South Korean defense-tech startup Newtype Industries is testing the Barbara AI system in Ukraine, which should speed up communication between military personnel who have spotted a target and artillerymen.
South Korean defense-tech startup Newtype Industries is testing the Barbara AI system in Ukraine, which should speed up communication between military personnel who have spotted a target and artillerymen.
This was stated by defense analyst Olena Kryzhanivska after a conversation with the founder and CEO of Newtype Industries, Seungwon Cho.
Barbara works primarily with voice messages from the military. A soldier spots a target and records the “voice.” The AI recognizes what is said and converts it into a report that can be passed on to the officer directing artillery fire. The program should also spot potential errors. For example, it can warn if the coordinates look wrong or if the target may be in a civilian area.
According to the company's plan, this should reduce the time between target detection and the decision to use artillery, as well as reduce the number of human errors during data transmission.
Kryzhanivska explains the importance of speed in artillery work, citing an interview with Viktor Kevlyuk, a reserve colonel and artilleryman. Kevlyuk calls one of the main conclusions of the war that the speed of the “detection-processing-strike” cycle can be more important even than the number of guns. Data comes simultaneously from drones, radars and observers, so it is increasingly difficult to quickly process all this flow manually.
Newtype Industries originally developed Barbara as a system to assist in artillery fire control. However, according to the CEO, the company has begun to expand it into a broader platform that could combine artillery with unmanned systems, including strike drones.
“I don’t think drones are replacing artillery. They are augmenting firepower. They should work together in a system, not as separate tools,” explains Seungwon Cho.
According to him, the company has already worked with two Ukrainian units and received initial feedback from combat brigades. The company plans to complete the current phase of testing by the end of 2026, although the specific timing will depend on the situation on the front.
Previously, dev.ua wrote about Clarity, an AI program for automatically searching for enemy equipment and positions in photos and videos from drones.
