They're saying two different things in the post. One is that a drone is flown to a location and then automatically attacks whatever it encounters, that's fully automatic and would be aweful imo because then the drone is making decisions on what to attack/kill.

The second thing is later in the post when they talk about countermeasures. They state that the drones can be countered before they're locked on to a target. That implies that an operator picks a target and the automation part only serves to keep the drone locked on the target, but the drone makes no decision on what to target. That's conceptually similar to a pilot selection an enemy aircraft they locked onto before firing a missile.

From the post it's not quit clear which of the two are the case or if both are happening. I suspect it's the second case because Ukraine can't really afford the bad publicity of the first case imo.

[–] teyrnon@sh.itjust.works 4 points 3 weeks ago

It's true, locking onto a target is no different than a guided missile. The Russian blogger is trying to make it sound like it's autonomous killbots, when it's guided munitions that are set on a target, by people, to avoid jamming.