Conclusion and Future Outlook
- References
Cite as Secontinuum Research (2026). AI in Recent Conflicts: Ukraine, Gaza, and the Houthi Campaign. SR-2026-01. https://www.secontinuum.com/blog/ai-in-recent-conflicts-ukraine-gaza-houthi/
Read the report· PDF, 17 pp