Ivan the Terminator: Russia Is Showing Off Its New Robot Soldier

"Peter Asaro, a spokesman for the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots and an artificial intelligence expert at The New School, similarly said Russian drones wouldn't be an immediate game changer in the rising tensions between Russia and the West.

"It's already pretty well acknowledged that if Russia wants to invade the Baltics, they can do it in 24 hours and NATO can't do much about it," Asaro said. "Them having some super sophisticated robot isn't going to change that."

But Asaro and Singer noted that Russia lately has been pursuing unconventional warfare that doesn't involve hordes of troops swarming across borders. Instead, as in Ukraine, Russia appears to have given tanks and other weapons to separatists in the eastern half of the former Soviet Union and, less overtly, sent soldiers who claimed to be mercenaries or Russian patriots, the so-called "little green men" who wore masks, unmarked uniforms, and carried Russian weapons in the conflict."