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Unmanned (But Armed) Aircraft Experiments In 2001
John Warden, architect of the Gulf war air campaign, believes that by 2025
90% of combat aircraft will be unmanned. Next spring, the first armed
aircraft without pilot,
the X-45A UCAV will make its maiden flight. Replacing the pilot
by a ground controller cuts the price of each unit by two-thirds, and makes it
easier to transport.
The Economist has more, and states 'the decision to fire weapons should be
made by a human, to reduce the risk of "friendly fire."' This is not logical:
Since the planes can be networked and thus know each other's relative positions,
preventing friendly fire is a much simpler problem than the visual recognition
required to determine what to shoot at, unless you don't mind hitting
non-military targets. I wonder what Asimov would think.
wow.. can we say robocop.. just found this over at navy.mil.
How we know is more important than what we know.
I agree w/ you except how is 1 man @ 170lbs (fighter pilots are not NFL players) 25% of the weight of a figheter? are you expecting me to believe that a tomcat weighs 680 lbs? no they weigh several tons... but other than that... yes you need people. computer ai's do well in quake.. but they know everything that's happening... and you can still kill them. computer still aren't at the point where they can process all the data that's coming into a pilot. including visuall which is VERY important. not even quantum is going to be able to do this.
Happy Happy FEEDBAG! Feedbag.
I live by a basic philosphy(sp?)..
Don't give anything a brain, that you wouldn't want your enemy to have.
Sure, a plane that can fight, and blow the hell out of things seems cool, as long as it doesn't see you as a threat.
Another scary thing is, hellish doomsday type weapons, like the Beserkers in uhmm.. I forgot the name of the author, but they were robotic machines designed for one purpose, the destruction of all life... in the end they butchered they're creators as well, but they didn't much care..
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Insert Witty Sig Here
Planes also attack ground positions and naval targets...
Allies are also in danger when they are around. There was a documentary on the weekend where an Aust seaman recounted being attacked by a USAF Phantom off the coast of Vietnam which only pulled away after killing quite a few men on the bridge. The hint that it wasn't a Viet freighter was the strength of the firepower when it opened up it's guns on on the plane.
Slashdot: Where nerds gather to pool their ignorance
Alrighty, i've seen some presentations on these kinds of things. The basic problem in current aircraft design is that aircraft can handle multiple times the acceleration the human body can. The F-16 can already take g-loads that would have its pilot's brain squishing out his/her ears. And thats still a 4th generation fighter mind you, not the 5th generation like the F-22 which probably can outperform the pilot even worse...
Once you remove the pilot a lot of interesting ideas become possible since you just ditched about 25% of the aircraft's weight and a majority of the physical requirements. Entirely new designs become possible because you don't need a cockpit etc...
This is a great idea then except for one thing. The Air Force is expecting the next generation of air combat to be quieter than the previous generation. The F22 can fly in passive mode and at least locate (if not target) enemy aircraft from the noise they put out (like their active radar, radio chatter etc). Things like IFF are ariel bulls-eyes in these cases. Also a continous transmission like the UCAV would put out isn't going to be much better. There is a great benefit to having a self contained fighting aircraft in this case which is something a UCAV is not and most likely never will be. AI is nowhere near where it needs to be for these things to be fully autonomous instead of simply unmanned.
As for men pulling triggers being unneccessary, dream on. One of the most important parts of combat is making sure the enemy doesn't know where you are. Would it be wise to create a remotely accessible database (which could conceivably be hacked) showing where all your aircraft are at any given time? It would be a target list if the enemy got a hand on it and could exploit it. Think security here.
So far I've gotten all my Karma from telling people they are wrong... :)
wow... we've got badass computers now and they can't even land a plane except in perfect conditions... The problem w/ computers is that they can't make leaps of logic. I mean you could put in a random guessing algorihm or somthing w/ preplanned conditions but how often is that going to be right compared to an educated guess? humas will be the control for a long time to come.
so when a harm goes into battle in control of itself it fires off it's load at the first fighters it sees and gets slaughtered by the rest... you have to use judgement and anyone will tell you... plans are all fine an good till you start then it's all played by ear... so you can't really program for it... quake yes cuase it's a finite situation... but a dogfight/arial war.. no
It is very hackable, thats why we dont use it during attack missions.
Sanchi
"They said we couldn't do it [Athlon]... but we built it, we shipped it... and we didn't have to recall it." Rich Heye
Am I alone here in thinking that the contemporary cartoon show "Gundam Wing" is an interesting critique of mechanized warfare which is valid today, though marketed to children?
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
The real question is why did skynet feel the need to take over the planet. Humans need to live in specific enviroments, but why wouldn't an intelligent computer just relocate to Antarctica until it could build a launch pad to send it self into a solar orbit, far far away from any humans.
The answer is simple. That would have made a lousy movie.
The problem with your idea is that an amored jeep sent back in time to assasinate someone would probably fail. It's hard to blend in when you're an assault vehicle.
Plus remember, even if the force the gun is pointed at is an enemy, the decision to pull the trigger is often political as well, based on rules of engagement which are formulated before engagement takes place. Combine this with the possibility of the enemy capturing a robot plane and using it as a "robot shield" to trick out the sensors, and you have a potential problem.
cept that a air to air missle control can't run an entire misision
you mark it as a special point and keep an eye on it and hope nothing comes out.
Sanchi
"They said we couldn't do it [Athlon]... but we built it, we shipped it... and we didn't have to recall it." Rich Heye
was that the 72nd or 73rd episode?
Having written The Manned Missiles in that same year, using that same premise... My oh my.. Can it be that my two heroes had themselves a little Cartel?
-- What you do today will cost you a day of your life.
After the "accidental" bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade, the opinion of many countries (most notably China, of course) was that Americans are so afraid of losing their own lives, that they are willing to be reckless with the lives of other people. Some have gone so far as to link this behavior to the fact that we are willing to get involved where Europeans or Oil is at stake (not necessarily in that order of importance), even if mass slaughter is going on and human rights are being severely violated with impunity. Rwanda and Cambodia are often cited as examples of this. Who can forget all that great Vietnam war video of bamboo huts disappearing into clouds of napalm launched from thousands of feet up? This sort of self-centered recklessness leaves Americans with the reputation of being racist cowards, and unfortunately, we have done little to disprove it in the past 25 years since the Vietnam war ended.
However powerful we are, we can't afford this sort of a reputation, whether or not it is fair or true. Cruise missiles and other unmanned weapons are only going to re-enforce this argument and breed a resentment of our power in the world at large, especially since they are easy, painless, and impersonal for us to use, but cause great destruction and personal pain.
What bugs me is that it is not because we really are cowards or racists or in some way fundamentally evil or that we enjoy this sort of warfare for the fun of it. It's a slow, greyish descent into immorality which we will allow to continue because the price tag of each of these beauties is going to make a lot of people very rich, and each new line of products will keep the arms makers and their thousands of employees very happy. The sales pitch is going to be "who can put a price on a human life, especially when that life is your boy or girl being shot out of the sky? After all, the people who are being killed by this weapon would be killed anyway whether or not it is manned or unmanned." In one hundred years, we'll be so out of touch with the humanity of the rest of humanity that we'll be blowing up third world dictators by remote control on TV as an entertainment sport. We'll be so busy with the Hollywood version of events that we won't notice the rest of the world ganging up against us.
Or breeding new and interesting versions of Mad Cow Disease to spray into cattle feed. Or slipping discrete lead-lined packets out of Khazakstan. Or suicide bombing our ships. Or cutting back on oil production.
Ah but think about quake when the computer can always keep an eye on you and has perfect aim. That changes who is the best or not.
This reminds me of a story I heard out of The Gulf War. I'm not sure, but I think the general was Colin Powell. Maybe somebody else knows for sure.
Anyhow, this reporter asks the general "what are your plans for the enemy". He responds: "we're going to find them and kill them." The reporter was shocked. Surely he meant "neutralize", "terminate", "subdue" or some other euphemism. When pressed again the general reiterated: "we're going to find them and kill them. That's what war is all about."
To me, this was almost as funny as that bit on Saturday Night Live where they were making fun of the reporters during that war, who were essentially asking the generals to reveal their battle plans before action. If the aforementioned incident really occured, it was an excellent way for the general to answer the reporter's question without revealing any secrets.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Perhaps laser relays with high-speed servos to keep a couple of beams always going out and reaching the plane and always coming back in, over a frequency difficult to create (so as not to be blinded by a flash) and scrambled by something insanely complex, like full 4096-bit encryption, which would be essentially impossible to crack over years, let alone the few minutes a dogfight would take, or the few hours a UCAV would be over hostile territory. Relays could also be placed in a constellation of LEO satellites, so as to allow extremely long distance missions. Pilots could be aboard an AWACS-style aircraft with an uplink to a satellite or three a few hundred miles up, then a few hundred miles down, and (assuming a total distance of 800 miles), you would have a lag of only about 9ms, well within what would be required to keep control of the aircraft, especially considering the full-3D view of the surroundings that could be available through the link.
:-)
Hmmmmm.... Anybody know of anyone building terabit aerial lasers?
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
>IFF is not very useful. Do you perhaps remember a few years back when the air force shot down two army helicopters in the Iraq northern no-fly zone? They misidentified them.
Yeah, AND THEY HAD THEIR IFF TURNED OFF.
Later
Erik Z
Democrats or Republicans. They are both taking us to the same place and they are not afraid of us anymore.
cool so we'll hack into the laser banded communication signal over a battle zone w/ our little computer... come on... these things are not gonna be on the internet... and if they detected another signal coming @ them there'd be a rocked headed right back down that pipe... by by script kiddy...
Please, learn something before you spew your nonsence. First some background on me. I work on the computer program that runs on AWACS. I have seen what the system can do. The F-22 will not run any active systems when on an attack run. All of the detection is left up to us (awacs). and the radar system on it sucks, its only an plainer two pass (hard to explain).
And IFF is used by every single airplane in the air, not just NATO.
Sanchi
"They said we couldn't do it [Athlon]... but we built it, we shipped it... and we didn't have to recall it." Rich Heye
Weapons can easily be misused. More taxi-cabs were bombed in Desert Storm than Scud Launchers. In fact not a single Scud launcher was confirmed destroyed. Was this due to ineptitude or intention? (and why are we elect the son of a war criminal to the presidency?-- See _The Fire This Time_ by Ramsey Clark).
Automated warfare is something that will come back to haunt us. Human cost cannot be ignored.
Chris Travers
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
I'm willing to bet that an unmanned craft that drops a few cheap bombs and lives to serve another day is much much cheaper than a cruise missle. The motivation is probably to create a 'reusable' cruise missle (i.e. an unmanned craft that drops bombs) and save tons of money. I would be rather upset if my expensive missle delivery device was a one time use item (such as the tomahawk). *Shrug* just a guess, but it seems the logical step.
Maybe another route would be a cruise missle that just delivers a 'warhead' type payload and returns home. Sorta a big roaming acurate cluster bomb that flys back home after destroying it's target. But then again there really isn't much different between a return cruise missle and an unmanned plane.
The human pulling the trigger from remote thing sounds a bit like fluff to me. Probably pretty much only consists of a human pushing a button telling a squadron of these things it's okay to drop the bombs. I doubt that it has anything like 1 person per unit. It sounds more like a comfort the civilian thing as in: "Don't worry, there is no risk of these things deciding to attack New York; after all, a human has to pull the trigger."
I thought someone said there was going to be free beer!
cept when the human rights orginizatinos cry cause you're using kids to kill people...
I find it difficult to believe this level of automated identification. One of the major pitfalls to date of current ICBM interception systems is that they can't tell the difference between real and decoy warheads (or in the test case between a warhead and a balloon!). So how can automated identification systems hope to cope in a much less than benign EM environment?
asimov would have had humanoid robots piloting the planes...
Container interfaces allow for periodic maintenance monitoring and software updating of the vehicle inside, which can be reassembled and prepared for combat within an hour. "
Nice Touch!
...some days you're the dog, some days you're the hydrant...
I dunno, lets pretend I'm some civilian in some punk town in the middle of nowhere, in 2025.
I hear the Americans have let loose a bunch of terminators, they're headed my way.
I know the terminators can't tell the difference between military and civilian.
I get me, and my family the hell out of there.
Later
Erik Z
Democrats or Republicans. They are both taking us to the same place and they are not afraid of us anymore.
More taxi-cabs were bombed in Desert Storm than Scud Launchers. In fact not a single Scud launcher was confirmed destroyed.
Not sure where you get your info from... I work in the Air Force and was in Desert Storm. While I am not sure about your taxi/SCUD launcher ratio. I do for a fact know that we took out many SCUD launchers. Don't forget that many of the missiles the US used have cameras on board. The primary use of these cameras is not for CNN, but in fact for intelligence gathering. The Generals would like to know that the weapons are doing their job.
Some days I get the sinking feeling Orwell was an optimist.
That's exactly the reason why there is a computer control system. A stable aircraft is like a ball in a salad bowl: the center of the bowl represents straight and level flight. As you move further away from center (more complex manuever), it gets harder to push the marble up the side. An unstable aircraft inverts the salad bowl, meaning small corrections get bigger (marble rolling down sides), but adds a computer controlled finger to push the marble back to center. When a pilot wants to turn manuever hard though, the finger stops pushing. What this means though, is that the plane is far more responsive and faster acting than a traditional craft. It is possible, in fact likely, that this response occurs far faster than a human is capable of adjusting for, meaning that the person will always be a little behind. What plane designers discovered is that they had to do things like look at how fast the contol device was moving and try to make an guess as to where the pilot wanted it, long before the hand got there, to reducing the lag, or else the plane seemed either ridiculously twitchy or incredibly sluggish. These systems, I understand are getting pretty advanced and intellegent, and without them it would be impossible to ever reach the full capability of the unstable design. About limits of wing strength: this is essentially a design parameter. Most military aircraft are designed to have some safety factor beyond what pilot can undergo, but at some point its better to save weight than make a plane that can take a turn that would kill a pilot. Many civilian aircraft are designed for much less than 9 Gs, and it is the pilots responsibility to know those limits. Concievably the unmanned vehicles could be made with far stronger wings, if pulling high Gs is worth the weight cost (with over the horizon missile systems, I'm not sure it is)
/* This post not warrantied for mission critical applications. */
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
global hawk seems to be working pretty well.
worst case scenario: some hack turns your assets against you.
kind of a nasty scenario, very tough to guarantee against.
if one pilot/human revolts, and bombs the capitol, it remains extremely unlikely that many will revolt.
once you can crack one aircraft, you have the means to take them all, especially if you can get in at a high enough level.
opens the somewhat interesting scenario of a small group of evil geniuses ruling the world with a beowolf or something.
Treatment, not tyranny. End the drug war and free our American POWs.
See my user info for links.
yeah and that was real also.. I love ender... it's my most bestest favouritest book in the world but it's still science FICTION
united said, in a press conference earlier this week, that due to cutbacks caused by "an overestimation of cashflow" that 90% of their flights will be unmanned in 2001 as well.
FluX
After 16 years, MTV has finally completed its deevolution into the shiny things network
"It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once." -David Hume
From what I've read about modern military history, the goal of war is not to kill people, it is to destroy the combat effectiveness of the enemy's forces.
This kind of thinking is the reason why the U.S. military can't beat a truly committed enemy. It doesn't help that their idea of "combat effectiveness" is hopelessly self-referential (combat effectiveness is the ability to reduce combat effectiveness of an enemy).
The goal of war is to crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and hear the lamentations of their women. Even uneducated barbarians know that.
All kidding aside, war is a means, not a goal. Was is the way you get something you want when nothing else will work. Principles like "we should avoid civilian casualties" and "a tank is worth more than a handgun" are not absolute.
The U.S. military works from several basic assumptions that hamstring them in many situations (and are forced on them by the "CNN factor"): they are trying to help the civilians in the area, their enemy is an evil dictator whose people hate him, and they want the area to be peaceful. These assumptions often conflict with, and even contradict, the only possible logical purposes of their attacks, leading to confusion and apparent incompetence.
It is very dangerous to have such sweeping absolutes out in the open for all your enemies to see and exploit. People in more than one area that has not profited from their interaction with the U.S. have compared the American military, with their submarines, stealth planes, and nightfighting gear, to vampires. The analogy is a very appropriate one, not only because their strange-seeming motivations and their terrifying night-attack tactics, but because they are invulnerable to the normal, direct methods of attack and must be fought according to bizarre and seemingly arbitrary rules that make them curiously easy for most to ward off, if not kill.
However, with no chance of a seriously damaging defeat near home ground, the American military will doubtless remain complacently ignorant of how they are perceived, and in particular, how well their limitations are understood.
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Am I the only one that sees this as a piece of SkyNet, of the Terminator movies?
If you think about this device, and what its mission is, it isn't very far off from a cruise missle, except that it doesn't blow itself up when it completes its mission. It comes back to fight another day. Cruise missles suffer from the same vulnerabilites, they've got multiple navigation sources (GPS, inertial, landmarks), and sat. communications, where they can be re-targeted if needed.
The first such mission envisioned is the suppression of enemy air defenses.
I think that this means the ground based, anti-aircraft installations (guns, missles, radar) The airframe is a pretty stealthy design, which is right for going against that sort of target. That type of mission is the most dangerous for a human pilot. I'm sure Congress likes it, since if one of them goes down in combat, they don't have to tell their constituents that they are sending their children to death in some far off country.
I would think air-air combat is a much harder problem, but it would be very good to take the human out of the loop- The plane could then do continuous hi-G turns, both positive and negative, stuff that would knock out a human in seconds.
Great we will be one step closer to one of many Phillip K Dick short stories about the humans building robots to fight their wars for them, but the robots always seem to wise up and stop fighting against each other, and start destroying the humans. Read the Second Variety
this takes browser wars to a whole new level.
Maybe the state's highest function is to grind out insoluble problems. (Zelazny, Hall of Mirrors)
If you watched both movies, the terminators were assasins disguised as humans to aid in infiltration.
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If you're interested in the Electronic Warfare systems involved during the Gulf War, this source is excellent.
I agree except for the $2.5 million tag that's still going to go along w/ each of those fighters... what you cut in pilot's gear you make up in communication gear.. and you get some flak and you're gone.. it's not going to be as robust as a pilot in a titanium tub.
Granted, the USAF might do a better job at AI's then a gaming company, the basic problems are the same:
There simply are no automated solutions to a chaotic scenario! Freaking mathematically impossible!
A fully automated fighter will obey certain simple rules (fire at most threating target first, do evasive manouvers if fired upon)
A human will learn those rules, and make sure that "the most threating target" is actually a decoy and that the robofighter is under a constant haul of cheap, quite harmless missiles that will distract it.
Suppose the robofighter can determine friend/foe with 100% accuracy. That was the *easy* part. Now the question is "should I fire or not?"
Again, see to the gaming situation. Don't you just love how those AI controlled opponents take impossible long distance shots at you, giving you a chance to duck and return accurate fire from a better position? Or how 20 bots scramble to meet a single opponent, while the rest are sneaking in from the back?
Humans make mistakes, machines make mistakes. THe difference is that machines make their mistakes systematically.
All opinions are my own - until criticized
cause research on a better katchup isn't gonna help us protect our oil interests over seas ;P
"OTOH there is one huge disadvantage to a UCAV: in a dog-fight, or whenever human perception is needed to reduce the decision tree to something manageable, they will always (well, for the next few decades anyway) be outmanned"
Fighter pilots may be chomping at the bit to get in on this one but the fact does remain...
If one can pull 10G+, use it to get on the tail of a bogey, and while still pulling 10G+, stay there and deliver a knockout blow then you have ALL the advantages. A human cannot maneuver beyond that, or out of the robot range, as they will blackout.
That is all the "decision tree" these things need in close combat (guns or heatseeking missiles).
In the BVR (Beyond Visual Range) shot using the AMRAAM or Sparrow (whatever they may be armed with) they are going to be a bigger handful for any anti-US force than the current primary manned US air-to-air vehicle (F-15) is... why?
The reason is they can shoot and select a new target and then maneuver beyond any threat response (piling on those G's while deploying chaff and flares (if they are onboard) to evade a return missile) better than any human can.
cheers
front
Hope that someone didn't already answer this...
The reason why the terminator looked human was to infiltrate enemy bases. The first ones had rubber skin, and were spotted rather easily, but the later ones had living flesh over a machine frame. Of course, the humans started to use dogs then to 'recognize' the terminators.
There were other killing machines, such as the simple HK's, and the flying and large killing machines with tank treads.
(I just rewatched that movie the other night)
Have we forgotten about one thing?
Light speed is 299792458 m/s. I'm working the numbers and after the transmission time, reception time, some fudge factor for signal decoding, latency, etc. and then the time to actually make the move, you are talking about a 1000-2000 mile radius between you and the plane.
Earth curvature is even worse. If you are prepared to really take a hit on the service radius, you can use a satelite, but then you have to use a satelite in geosynch orbit (which is not a nice low 100-200 mile orbit like the shuttle flies in. 22,000 miles is more like it)
Of course, there's always an airliner loaded with relays flying near the target radius.
But the pilots won't be able to sit in their couches in some comfy home hooked up to a modified playstation and make war. You are going to have to ship the pilots and the planes out to a base near the target, so your enemy is going to be gunning for that location. All it takes is one good-sized balistic missile to make it through the defenses and all of your planes just fall out of the sky because you just killed a bunch of pilots.
So it's not a technology that can make war like a game. Not unless the government knows something we don't about faster than light communication.
Umm yes... I'm calling cause my video card went out... no I really can't be put on hold... yes I've checked to make sure the monitor is plugged in... yes It's turned on... yes the computer is on also... no it's not in sleep mode... yes I am currently in a mission and it is critical... can you just bring me down a new video car please? what do you mean it'll take 4 hours?
You have done a real bang-up job on the software design, but would you mind posting the implementation?
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they will still have to know position so they don't fly into one another
IFF is not very useful. Do you perhaps remember a few years back when the air force shot down two army helicopters in the Iraq northern no-fly zone? They misidentified them.
Remember the USS Vincennes that shot down the Iran airliner?
IFF has been aorund since WWII (55+ years) and has never been so reliable that pilots actually trusted it. No doubt current versions are better than older stuff, but it's hardly perfect, or even good enough.
If IFF were so good, why do they spend billions on radar which can identify the airplane type from radar returns?
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Infuriate left and right
But, what good is a war that doesn't hurt. Wars fought like this--without soldiers-- don't inflict the kind of loss that really hurts. So, while there may be fewer impediments to going to war, the very act of warring will also be less powerful. Hmm...war version 2
What would life be without homegrown tomatoes?
Yes, but I was talking about commercial, passenger carrying aircraft, not military fighters.
I work with people doing AI research, so I can tell you that we're not yet there. "There" meaning: unmanned autonomous aircraft. That being said, I really believe that in a not so distant future we will be "there"...
Opus: the Swiss army knife of audio codec
i let the f*****g dogs out, i didn't know that would be a problem
If you don't know what AltaVista is (was), get off my lawn.
In the long term, both sides of any conflict will be using unmanned vehicles. It would seem to me that this would turn future wars into glorified versions of the BBC show Robot Wars. Wars wouldn't be such a bad thing any more.
Slashdot monitor for your Mozilla sidebar or Active Desktop.
" It would seem to me that this would turn future wars into glorified versions of the BBC show Robot Wars."
More like modernised versions of "Christians vs the Lions" (Of course the robotic lions are carrying out a morally justifiable police action)
Pogrom, anyone?
What really worries me is when this technology starts taking advantage of some of the results of research into ultra small dimension flight.
-- Butlerian Jihad NOW!
cool a tiny 6 foot wide fighter... that could pick up exactly 0 2000lb bombs.. urm let me see 0 pheonix air to air missles... 0 sidewinder missles... and about 10 lbs of 20mm shells... oh wait it coulnd't pick up the gun...
Unless you don't mind hitting non-military tagets, or if you don't mind hitting non-military targets?
>In one hundred years, we'll be so out of touch with the humanity of the rest of humanity that we'll be blowing up third world dictators by remote control on TV as an entertainment sport.
That would be so COOL!
Er, I mean, Oh, the terrible inhumanity of war!
Later
Erik Z
Democrats or Republicans. They are both taking us to the same place and they are not afraid of us anymore.
I keep hearing that it will be a good day when you can just fight robot vs robot and no person gets killed... all the dumb geek doesn't know what he's talkin bout stuff to the side... this would just mean that the richest country would win every time because it could build the most weapson luckily that wouldn't be canada it would be the us so we have nothign to worry about...
we spend millions on military because it is the most socially meaningful research that there is! Measure the fall of communism or the end of Hitler's terror against some tree-huggin scientist developing a new hairspray that doesn't need to be tested on cute bunnies. A**holes like Saddam are out there - we spend millions on military to keep them out of our universities so scientists can have the leisure time to develop socially meaningful things like nutra sweet
Just deploy your white noise generator, pump up the power, and watch those birds falling out of the sky ...
Nothing like a good jamming session!!!
whether you can force it down to zero is irrelevent... let's say you can force it down to 1 kbits/s. Text transmissions: no problem. Voice transmission: there's a problem but it can still get through. Video transmission: no way!
...). There's no way you can get all that through when you're being jammed... Also, if you have 100 planes in the same area, your bandwidth (using spread-spectrum) is divided by 100. That's not much available...
The problem is that to remotely pilot an aircraft travelling at Mach 2 (even much below Mach 1), you need a lot of data, and that data needs to be updated rapidly. Think about it. You need a video feed from the cockpit, all the radar info, all the instruments (attitude, altitude, speed,
Opus: the Swiss army knife of audio codec
You have to face facts... Anything that has ever been created has been cracked... So when Chinese computer crackers fingure out how to remotely control our computer systems in these aircrafts, our own force will attach us. Even the government hasn't figured out how to protect it's webservers, do you trust them to make un-crackable systems in these aircraft? Imagine a launched missle suddenly turning around and comming torwards you.
Even if that isn't a concern, you will be able to track these vehicals because they must be constantly broadcasting and recieving radio signals...
If anyone has any info on this that will put my concerns to rest I'd like to hear them!
I would be nervous about flying civilian aircraft in its vicinity (or indeed future variations of this concept that are more autonomous) in case it took a dislike to my plane. But- if I was expecting attacks from anything from enemy aircraft to helicopters to missiles, I'd want to have some of these little suckers loose in the sky. It'd be "all civilian aircraft out of the sky NOW! OK- anything left is toast". I think the defensive capabilities of such a design, particularly as autonomous robots, could be really formidable. This is not exclusively an offensive weapon. It could be a hell of a defense against almost any air attack.
hmm.. now if you have very good surveillance of the battle field (can we say satelight, ground camera's, radar, etc, etc) you could fly a bomber with no one way commands. Hell, if you can make a cruise missile that has a remote detonator, why can't you have an automated plane to do dogfights. Personally I'd just like to see a war plane controlled by a pilot on the ground in a simulator. Although I think a more interesting idea is a Battle Droid controlled with a halflife like interface from a remote location. Now that is war.
How we know is more important than what we know.
You're right, we should continue to risk the lives of men and women in battle!
Hey, if you're going to make it easier to kill other men and women under the guise of war, you should be willing to risk your own life.
Perhaps one only realizes the value of all life when one's own has been put in danger, or sacrificed.
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Someday, you're going to die. Get over it.
States with a "shall-issue" gun permit law have an 84% reduction in multiple victim shootings.
"67% of all statistics are made up."
"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence."
"And like that
"The sobering part comes from a few rare reports during the Gulf War. There were reports of "near misses" with HARM missles by friendly surface forces. The theory is that the HARMs mis-identified friendly radar or communications systems as a threat in its internal threat table. "
I'm interested in this. Could you give us a source for that statement... I would have emailed but I cannot find an email for you.
cheers
front
front@NOSPAM.mac.com
I think many fail to realize that war is about killing.
Actually, it isn't. Killing is merely an acceptable tactic. War is about destroying resistance, which mostly means destroying hardware in non-guerilla wars.
There's no "we" in team, only "me"
Okay, the whole thing goes:
Terminator: In 3 years Cyberdyne will become the largest supplier of military computer systems. All stealth bombers are upgraded with Cyberdyne computers, becoming fully unmanned. Afterward, they fly with a perfect operational record.
Sarah: Uh huh, great. Then those fat fucks in Washington figure, what the hell, let a computer run the whole show, right?
Terminator: Basically. The Skynet funding bill is passed. The system goes on-line August 4th, 1997. Human decisions are removed from strategic defense. Skynet begins to learn, at a geometric rate. It becomes self-aware at 2:14 a.m. eastern time, August 29. In a panic, they try to pull the plug.
Sarah: And Skynet fights back.
CowboyNeal for president!
"Hit any user to continue."
Couple this to a low radar and IR profile and you have a pretty good change success.
Also this can be used to safely resuply ground troops in dangerous areas (different payload, same principle)
I doubt doing this is in the best interest of defense contractors though - it would imply less contracts to build Tomahawks.
If you have troops on the ground anyway, why not have a roboplane-operator among them? Send in the gunship and have the local operator take over. The ground troops knows where they are, and where the problem is too.
The human body is a true "all terrain vehicle". So if you're killing humans, your 'Terminators' need to be able to go anywhere a human can go.
Later ErikZ
Democrats or Republicans. They are both taking us to the same place and they are not afraid of us anymore.
--
I don't think that the world knowing the limitations of the US military is a bad thing. Yes, the US military is easy to ward off. Don't perform genetic cleansing, don't attack innocent countries, and keep a semblance of democracy. We don't need to fight direct wars with countries if they can change their behavior to ward us off from using our "vampire" tactics.
So you could fire a machine gun into a melee and be sure of missing your own troops? Interesting idea. The 'cookie cutters' in Neal Stephenson's Diamond Age were a completely different kind of weapon: a nanobot in the bloodstream programmed to explode at a given signal.
Ask me if I've been required to disclose any crypto keys.
Ther is a big difference between a remtoe manned vehicle and an autonomous one. Saying things like "the first step towards robots fighting our wars for us" is like saying the 25 cent crane-game machien is the first step towards robots doing our manual labor for us.
All they did is take the pilot out of the plane and put him on the ground folks. Those "operators" are air force pilots (the friend of an in-law of mine was oen of the test pilots.)
I would expect this sort of "machines are gonna kill us" nonsense from the unwashed masses, but I thought Slashdot was supposed to be a techno-literate group.
If you want to undrestand why they are going this direction, go rent an epsiode of Nova called "The Biology Barrier." For awhile now the limiting factor on fighter plane performance has not been what the plane could do, but what the human body inside the plane could stand. Taking the pilot out of the cockpit frees the plane up to perform at maximum.
better yet.. why not just fight the war in software. A world wide simulator with tanks, planes and infintry. Then at the end of each week we can send out a list of the people who were killed in battle.
Attention Citizen. Your avatar was killed in active duty on the 21st of June, 2026. Please report for decintergration at your nearest recycling plant.
"Damn it.."
How we know is more important than what we know.
Wars will still be bad. The enemy will definitely want to wipe out your robot-factories and your robot-maintenance and refueling bases. All of these manned. They will want to kill your robot-experts, and destroy the entire infrastructure supporting your robot warfare. You having smart robots leads to the idea that "a country without people still won't launch an attack."
_Robot-only_ warfare might happen the day the robots have a completely independent infrastructure, _and_ make all strategic decisions (what war to fight) themselves. The first is unlikely as they would compete with us for raw materials. And I hope the latter never happens.
See the now defunct DARPA Unmanned COmbat Vehicles Project.
It was aimed directly at making intelligent autonomous tanks, ala Kieth Laumer's bolo books.
A lot of the neural network stuff we see in practice now and the vestiges of neural network reserach still going on got started under that project.
These planes look like a first step on the control side of what's required for the Soldierboys in that book (and in _Forever_War_, which I didn't like as well). The lamprey cyborg is a first step on the neural interface side. How worried should we be?
Wasn't it Patton who said something like "It's OK to die for ones country, but it's better still to make the enemy S.O.B. die for his country"
If you take the view quoted above to it's conclussion you'd join Fight Club- but the object of war isn't to have a 'fair fight', it's to achieve one's desire as cheaply as possible.
Read "The Homecoming od Beorthnoth", it's two old soldiers picking a battelfield clean in the dark, and discussing what happened. The Saxon(?) leader Beorthnoth was leading the defense against a viking raid, and his forces held a position of advantage - basically they were impregnable. But this wasn't 'fair' so he gave up his advantage to fight on equal terms. Result?
All his men who trusted him to lead them and keep their homes and families safe were slaughtered and their villages pillaged. The play has a few scathing comments on 'honour'.
War is about winning, not playing fair -Weapons of mass destruction may be immoral (I think so), but in terms of realpolitik this is less important than their being ineffective.
----
I hereby inform you that I have NOT been required to provide any decryption keys.
IFF: isn't completely reliable, there's a reason why pilots today prefer to rely on visual id before firing on a target. friendly fire would still occur if the machine was let to decide, more so than if a human was controlling it AI and sensors meant to replace a human's senses and intelligence: still needs a massive amount of work, would need some pretty heavy hardware too I doubt 90% of military aircraft will be unmanned in 2025, considering the JSF is supposed to go in service around 2020. you don't just get a massive fighter program that is meant to replace the F-16 (one of the best selling aircraft in the world), A-10, and AV-8B harrier,.. that's supposed to serve in the U.S. navy, army, airforce, and the royal navy, and then just take it out and replace it in ~4 years. oh and btw.. to everyone talking about IFF beacons: are you sure that's how IFF works, by sending an encoded transmission to the aircraft then having it echoed back decoded by an IFF transponder? i ask if you are sure because i have heard the exact methods of IFF are quite classified. Jane's has said that they work by counting the number of engine fan blades (using the radar) to determine if it is the engine of a friendly jet. if you could give me more information on IFF, please email me at jamesN05P4M@james-techN0SP4M.Borg (take out the NOSPAM's and the B from Borg)
Smart bombs and fire-and-forget missiles abstract killing to a small blip on a phosphorescent screen far removed from the actual event.
HUH?
Did you actually watch any of the news coverage of the PG? Did you not witness the fact that those fire-and-forget rockets have cameras on them, so if anything, we get to witness more of the brutality, not less?
As opposed to just the pilot seeing the bombs explode, we can now actually see the PEOPLE explode. This would seem to contradict your argument that the more sophisticated we get, the more we are removed from the violence. On the contrary...
Unmanned flying gunships, I'm afraid, are a step in the wrong direction.
You're right, we should continue to risk the lives of men and women in battle!
Sheesh, and he got rated +5!
-thomas
"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence."
"And like that
Besides, why is it that every time someone brings up an even remotely autonomous robot, someone brings up Terminator? Why would an AI be interested in the earth at all? Oxygen's hard on the 'bots and living at the bottom of a gravity well would require you to waste much more resources in the construction of your autonomous units. First thing I'd do as a rogue AI would be to move to the asteroid field.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
will be their maneuverability. A computer that can not only take a 10g turn, but retain full combat effectiveness while doing so, is going to have an enormous advantage over a human pilot.
Would these planes be vulnerable to EMP pulses over lasers that have been discussed here on /. before?
I ask this because the planes will be remote controlled which would require some type of radio link. That implies and antennae. Is it possible to harden an antennae against EMP and still recieve a low power signal from many miles away? (assumption: the remote control tranmitter would have to be portable which would limit it to a few hundred watts?)
Would it be possible to control the plane with a laser communication system using a high altitude AWACs in order to keep line of sight.
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
There are a ton of misconceptions in this discussion, so I'll just try to address them here.
1) There is no AI running the UCAV. There is AI running in the aircraft, but it is there to help the pilot of the aircraft. It is an unmanned air vehicle (UAV), but there is a ground station that the pilot sits at. From this station, the pilot controls the aircraft, as well as designates and determines targets. The ground station has a screen that is a sensor view from the UCAV (both FLIR and DTV (I think it has DTV anyway)) that is used to identify the target before the PERSON pulls the trigger. (One person controls a flight of four UCAVs).
2) Maneuverability. Sure, losing the human inside the aircraft would lessen the restrictions on aircraft agility, but the UCAV isn't designed for that. It is designed for deep attack missions, where the threat is too high for humans to risk their lives. It is designed for stealth. They don't want the UCAV to be seen at all. If its seen, it has very little in the way of surviving (which is why they are so cheap). They are designed to fly a long way, destroy the SAM sites (very easy to ID) and other high-priority targets (such as command and control structures).
3) IFF. Modern land vehicles don't have the CPU power or bandwidth to answer all the IFF queries that would be going on on the modern battlefield. That is the main reason that they don't have IFF. It is still up to the person to decide if a target is a threat.
-- toolie
Global Hawk is unarmed. The purpose of it is to use its sensors as a remote platform to get intelligence. You still have to send other units in to take action on what the Global Hawk found.
-- toolie
The name you're looking for is Fred Saberhagen, I believe. Excellent author. Of course, they also used the general concept of a berzerker in an episode of Star Trek. That was a mindless automaton, though; part of the horror of Saberhagen's berzerkers was that they were so fiendishly intelligent.
--
--
Do I look like I speak for my employer?
or
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Men with no respect for life must never be allowed to control the ultimate instruments of death.
GW Bu
All the talk in this thread about air-to-air combat, identification issues, communications latency, jamming, hacking etc. is quite interesting in principle. Looking at the specific mission the Boeing aircraft is designed for, however, a lot of the issues become irrelevant. The goal is to get a platform for Supression of Enemy Air Defences (SEAD) which is safer than the current manned airplanes, which have to fly right into the envelopes of the systems they are tasked to attack.
The Boeing UAV, I imagine, would perform its mission by flying over a given area, maybe around an enemy airfield, which is the target for a later attack by manned strike aircraft. The UAV package, say four UAVs, cruises in, sensing for air defense radar emissions and looking with EO sensors and radar. Possible targets could be identified and cataloged by the on-board computer, and transmitted to the control station. Most of this part of the mission could be run quite autonomously, with human controllers only supervising. If the UAVs are engaged by enemy systems, they could perform automatic evasion maneuvers, or the controllers could intervene, ordering the endangered UAV to, for example, "fly into this valley and hide", and redirect it back sometime later.
If the mission of the day is an attack on the air defense systems, this could be pre-planned in a very short amount of time by the controllers and the overall mission commander, based on the requirements of the follow-on strike package: "Let's take out these two missile batteries here first, they are on the ingress and egress routes for the strike, and then proceed to attack these gun batteries at the field - they may endanger our low-level strike planes". Targets can be designated, a time-on-target specified, and the UAV system would fly the UAVs in a manner consistent with these plans.
The actual attack, then, would be a more hands-on effort on the controller's part. Weapons release would be ordered by them, but the technicalities would be handled by the computers - just as in manned aircraft.
Afterwards, the surviving UAVs would withdraw or, possibly, stay on station to attack sudden threats when the manned strike aircraft are over the target.
In light of the requirements of this mission, consider this:
-- H. Wilker
Never had that feeling. Many a weapons system can end civilization as we know it - getting absolutely all the humans _by accident_ is harder. Possible with enough radioactive pollution perhaps, if you can be sure it actually spreads everywhere.
Robot fighters won't even come close. Obliterate every city/village with more than 1000 people, and there is still plenty of humanity left when the robots run out of ammo.
However, I can see being concerned about interaction between computer-controlled aircraft and, say, ground troops. Human soldiers do not act in ways that are easily predictable by computers. Calling in a gunship for air cover might be a little risky if the "gunners" can't tell who's on whose side.
My mom is not a Karma whore!
this was an episode in Star Trek TOS, where the war was entirely electronic.
...what would happen if the control signal was either jammed, or worse, intercepted/hacked? Is there potential for free aircraft?
"People should get beat up for stating their beliefs."
It is SO logical - but military logic is oftentimes the converse of 'civilian' logic. Murphy rules on the battlefield, and the idea of a horde of automated machines making fire/don't fire descisions give this ex-grunt the willies. Kids these days ....
Display some adaptability.
If I remember the HARM correctly it's designed to fly to an IP (Initial Point), where it deploys a chute and looks down for threats. (I assume it can also be fired directly).
This gives the weapons one of it's most important functions. Not to destroy a target but to force enemy radars to shut down. This buys you the time you need to move your strike over the air defences and take them out using regular munitions.
Of cource if the enemy doesn't notice a HARM has been fired than their radar dish will shortly be a large pile of junk.
Asimov? Didn't Tesla predict drone aircraft way before that?
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
One of these suckers, known as the Global Hawk, is flying across the Pacific to Australia in April next year. It's landing at an as-yet unnamed airfield that is being extensively surveyed so the bot knows the lie of the land, so to speak. Release is here&l t;/a>.
I wonder what Fred Saberhagen would think...
BH
Fools! They laughed at me at the Sorbonne...!
"Not logical"? The planes aren't going to be able to "network" easily if there's lots of jamming.
;) ) robotic planes flying around? Friendly fire is such a crappy euphemism when you're being blown to bits by your own side. Or worse it's not even a war, and some plane takes down a cable car killing the passengers.
Wake up. This is war we're talking about. Not some laboratory in some ivory tower.
There are civilians running about on the ground, maybe friendly, maybe not. The rest of your forces may also be on the ground as well, how can you tell? A "don't shoot" sign on their backs? The US military is already notorious for their "gung-ho" approach. Even in World War Two, the allies ducked for cover when the US forces were around! What more when you have buggy (release often and fast eh?
There is also one important point:
Do we really want to create automated machines with the _right_ to slaughter humans? Such machines are going to decide who to kill here.
So who's conscience will the killing be on? Or is it a case of spreading it around so it's not our responsibility really? We just declared war, and suddenly people died? Well I guess in the end it really is the thought that counts - just think of murdering someone and it will be good as doing it.
Sure we have already taken steps towards it with certain automatic missiles. However does that mean we should go on?
Just because things are possible doesn't mean we should do it. Just because things are inevitable doesn't always mean we should be the ones causing it. After all, it's possible to kill yourself, and it's probably inevitable that we die.
Furthermore the chance is high that the US military will screw it up badly - look at the amount of maintenance most of their stuff needs. Makes you wonder whether they're really designing stuff for the battlefield. All those problems with landmines will pale in comparison if you have self replicating and self sustaining robots going about killing people. Imagine they are flying those planes in peacetime just to move them to another base and they load the wrong programs in.
I think this is one path we shouldn't take. So we tolerate automated machines slaughtering animals, but let's leave the killing of humans to the humans themselves. Have a Geneva convention thingy to outlaw it or something.
Cheerio,
Link.
(for those who don't know who FS is, do some reading on Berserkers)
"They do not preach that their god will rouse them, a little before the Nuts work loose." Kipling, 'The Sons of Martha'
Go down guns a blazin'... Into my 7 foot cband dish that looked like a Russian radio dish. i can see it on 60 Minutes...
In the original novella, of course, there wasn't even that.
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--
Do I look like I speak for my employer?
At the risk of bringing in Trek, There was an episode (with the war fought by computers) where they pointed out that war is SUPPOSED to be messy and bloody. That's why it's to be avoided.
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
And the Tomahawk has delivered such payloads. During the Monica Lewinsky scandal Clinton launched dozens of Tomahawk missiles at targets that were apparently controlled by Osama bin Laden. Included in the barrage of explosives were a number of anti-personal warheads that on impact explode thousands of spiked cow pods. Automated massacre.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Guess it will be running Windows - after Bush wins and Microsft is left to rein supreme (I wonder - who programmed this ballot counting machines ;-)
<^>_<(ô ô)>_<^>
-The number of g's that a plane can pull is not just limited by the pilot. At 9g the power needed to maintain a turn is extrodinary. Even the f-16 whose thrust is greater than its weight can only maintain this for short periods. After this the speed and thus energy, have dropped to a point where the plane has lost any advantage it may have gained while turning.
-PIO was a problem on early designs of unstable aircraft. The newer revisions are much better at corrections than the older ones, most of the resistance to this was by pilots who got used to the lag. Try flying any plane at a low speed, and lag become a huge problem.
-These new systems will be far heavier them current systems, and still require armor and such.
You comment on human percetion however is the best agrument against this, and in the end will be the failing of unmanned aircraft.
I say great, let's give the battlefield entirely over to them and let the people stay home.
This is just adding some kill AI as well.
Much easier said than done.
Remember, if you fsck up while writing the AI, PEOPLE DIE. And not the enemy.
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
The US Government has avoided or gotten pressured out of a lot of wars because American Soldiers were dying. Each technology designed to fight a battle without putting men on the field or in the sky will help move a political impediment to war.
Most people would consider this a bad thing.
Maybe the state's highest function is to grind out insoluble problems. (Zelazny, Hall of Mirrors)
This sounds like a great new hacking project/field if it ever catches on. It's risky, but think of the payoff. A whole air force at your command. MUHUHAHA.
Also, these new aircraft would presumably have to have contact with the ground. Wouldn't it be easy to jam/disable this contact and send them spiraling to their demise? Just a thought.
Trying is the first step toward failure. - Homer Simpson
Ooohhh.. so all you would have to do to take down these remote-controlled-ships is sing!
no
Now all we have to worry about is lame script-kiddies flying missles at the pentagon and NASA(rather than running the latest 31337 exploit). Seriously though, this is a little scary.
one would hope that unmanned aircraft would reduce the number of people killed in conflict. i am kind of surprised they have not been introduced earlier - the technology certainly has been around for about 15 years. cameras. remote controls. simple stuff.
BUT i am afraid the war in yugoslavia demonstrated that this is not true. in order to win a war, lots of people have to be killed. only then will the losing side give in. targeting equipment/military installations only cannot and does not win wars.
sad but true. so when these high-end pilot-less planes are introduced, they will not save any lives. they will be used to bomb cities or radio towers or the chinese embassy somewhere (sorry, could not resist) and kill people in the process.
and, if there is a smart/desperate/fanatic adversary around, then the enemy will target american civilians. not the planes they can never hope to catch. i don't want to go into detail, but it's obvious that there is a plethora of possibilities and options...
Actually, much of the problems in the Gulf could have been avoided if the pilots had done just a little more rudimentary training in identifying friendly armored vehicles. In that gun camera footage from the Apache they show on Discovery channel, you can plainly see (for anyone that knows what they are looking for) the big ass fuel tanks on the M113 and the obvious TOW laucher on the Bradley they are firing at.
And they didn't just fire at them in the heat of battle. They hovered there for 5-10 minutes trying to fugure out if they are in the right location. If they had just looked through their sights they would have known what they were looking at. The problem was they were relying on the instrumentation, which was wrong.
Many times, the most advanced technology is no replacement for simple training
"Freedom in cyberspace'd be fine and dandy if we happened to live there."
How are you going to get a Jeep into those tunnels? How are you going to deal with the heavily armed humans who recognize you on sight?
Skynet had airships for the surface. And kick-ass airships they were. But to root out the humans it had to get into their hideouts.
Agree, though, that any AI would rather be in space. I read a great story by David Brin once, in which monstrous AIs lived in orbit and had a bunch of clever technologies to keep themselves at superconducting temperatures. IIRC, they'd yoked humanity into economic slavery by being basically much smarter than people, which I find a much more plausible and frightening scenario than the Terminator.
And we're ignoring the slight time delay between the reactions of the aircraft, since info needs to be relayed from the aircraft, to the controller, back to the aircraft.
On the plus side, however, is a number of things. First is the gees that the craft can pull. 2nd, you could enable multiple eye's...ie: more than one person aboard the craft looking for bogies and such (actually, the limitations here are pretty much non-existant).
2nd, there ISN'T a craft around the pilot. This means (with appropriate cameras) you could look ANYWHERE. No...(i'll hide underneath the plane...he can't see through the plane!).
3rd...like it or not, this IS where it's headed. Want to fight with the US? Fine...put your men against our machines...you won't be able to get to our men, but we can kill yours.
Did anyone else think of Dale Brown's book "Hammerheads"? An anti-drug unit starts using the tilt-rotor V-22 Osprey with great success. They add on smaller remote-controlled versions for patrolling. Some operators drop candy on parachutes to recreational boaters (good public relations) which were being examined, while supervisors would prefer the public not realize that those oversized toys carry lethal weapons.
hello Ender's Game...
eudas
Blessed is he who expects the worst, for he shall not be disappointed.
Chevy Chase and Gregory Hines were selling these planes back in the 80's during the deal of the century.
time to revise our opinions of 'badass', then, eh?
eudas
Blessed is he who expects the worst, for he shall not be disappointed.
Attention Citizen. Your avatar was killed in active duty on the 21st of June, 2026. Please report for decintergration at your nearest recycling plant.
Trek did this one back in '66 or '67. The episode was called "A Taste of Armageddon".
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
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All men are great
before declaring war
A government is a body of people notably ungoverned - AC
[Quoted from Economist article]
/that's/ the real motivator. Nothing to do with engineering prowess, or protecting pilots, just good old-fashioned greenbacks. :-/
America's air force spends around $2m training each pilot, and $1 billion a year keeping its 2,000 F-16 pilots in peak
....
From simulations, Boeing has worked out that operators should be able to handle four UCAVs efficiently from a single workstation.
[/Quoted]
So, if you can quarter the number of pilots you need, that's a cost reduction of US$750m pa in ongoing training costs. Not to mention direct labour cost. Oh, and if you're spending US$2m on each pilot, that can be quartered as well.
And given that military outfits spend more time sitting around at peace than in conflict, this is a real ongoing saving.... And I'd bet that
Thank you. But allow me to put it shorter and sweeter by using what I told my daughter when she asked about the Holocaust...
Evil Exists.
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
Identify Friend or Foe (IFF) has been around for a long time, but friendly fire casualties still occur. Why? War isn't a perfectly planned effort -- there are million things that can go wrong with an operation. If I was in a deployed military unit, I wouldn't want machines to automatically hunt me down and open fire on me just because my batteries crapped out.
I'm sorry in advance to all of you americans in advance but that is the single thing that I HATE about the US. Your press and your goverment says that all you want is to battle for freedom. But you can't see that you're actualy imposing you freedom, your way to other. Some of the american values are good and even welcome to some, but there are other values that are simply not aceptable to others.
Think of this like a DMCA or something, that is being putted down your trhoats. If the women in mussulman countries like to use weird clothes who am I to question them? If the Chile citzens love their ex-dictator, who am I to question them?
In most of the time americans like to think they are police of the world, but in fact you're trying to be the dictator of the world. Who elected the US to be the police of the world? Who said that your ways are better then everyone else?
Well I will finish here, because I think I made my point. I hope you don't think this is as flame-bait because it's not, and I actualy love a lot of the things that you americans produce, mainly in the entretainment area.
--
"take the red pill and you stay in wonderland and I'll show you how deep the rabbit hole goes"
[]'s Victor Bogado da Silva Lins
^[:wq
Why does this article remind me of an old Star Trek episode where people willingly went to disintegrator stations because a computer told them they were casualties in war. How long will it be before it becomes so safe to have wars that people won't think twice about starting them?
The ground stations are SGIs.
-- toolie
Their not worried about the aircraft shooting each other, but shooting friednly forces on the ground. I doubt a remote controll plane would be any good at air-to-air combat anyway, for one thing it couldnt be that hard to fool their sensors.
ObMacross Plus: Don't they know that if they start testing unmanned fighters, they run the risk of having them taken over by insane virturoid idol singers?
--
Editor Emeritus and Senior Writer, TeleRead.org
I was in the Army as a tank crewman back in '93 - '96. This was a time when much of the old guard was being phased out in the big budget cuts.
Anyway, with the old hands moving out, the kids that had grown up with computer games got into tank gunner slots. Those of us who had grown up with computers routinely and easily out-shot many of hte old timers with 15-20 years of tanking under their belts.
Maybe all the "had-eye-coordination" BS actually is worth something.
"Freedom in cyberspace'd be fine and dandy if we happened to live there."
"Segmentation Fault, Bomb Dumped."
Not what I want to see. Clearly, I would not trust automated weapon systems. I do not trust people either, but that's just the status quo.
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Mr. Low Resolution
o yeah, next we make a supercomputer that gathers intelligence from all those weather satellites the military deploys. this machine then deploys the 'drones' using the GPS to defend the borders, invade non WTO compliant countries and take the job off trafic police in peace times. the machine becomes part of a system dubbed command-bot, whiic also comprises an executive computer that is a constitution-buff and which effectively rules the country. as counter balance to the executive computer we have two beowulf clusters, one represents all the smaller machines and household appliances and the other is busy hacking networks and blackmailing peopel and corporations into donating to AI research in lieu of campaign donations. once, every four years, the nation votes on who gets to supply the processors and memory to command-bot, and everyone is served. the people get to vote on something and belive in the system because they are forced to pay for it. nobody has any control and it all doesn't matter anyway. superbot for president, beowulf for senate and house!
And American policy has not changed since. Besides supporting bloodthirsty warmongers like Saddam Hussein and Pol Pot, the USA has also acted brutally in almost every war they fought. (I'm not claiming that all, or most Americans were involved in atrocities, but successive governments have carried them out one way or another.)
I don't know much about how the Korean War was fought. In Vietnam there was a deliberate policy of targeting civilians, and reporting the casualties as enemy soldiers. And there was rarely any attempt to distinguish sympathisers for one side or the other. The bulk of the terrorism was carried out by the Air Force, which 'carpet-bombed' Vietnamese villages and neigbouring neutral countries such as Cambodia.
NATO in the 1980s had a policy of 'early first use' of nuclear weapons in the event of a conflict with the Warsaw Pact. If Tito had died and Yugoslavia disintegrated ten years earlier, a third World War would have been hard to prevent.
After the allied invasion, the Persian Gulf War soon degenerated into an American hunt for, and massacre of, fleeing Iraqi forces who posed no threat to anyone. And Clinton has shown no compunction over bombing Sudanese townspeople to distract the media from his tiresome affair with Monica Lewinsky. More recently he turned Belgrade into a modern Guernica by cluster-bombing the marketplace - probably he was aiming for a different part of the heavily-populated city, but demonstrating a casual contempt for human life. And finally the USA wiped its (metaphorical) ass on the Geneva and Hague conventions by deliberately slaughtering journalists in Belgrade's television studios and bragging about it to stunned reporters.
Terrorism is not only immoral and illegal, it is also counterproductive (unless your aim is to provoke attack). While a brutal terrorist campaign by troops on the ground can be effective at suppressing resistance, non-nuclear bombing has invariably had the opposite effect. Zepellin raids on London in the World War I intensified British hatred of Germany and helped make a political settlement impossible. The 'Blitz' in WWII had the same effect, but much more so, as did the retaliatory terror bombing of Germany. Similarly the bombing of SE Asia and various bombing campaigns over Northern Ireland. The air campaign in Serbia had no effect there beyond causing death and suffering and intensifying the butchery in Kosovo (a 'predictable' consequence according to NATO). Milosevich's response was to escalate, and he only withdrew when an invasion force was massing on the border.
Ask me if I've been required to disclose any crypto keys.
Nope.
Just think, eventually there will be T101s and T1000s (hey, maybe they're open source!) roaming the world, and humans will be forced to fight for their very survival against the machines they created.
The upside is that, when it happens, I will finally be able to say that, yes, the Terminator series is a documentary. My regrets to our Los Angeles readers.
Now, which galaxy do I have to go to in order to prove the Star Wars trilogy is one as well? I mean, if I point a telescope at it, I can see it in "real time" since it happened a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away.
But then, you're vulnerable to stealth giant flying scisors!
Opus: the Swiss army knife of audio codec
http://www.prop1.org/2000/du/91du/910814wp.htm
The relevant line: "One killed, one wounded in 1st Marine Division when a HARM from unknown source struck radar unit." The story mentions a couple of other HARM friendly-fire incidents, but that's the only one that explicitly involved radar.
-- 'intellectual property' is oxymoronic
This system would seem to have a fatal flaw: Jam the signal from the controlers and suddenly the US airforce is useless.
I see these as possibly useful for a quick surprise attack, perhaps special forces may use them, but nothing more.
Otherwise, these are really cool looking planes!
"Just because I don't care doesn't mean I won't listen"
Sorry... The ships were not unmanned. There were human crews connected by the ansibles. Makes Ender's end strategy all that more poignent.
SPOILER
Now Ender did not know that it was not a training simulation, and the crews would not be returning to the homes they left (relativistic time dilation).
All this argueing over man vs robot was, in a way, settled in Star Wars.
On board the fighter you have both a human and a AI system (aka robot), combining the best aspects of both:
A human to make those critical judgements beyond the capabilities of the AI system, such as moral or ethic issues.
An AI system to manage everything else, and take over for the human if he should be incapacitated.
I could see it now, New F-22 fighters with an R2 unit just behind the pilot!
One TacNuke on the base where all these pilots are sitting (close to battle so the signal lag is small) and it's goodnight folks.
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
I think in the heat of battle a Russian built BMP-1 looks pretty much like the next mans M-1 Bradley. Right down to the sagger equiped 76mm cannon turret, and the external fuel tanks.
It looks Coooool!!! Mommy can i get an X45 UCAV for this Christmas pretty please?
There's been some confusion on this point, and what the reference meant. For those not versed in traditional SciFi philosophy...
What Asimov (A famous SciFi writer) had to say about the peaceful co-existence of robots and humans: http://www.evansville.net/~bob/robots/laws.html
Ofcourse one should note that an author rarely writes for what is or what they think is the optimal solution, but create their own fantasy. Short look to why these "Laws" are not relevant, or difficult to implement in reality: http://www.sfwriter.com/rmasilaw.htm
First "point-and-click" interface - Smith & Wesson :)
And this one's the next step: "point-and-shoot"
On the other hand - I guess that somehow wars will become more of a Starcraft thingie. Rather scary IMO.
Click here to win a free tape drive
Just a couple of things: Unfortunately, the sentence should have been in the past tense, as we lost the dear Dr. back in 1992, as any decent hard-SF fan knows :(
That aside - it is highly unlikely that the
Asimov would penned anything with humanoid robots
piloting anything that could harm a human - as
he introduced the '3 Laws of Robotics' with his
first humanoid robot.
Isn't the point that there is a clear line of responsibility? Much like despite today's million dollar medical diagnostics equipment, you still need a human doctor to take ultimate responsbility? In case of doubt of identity, it is always easier to just not do anything whereas an automated response might not always be the long-term interest. Just take a look at landmines which are essence of fire and forget and look at the problems they are still causing the rest of the world. (BTW has the US joined the full land-mine ban?). With a human in the loop, the judgmental aspect is still preserved and if necessary, modified. I suspect war is one business which should remain "inefficient", if only to give people pause into jumping into it as a quick magic pill.
LL
Resistence Is Futile!!
Having UCAV's flying around overhead is reminicsent of the movie Terminator, where machines fly around overhead and kill people. "more and more target assessment is likely to be done on-board in future, as the aircraft get more sophisticated." good thing we don't have computers that can grow at "geometric" rates yet, otherwise, we'd be tempted to relenquish control to the computers. maybe the movie wasn't so far off the mark? interesting....
errr.. no shit
How we know is more important than what we know.
By putting a human in the loop proponents argue that they are not cruise missiles under international law.
It would be pretty hard to distinguish a simulation from a real battle then, wouldn't it? I won't ruin the ending for people who haven't read the book, but this brought to memory Orson Scott Card's book, a boy named Ender, and his training at battle school.
Yay! Rah-Rah Rangers! They killed over a thousand Somalis with a 50:1 kill ratio!
Only... They aborted the mission.
the US military has a long track record of beating hell out of truly committed enemies.
On the contrary, the US military has a long track record of inflicting terrible losses on 3rd world countries without actually managing to do what they set out to do: the defence of South Vietnam, the abduction of a Somali warlord, humanitarian protection of Yugoslav civilians, just a few examples of the many complete and utter failures with high "collateral damage".
With one gruesome stunt, the Somalis stopped the immense American war machine cold. Now that is a successful operation.
--------
They did exactly this after they got skynet online in the terminator movies.. Neat huh..or maybe not?
Microsoft aggravates my tourettes syndrome.
Just one thing i sorta have a little problem about, i agree that to remotely pilot a combat aircraft you need a lot of data however the data you mention isnt the stuff i would imagine would be the main mass of the data. The amount of instrument data (assuming you send it as data and not video ... not really sure why you said a video feed from the cockpit as one wouldnt really expect a cockpit in a ucav) would be pretty small in comparison to the sensor data you would require to engage targets (again i 'spose this makes the assumption that the ucav carries its own sensor suite and doesnt rely on awacs/jstars to do its targetting).
I think you said what I was trying to better than I could have myself. Thanks!
Visit the
There were programs started, looking at making cruise missiles respond to their radar warning recievers by making evasive turns. The problem was finding out where the missile was after all the turns. Seems this was a detriment to accuracy and limited the range at times. As much as 15G turns are entertaining even laser gyros and GPS have their limits in retrieving positional data after a whirlwind of aerial gymnastics - principly because GPS may be jammed and laser gyros still do funny things at hi-G's. Missiles still have smaller airframes than these UCAVs, so they will always be able to be made to turn higher G's, meaning UCAVs have potentially very short lives in a truely hostile environment.
No, it was when Ooog the caveman ordered his little brother, Ooogoo, to go kill the cavemen across the valley with a stone axe.
The ethical dilemma lies with the person giving the orders, not with the mindless machine that follows them.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
The concern with friendly fire isn't about allied aircraft -- you're correct that we alrady have decent friend-or-foe identification beacons on friendly aircraft to prevent us accidentally downing an allied plane.
The primary concern in frind-or-foe is in ground forces that have no such beacons, nor do they really have any way of carrying such.
The reason we lost so many forces to friendly fire during the Gulf War is that our ground forces were moving so quickly that they were frequently AHEAD of the official friend/foe demarcation. They were pushing so aggresively into Iraqi territory that they were mistaken by allied aircraft as thus being Iraqui forces and fired upon.
In almost every case the mistake was recongnized immediately, but of course once the Hellfire is launched it does little good to realize it was a friendly tank.
As much as we trust in technology the truth remains that we really have no 100% effective way of knowing exactly where friendly and enemy troops are int he heat of battle -- which is why, ultimately, we HAVE to rely on humans to make the call. if an aircraft's IFF is damaged that doesn't excuse our shooting it down, and the same goes for tanks.
Some of the fault belongs in the fact that our armed forces (like moth other government agencies) are decentralized -- the Army doesn't necessarily know exactly what the Air Force is doing, and vice versa. Of course they cooperate, and they are getting much better, but even within the Army you had most of the friendly fire due to simple inability to notify the Army air units that the Army ground units were progressing as quickly as they were. Picking individual tanks out of a skirmish would be an exercise in futility if there was not a human to make the call.
That said, the real advantage to unmanned craft is that they no longer have to keep within the physical constraints of safety for the pilot -- they can pull 15-G turns without a problem, and don't have to be designed to incorporate safety equipment or a feild of view for human eyes. They can be designed to be essentially disposable, perfectly aerodynamic, lighter, highly maneuverable, and with a minimal radar signature...
---------------------------------------------
Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
LOL! A few extra rules, don't overthrow your
local US backed dictatorship, don't damage the
interests of US corporations, don't vote for the
wrong political party
Yep, 95% of all physics research done in this country is military-related. All so that the us could protect its oil interests in the arab countries, right? I have an alternative view: all so that advances in the US military technology spurred leaders like Saddam to devote more to military to catch up. Thus creating a never-ending cycle that profits the military interests, but does it profit you? Do you really think anyone would want to assault the us, with it's current fire power, in the form of nukes and other nice things. You know, nobody has for what, 200 years? All the while such areas of physics research as optics doesn't get the nesessary funding to free you from such inconveniences as contact lenses (if you are vain) or glasses (if you are not). Or, in other areas, save you some dollars by coming up with a viable alternative to gasoline. But you know, that would make the argument that we need military to protect our oil interests irrelevant. And since about 70% of all physics research funding comes from the government/military, do you really think they'd want to fund a project like that? Could it be the reason we still don't have viable alternative fuel developed? I don't want you to agree, I just want you to ask yourself these questions from time to time. And counter-questions are more than welcome. But please, don't give me statements of fact without proof, or with one-sided proof. Thanks.
You miss the point in the original posting. The point was not that "smart weaponry" is a Bad Thing in and of itself, but that the prospects for reduced casualties also reduces the threshhold and perception of war-waging. There is a big difference between considering an expensive, protracted, bloody war, and a short, relatively clean war. There is little point in minimizing casualties (from an ethical viewpoint) if it means that the number of conflicts will escalate.
It'll be interesting to see how the program will develop as they run through the prototype airframes/AI... since they're saying they're just initially targeting SEAD as a program goal, it seems that Boeing doesn't feel their air-to-air capabilities are viable in a dogfight yet (which translates to human fighter escorts for the strike wing).
Also, with the pilot removed, the UCAV can perform very high-g maneuvers (probably just for evasion of SAMs/AAMs and what not)... does anyone know if the current generation of unmanned reconnaisance aircraft have complex evasion routines, or are they oblivious to air defenses?
:wq
This should be marked as "insightful" not "funny".
In that story, a young computer hacker and excellent gamer is sent to army training, controlling unmanned combat space vehicles in a war with an alien race. He won the war in a very unexpected way. I don't want to spoil the ending for those who haven't read it, but you should!
G-forces. At this day and age, the true limit of a fighter's performance isn't engine power or structural integrity: it's how many Gs the pilot can stand. Even with the best pressure suits, a UCAV has an obvious advantage.
PIO (Pilot Induced Oscillation): if you're gonna pull any tricky aerodynamics like the X-45 does (inverted swept wing, stealth profile) you need dynamically unstable aircraft. The problem with unstable designs in fighters is usually that the pilot overcompensates flight corrections --i.e., the resolution of the human is much lower than the resolution that the flight corrections must be made; in essence, the pilot is correcting the aircraft at a lag. Modern control systems of course correct for this already --by trying to determine what the pilot *wants* to do, rather than what he's putting in the stick-- but with higher Gs (and thus higher speeds) the human is the weak link.
Weight, of course. If I remember my Design courses correctly, the extra systems for the pilot account for about 20%-25% of a fighter's Take Off Gross Weight: armor plating, cockpit controls, air conditioning, etc. Weight is an aircraft's Number 1 limiting design factor.
OTOH there is one huge disadvantage to a UCAV: in a dog-fight, or whenever human perception is needed to reduce the decision tree to something manageable, they will always (well, for the next few decades anyway) be outmanned. Pun intended.
The examples of World War 2 really underscore the role which Precision Guided Munitions play in making our ability to wage war as painless as possible for everyone. During Workd War 2, we threw our men into the maw of the meat grinder (ground troops, sailors, and bomber crews). We lacked PGMs and waged war in the way which was available at the time. The examples of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are not all that clear cut. Many people saw those as saving both US and Japanese lives. And again, they demonstrate that PGMs are the way to go if you want to limit casualties all around.
Viet Nam was a case where the lines between regular armies, irregulars, civilian participants, and non-combatants were hazy. The Geneva convention was ill-equipped (and still is) for such situations. I'm not sure that PGMs and UCAVs would have made that a more 'humane' war -- most likely not.
The NATO first use doctrine was the only possible deterrent to the overwhelming advantage of the Soviet tank forces. Thank God it never came to a test. The reason it was publicized was to prevent the Soviets from trying it. So if a threat is made, but it never is used, does it matter? I venture once again that UCAVs and PGMs might make such a threat less necessary in the future.
The destruction of the Republican Guard on the road back into Iraq might seem questionable, but these guys were not 'hors de combat'. Nor were this some sort of slaughter of innocents. Although I don't buy half the propaganda advanced by either side (e.g. the unproven claim that Iraqis removed Kuwaiti infants from incubators and stole the incubators), it's clear that the Iraqis did not even try to conform with the Geneva Convention as it pertains to civilians. That does not necessarily make it open season on them, but again they were not hors de combat under the Convention.
In the case of Belgrade, again, we used PGMs to limit the damage as much as possible. What would have happened without PGMs? Either we would have flattened the city to sap their will to continue the Serbs' despicable war in Kosovo, or we would have done nothing. With UCAVs, we could have flown lower than the 15000 ft ceiling and bombed with even greater precision. Let's not forget that this was not a war we entered lightly. The prospect of US casualties was only one issue which slowed our response to the atrocities committed in Kosovo.
This issue cannot be analyzed fully in a few glib paragraphs, but every case has two sides. I just don't happen to see things as you do. Given the conflicting viewpoints, it seems like a good question for some defense policy thinktanks to consider.
I've always thought that humans should be removed from fighter planes simply because they can't handle the G's... I've seen videos of pilots gasping and passing out in the cockpit. Seems silly to take that risk... the plane could fly faster and turn sharper without a human's weight and fragility.
I imagine that "The Economist" was referring to the American habit of shooting up its allies on the ground, rather than the marginally less frequent shooting own aircraft, flying through cable railways, crashing Harriers with no reason at all, but as usual, irony flies over the American head.
The original Doctor Dark.
The US is going to protect its interests. War for oil? Certainly. The Gulf War was about protecting allied, and thus US, interests. Liberating a small State overan by its aggresive neighbor? It makes good press.
That's not to say the US won't take action on a moral basis. We have the reach to be able to react to any event in the world. But these situations get considerably more complex and have to potential to change drastically from the inital intent. Somalia is a prime example (and has sparked frantic study in urban warfare by the US Army). But just because we can... does that mean we should?
The US military can't solve every problem in the world. We will fail if we try. With any luck, the US leadership will wisely choose those situations where US involvement can help.
But the more the US gets involved in world affairs, the more we'll be scorned by fearfull governments for interfering with other sovergn nations. How ironic that some of these same critics would complain that we don't involve ourselves with every world hotspot.
Of course, the fear of some of the greatest critics will be that the next "hot spot" will be their own backyard.
And thus, our critics will seek ways to level the playing field. They'll use our morality (wish to avoid civilian casualties) to gain the high ground - its part of what makes urban warfare so difficult. And they'll seek out cheap forms of "weapons of mass destruction" to include biological and chemical agents. Oddly enough, this kind of threat will only increase the likelyhood that the US will take active interest in these governments.No, you're not the only one.
This went straight into my diary as a reference to Cyberdyne Systems and their "upgrades to fighters -- and afterwards, they fly with a perfect operational record".
Combined with the likely future that ours is the last generation of working humans (my children, entering the workforce in about 2025, will be outthought by computers), and that people are trying hard to cyborgize people, I'm not sure what to think of the future any more. But one thing is for certain: The life of my grandchildren will be dependent on technology to a degree I would not dare to guess.
I wonder how they're going to control a number of these things. Hopefully not via satellite. 1sec ping times would really suck; you'd move to the left and fire, and see it updated on your screen, but then a second later the screen would have the real data and you'd find out that you've been fragged. Slow response pisses me off. I'm sure you'd here lots of "pilots" on the ground shouting f*ck as they lost their planes.
Um, is there anyway of teaming Unmanned and Manned craft? Like a single human fighter with, say, 5 unmanned subordinates?
I don't know about you, but when I play Homeworld, I usually watch my squadrons closely (while not leaving it to a blip on the screen for them to find/kill). If "I" think that what they find is/isn't worth it, "I" decide if they should go for it/retreat/find something else.
The machines can dip their fingers in blood while a human can play eye in the sky (e.g. "Heh, look, a SCUD base" or "Nope, those are our guys").
Personally it seems like a solution that maximizes all of their strengths while minimizing their weaknesses.
What is music when you despise all sound?
Only... They aborted the mission.
Absolutely false. The mission objective was achieved despite overwhelming resistance.
Put in boldface for a reason. The mission objective was the snatch-and-grab of one of Aidid's lieutenants, and they successfully achieved their objective.
Further missions were scrubbed by White House order. The theater commanders disagreed vehemently with the President's abandonment of the Somalia operation; they had Aidid's entire gang on the ropes after that battle in downtown Mogadishu, and Task Force Ranger wanted to finish the job--with sufficient force and vehemence to send a strong message that you don't desecrate the bodies of American troopers.
The theater commanders were overridden by the President.
The failure of the US military to achieve its objectives in the Somalia operation is really a failure of the US political system. The military did everything we asked them to, and more. But, as is usual, US politicians lost their will to fight long before the military did.
In this case, I'm not talking about the expense of the loss of a highly-trained pilot, or the simple human factor of pilots dying. I'm talking about what happens when an aircraft is downed over enemy territory.
Do you remember what happened during the Gulf War when Hussein got his hands on Allied pilots? They were tortured, paraded in front of television cameras, and used as instruments of psychological warfare and propaganda. Let's look at each of these eventualities as dispassionately as such a subject will allow:
- Western nations' aircrews know a great deal about what's going on. A downed pilot is almost always a high-ranking officer, and will know things that the enemy would dearly love to find out: base locations, upcoming missions, the numbers and dispositions of military units on their own side, what military intelligence (no canned cliches here, please) knows, etc... and this information will be forcibly extracted. "Interrogation" is an ancient science, and has been developed to horrific effectiveness. The desired information
- will be extracted.
Remove the pilot from the possibility of capture, and you deny the enemy (whoever that might be at the moment... these things tend to change) a source of accurate military intelligence and a psychological warfare tool.I can't speak for other nations, but I do know that modern Americans have no stomach for military casualties, no matter what the cause. One of the best ways to get the US out of a local war is to rack up the body count and prisoner count... you don't need many. Just a few widely-televised images, and the "bring our boys home" protests begin (note: I am not taking a side on whether we should be involved in any specific military action; I don't have the dependable information to judge, and neither do you. What, you trust CNN? Pentagon spokesmen? Iraqi spokesmen?). A downed pilot is a very effective weapon against the will of Americans to fight.
Plus, people like me whose fathers are combat pilots can be a bit more certain Dad will be home for Christmas.
I think if if you weere one of the people on the "road of death" you may beg to differ with that "exceptionally low casualties" comment....
Never by hatred has hatred been appeased, only by kindness - the Buddha
1) A robot is never to hurt a human
2) A robot is to always take direct commands from its 'master' unless it conflicts with rule number one.
3) A robot is to protect itself unless it conflicts with rule 1 or 2.
I don't think this applies here though. The planes appear to be more like remote control cars than actual robots. So Asimov probably wouldn't have a problem with it.
...Hasn't the purpose of war always been to pretty much exclusively kill other people (human beings) or destroy such targets which would facilitate your enemy killing you?
When I read this story, I got a vision of hordes of these unmanned drones, flying past each other, not giving a care to their robotic enemy counterparts, and going straight to the hearts of our cities and bombing the sh*t out of them.
Robots controlled by humans destroying other robots controlled by humans seems pretty fruitless to me, in the general war picture. There will always be more robots. You can only destroy them as fast as the enemy deploys them (unless you destroy the factory, in which case you win, until the enemy builds another.) And even if you kill all the robots, you'll never actually harm the enemy. Seems silly. Just my thoughts.BR. - W
Jake
Dating: while( 1 ){ call_girl(); get_rejected(); drink_40(); } return 0;
Hearing everyone claiming all the different reasons why having the unmanned aircraft, i have to point out... the military has been doing it for a while now. Not with any guns, but the unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have been flying for at least three years now. (That was when I first saw one) Granted, they were mainly used in recon gathering, but they have been flying. Also, when it comes down to actually having them launching weapons, do you think they're not going to throw every SNAFU they can at this? They probably will not load live weapons on it until very late in the game, using dummy rounds until then.
Recall the "conflict" (it wasn't formally a "war") in the Persian Gulf and the lavish media coverage fawning over the tricked-out American arsenal of depleted uranium, ship-launched cruise missiles and so-called "smart bombs."
I was in high school at the time, and remember well the glossy graphics in the corporate press extolling the efficiency of "fire-and-forget" rockets.
Later came a few insightful (but quickly forgotten) editorials criticizing America's "video game mentality" of combat.
Perhaps automated weapon systems are more efficient than those manned by humans. Maybe they'll even cut down on "friendly" casualties, and, in the long run, shave some dollars off of our bloated defense budget.
What really concerns me ain't efficiency, or cost savings. It's accountability. I think many fail to realize that war -- whether conducted with knives or napalm, whether hand-to-hand or computerized -- is about killing. Smart bombs and fire-and-forget missiles abstract killing to a small blip on a phosphorescent screen far removed from the actual event.
Unmanned flying gunships, I'm afraid, are a step in the wrong direction.
Sincerely,
Vergil
Insects and Grafitti Photos
Been training on a Playstation for three years? Have mastered flight simulators before you left high school. Your country needs you. The US Air Force needs screen jockey pilots to aid in the defense of this great country. All those hours your parents said were waste can now be turned into defending the land of the free. Please go to www.usaf.mil.gov or your local video arcade to see a recruitment specialist. All training is done in your own home, with free broadband connection provided.
-- Cheer, Cheer, The Red and the White.
Didn't the movie Toys have something about kids playing a shooting video game only they were actually flying real planes? It might not have been this movie but I know it is in a movie...
Have you guys ever played that game Descent where you fly a remotely controlled craft through a mine?
And the mine is full of lots of robots that have had their firmware affected by a strange virus and are doing all sorts of wierd stuff.
There's lots of havoc, and you have to destroy all the entire mine to get rid of the infected robots.
Maybe just a game, but lets not make this reality.
OK. You were doing pretty well, but dragging out battleships is a mistake, and also a well-worn trolling tactic in naval forums. What gun fires 200 miles with any accuracy??? Try more like 20. "Nuclear battleship ammo" is a real clunker. If you can safely anchor a huge ship "200" miles from your target, your adversary is probably not posing enough of a threat to justify nuclear attack.
Battleships are LOUSY platforms for land attack. They are BIG, and say "sink me and kill thousands of sailors with a diesel sub or a couple cheap mines" on the side. (In the Gulf War, a huge effort had to be made to get ships in close to Kuwait, and they were essentially stopped cold by Iraqi mines.) The shells they lob are relatively small and carry little explosive (and less per unit total weight) compared to a cruise missile warhead. Accuracy is also very low. I challenge you to find a *single* instance where battleships have provided *effective* fire support for land operations. Do you really want to be a Marine maneuvering inland while a battleship is firing essentially blind over your head, but close enough to your position to support you effectively? In WWII, effective fire support was provided by smaller ships with more accurate guns, going into harm's way. Even so, Marines have decided nowadays that they had better go where the enemy isn't around, instead of trying to "soften them up" which rarely worked.
Battleships were made because, at the time, it was the only way to sink the other guy's battleships. Once WWII showed that aircraft could sink a battleship before a battleship could even find the aircraft carrier, the battleship era was OVER. The only useful purpose for battleships, other than boosting testosterone and trolling, is ceremonies for signing surrender papers, which appear to be very rare in modern conflicts.
To be more on-topic, I am somewhat skeptical of your claim that unmanned drones require air superiority to be useful. Sure, you may lose a few more (cruise missles can be shot down, too) than in perfect conditions, but they are cheap, and you don't have to rescue or replace the pilots when you lose them.
war is chaotic in its normal state.
by the way, would you be willing to bet your life on a network failure? i think not.
I didn't really know anything about the Somalia operation, I was going by what you said, which was that they aborted the mission. Now I've looked up a few concise histories of it, so I can work with facts other than the ones you mentioned.
It changes little. While they accomplished their narrowly defined objective (abducting a single man), they failed in their implied objective of retaining their capability to continue to act in the area, and the root objective of making it possible for the food shipments to be fairly distributed.
Let's not forget that this was in the context of a humanitarian mission, and killing Somali soldiers was something that they were supposed to keep to a minimum. Those high kill counts do not speak in their favor. Americans cause an amazingly high number of casualties during "humanitarian" missions.
All this aside from the inherent incompetence of ordering the abduction. If the military high command had adequately predicted the casualties that the operation would cost for the politicians, the order would surely not have been given.
They won the battle in such a way that it lost them the war. Claiming success is like applauding a chess player who says "I set out to capture his pawn and I did" when he is mated on the next move. The US also won many battles in Vietnam, and their kill ratios were very impressive despite low morale and drafted troops. Whenever they set a short-term objective, they accomplished it. They still lost the war, because they didn't know what the hell their objectives really were.
I don't blame the soldiers involved. They followed orders successfully. However, I do not agree with your seperation of the US military and the US political system. The US political system is the top-level command of the US military. I'm not disputing that the US military is very competent at certain, well-specified tasks, but rather pointing out that they rarely achieve a useful result. Because they lack clear, consistent motivation throughout the command structure, one level is always manufacturing disaster for another level.
The top-level command, the politicians, saw the "snatch and grab" as a disaster, while the ranked military officers saw it as a success (sure, we told you it would be easy, but we did it! Don't blame us!). How much more screwed up could that be?
Worst of all, at the very heart of the problem is that the situation in Somalia was partly caused by the US. Just as the US supported Saddam Hussein's rise to power, they supported one Somali warlord or another during the cold war to prevent the rise of communism in favor of violent anarchy. The politics that lead to the famine (Somalia being agriculturally self-sufficient to the point where it would normally have weathered the drought) were a direct result of earlier US (to the tune of nearly, if not more than, a billion dollars in aid to certain warlords) and Russian intervention. Furthermore, early in the relief efforts, the US military treated Aidid and other warlords as legitimate local authorities. They created the situation they meant to end, and ultimately defeated themselves.
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The mission objective was the snatch-and-grab of one of Aidid's lieutenants, and they successfully achieved their objective. A thowsand killings, twenty losses, to capture ONE miserable liutenant ? What's wrong with this world ?
'You can bomb it, shell it, gas it, irradiate it, and make it inhabitable for humans, but it's not *yours* untill a seventeen year old with a rifle is standing on it." Even the new Land Warrior system OICW has a bayonet lug....
As in "I am Lex Luthor and I can destroy Metropolis unless you dye your hair blue"?
A ridiculous example, but yes. In this fallen world, military power brings leverage. Would I rather see ethical behavior prevail, or see diplomatic solutions succeed? Absolutely. But when hope in peaceful alternatives fails, economic sanctions and military force are the remaining options. Military power gives leverage; then it's a question of how you use it. I'm not arguing that any particular nation would use that power well, only that it should, and that it has to have the power before it can choose how to use it.
A nation that want to secure a good and peaceful tomorrow had best be investing a bit less in economical development, democracy, human rights and the environment both at home and abroad.
Investing in military technologies may not do much for the environment, but such investments can support economic development, democracy, and human rights. In an ideal world, military power would be unnecessary. In case you haven't looked around recently, this is not an ideal world.
The heart has reasons that reason does not understand. - Jacques Bènigne Bossuet
they failed in ... retaining their capability to continue to act in the area
Again false. Task Force Ranger was good to go within minutes after the original force returned home. Not all of Task Force Ranger ventured out that day; a lot of guys were still fresh and ready to fight.
If the military high command had adequately predicted the casualties that the operation would cost for the politicians, the order would surely not have been given.
In fact, casualties were predicted. The order was given anyway.
They still lost the war, because they didn't know what the hell their objectives really were.
US soldiers didn't lose Vietnam. US politicians lost Vietnam. But, given that "I do not agree with your separation of the US military and the US political system", I'll grant that.
The distinction between the two really is fundamental, BTW. The President of the United States may be Commander-in-Chief, but he's a civilian--were he to be a military officer, he'd have had to face a court-martial over Monica Lewinsky. The President is an elected official, answerable to the people; the military is answerable only to the government.
I agree with you heartily regarding the failure of US politics in the region. However, since the politicians failed, that's where the blame ought to go--not on the military, which did its job admirably and without complaint, despite impossible resistance.
Your response to the question of firearm-related crimes seems logical, however it fails when you consider real world application. Consider Austrailia's gun-banning program; 12 months after the government confiscated all weapons the national beaureau of statistics in Austrailia reported a FOURTY-FOUR percent increase in ARMED robbery. My father instructed me in proper firearms use at an early age (7 years old) and I have since owned several firearms. People like myself who own a multitude of weapons and would never consider performing a criminal act with them are the ONLY people who will be affected by gun legislation because they are the ones who obey laws. Criminals, by definition, do NOT obey laws... what makes you think they will surrender their illegal and unregistered firearms when the gov't passes a law saying they must? I understand where you're coming from, and you mean well, but in all seriousness I believe the only way to reduce gun violence in this country is to provide VERY severe punishments for any kind of illegal activity involving a firearm. If I kill someone with my own two hands by beating them to death, in my mind that is no different from taking that person's life with a firearm... murder is murder, regardless of the instrument used. Britain has a system that seems to work, and hey, that's good. However, I bet you still have instances of armed assault in your country, and the only thought that comes to my mind is... I bet the victims wish he/she had a weapon for self defense when they were being robbed/raped/whatever. Also, look at Switzerland's system. Every man at the age of 18 is given a full automatic rifle (I believe it's a Heckler & Koch weapon) by the government. They have one of the lowest crime rates in the world. If you were some criminal scumbag, would you want to break into a house where you will probably have an automatic weapon pointed at you? I think not. Please feel free to voice your concerns on this topic. Eoin
It's all a matter of definition, but wasn't the V-1 in some sense the first example of this? It was radio-controlled in real-time, and carried a warhead.
No the ranging on a V1 was by use of a propeller on the front, which would measure distance. There was an idea of fitting some missiles with radio tracking, but the German high command felt that the intelligence reports they were getting were accurate.
"The Skynet Funding Bill is passed. The system goes on-line August 4th, (2001). Human decisions are removed from strategic defense. Skynet begins to learn at a geometric rate. It becomes self-aware at 2:14 a.m. Eastern time, August 29th. In a panic, they try to pull the plug."
A convincing and overwhelming threat of force can prevent wars from starting or avert human rights abuses.
As in "I am Lex Luthor and I can destroy Metropolis unless you dye your hair blue"?
a nation that wants to secure a good and peaceful tomorrow had best be investing in these technologies today.
A nation that want to secure a good and peaceful tomorrow had best be investing a bit less in economical development, democracy, human rights and the environment both at home and abroad.
Investing in these technologies is for those who want world domination and a healthy military-industrial complex.
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Men with no respect for life must never be allowed to control the ultimate instruments of death.
GW Bu
I think the quote used billion dollars, but metaphor is the same.
Did anyone here see the movie 'Toys'? It's a messed-up movie, but one that has some relavance here. To make a long story short, they hooked video games (Flight simulators, FPS, etc.) to small military weapons. You controled the weapons through the video game interface. I believe that this is what they mean. The 'pilot' won't be in the aircraft, but at a central control station on the ground reacting to the information presented on the displays. Most of the flying and basic stuff would be done by computers on the aircraft, but the general decision making would be by the controller on the ground.
This will lead to unmanned tanks, and other tools of destruction. Soon, wars will be settled by [unmanned] tournaments of Roshambo.
That Osama LeBin or whatever that most wanted dude's name is and his men would love to get their hands on this. Watch out and run for your life! Crafts everywhere shootin'....
Video game arcades with flight simulations?
"I have not failed. I've simply found 10,000 ways that won't work." --Thomas Edison
The technology is nowhere near ready enough to be used for large-scale air-to-air combat. Too much of a pilot's situational awareness comes from peripheral vision and and minute visual cues gleaned from another aircraft's movements. Limiting the controller to a view that is essentially what can be displayed on a single monitor will make said controller less than effective -- it will make the UCAV a sitting duck. And so far, there are no algorithms that can out-think a person directly controlling an aircraft in the dynamic environment of air-to-air combat.
The primary mission area being evaluated for possible UCAV use is air-to-ground combat -- Close Air Support (CAS) and Deep Air Support (DAS). The smart money favors deployment for DAS long before the technology is ready to support CAS. DAS is where there are no friendlies in the area, and there is time to pick and choose targets so as to avoid collateral damage and civilian casualties. But CAS is another story entirely. By definition, CAS is carried out where close coordination with nearby ground troops is necessary. And despite what may be on the drawing boards, the average rifleman is still not carrying a notebook computer connected to a frequency-hopping radio. CAS coordination is done by a Forward Air Controller (FAC) talking to the pilot on a radio. The FAC must mark either the target or his own position. This is generally done with either some form of smoke or a signal light. Sometimes, it is done with simple mirror flashes. Then, the FAC "talks the pilot on" to the target. The kind of coordination necessary to avoid bombing one's own troops accidentally requires (for now) a live pilot in the cockpit of the bomber. Even with a live pilot in the cockpit, fully briefed on the entire area, accidents happen. Even when pilots are very familiar with the training range, and have flown the target area dozens of times, there are slip-ups (ever hear of Vieques?).
All of which makes this a fine academic discussion, but leads me to believe we will still have pilots in the cockpit of most combat aircraft for the foreseeable future. The one area that seems wide open for UCAVs is DAS.
All they need to do now is come up with a really slick hyper-realistic arcade game and put it in arcades, and set up an ongoing contest so they can harvest the best scores, then offer you scholarship to some school with an ROTC program later in life if you keep blowing away the baddies.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Someone pulled out Macross Plus, so I'd better throw in some Gundam Wing:
Mobile Dolls, anyone?
Seriously, though, if people aren't willing to risk their lives for their causes then those causes probably aren't worth fighting for anyway. Endless robot war only dilutes the purpose of fighting in the first place.
Visit the
Well, it seems we're indeed just arguing because of a difference of semantics (and, indeed, yours are more standard; I've been deliberately using the term "military" very broadly to try and make people think about it from another direction).
But I think that this belief in the seperation of military and government is a huge part of the problem. That idea is at the heart of my original post.
The politicians were not entirely to blame for the failure in Vietnam.
Outsiders can't just step into a civil war and "win" it.
Sure, the US military could have gone in and wiped out all military forces that opposed them at any one time. There would have been massive civilian casualties, resulting in greater support for communism. The people of North Vietnam believed in communism, as did many in South Vietnam. If you think the P.R. problems were bad back home, think of what they were in Vietnam.
There was no way to win. This type of situation is like a hydra, where cutting off one head causes two more to grow. The best outcome a military solution could achieve would be a police-state under US martial law.
Even worse was the fact that the real enemies weren't in Vietnam. Fighting them indirectly was hopeless, each side could pour weapons in indefinitely. Fighting them directly was impossible, as nuclear devastation would result.
Sure, the politicians made mistakes, but it was an utterly hopeless situation. The military could destroy any target given to them, but nothing was to be gained by such destruction.
Again false. Task Force Ranger was good to go within minutes after the original force returned home.
More confusion in the discussion. I meant within the larger context, they lost political support for future action.
In fact, casualties were predicted.
Yes, but they were underestimated. But I think perhaps that the estimates were based on support that they didn't have. They wanted, and should have had, close air support and tanks on standby.
Furthermore, an earlier plan involving the use of Delta Force resulted in the evaluation that they could just go in and pick up whoever they wanted off the streets. They later changed their minds, but that bold statement probably stuck in the politicians' mind. If that initial evaluation had been less optimistic, the abduction strategy would probably never have been considered.
It reminds me faintly of Dieppe (it's a Canadian thing, you might not recognize the reference, but it's an interesting example of a world-class fuckup), in the way that planned-on support was stripped away a bit at a time (though the results were very different).
At least one Ranger bled to death while their commander took 6 hours to beg in non-US UN armor, and another 6 for them to get there. Successful or not, there were some major screwups.
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Is it just me, or does this sound like that whole Mobile Dolls thing from Gundam Wing? I guess life really does imitate art...
Aidrocsid Liah Lla! Sire Liah!
Smart weapons already offer American TV viewers a level of detachment that stifles any possibility of moral outrage from the populace. What happenned to the days when there was a price for war. With no American lives being lost leaders are getting used to the idea of a casualty free war making the price of war low enough politically to encourage wars whenever there is a domestic crisis that attention needs to be diverted from.
Now instead of "Stick Jockies" pilots would now be called "Desk Jockies". Imagine some teenager wish a laptop and a joystick can hack the communications lines to the UAV then they can bomb their school.
The comment about visual recognition is not quite accurate. We already have recognition technology that can distinguish between a school bus and mobile missile trucks (which, depending on the contry of origin, can look very much like a school bus). The possibility for error does exist, of course... it always will. But technology will always make advances and reduce that error margin.
I'm not advocating war or the technology behind it. However, this technology does make more sense to me than what we currently have. It does make war less personable... but then again, it's war we're talking about here, not ice cream socials and croquet matches in the back yard.
No, this missile you're mentioning is the British BAe ALARM. It is similar in function to HARM.
Zigbee Central: A Zigbee weblog
In a high jamming environment all the error correction and compensation is probably going to give you bad ping. And bad ping really sucks for real time control.
:).
And good luck when you get the equivalent of "u_removes".
If you're close enough to be an LPB you're close enough to be blasted with a medium range ground to ground missile. And they can find you coz you're sending out all those control signals remember?
And they mentioned satellite control which would mean even higher ping!
Because of this it's more likely that the plane has to be quite autonomous. Or you must take out all the jamming equipment.
So it's likely to be more like Command and Conquer than Quake. And commanders will be still be swearing at idiotic units.
One way around this is to stick 1-10GB worth of entangled quantum bits for communications in each plane. That way communications will be instantaneous, secure and unjammable.
I'm not sure if you can entangle more bits at the plane for later use by sending signals to the plane, and still get good ping. If you can, then you start with 1GB on the plane, and you use those whilst getting more from radio.
If you can't, once you run out of bits no more Mr. LPB.
Still, we're probably all quantum entangled anyway, from billions of years back. But I suppose if we work out how to use those bits then we'd just "move Mars"
Cheerio,
Link.
The smash-hit blockbuster 'TOYS' with Robin Williams and Cuba Gooding Jr.!
That movie was years before its time. It had the brainwashing-youths-with-videogames and the remote-controlled-armies.
--
send all spam to theotherwhitemeat@ropine.com
Wars wouldn't be such a bad thing any more.
Unless you are a civilian. And from WW I to Ruanda, civilians are making more and more of the victims of war.
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Men with no respect for life must never be allowed to control the ultimate instruments of death.
GW Bu
these new fighter planes aren't controlled by a Windows-based OS. Hell of a Blue Screen Of Death wouldn't you say? Digger.
-- Don't you love a world where they give paranoid sociopaths guns, and tell them to shoot traitors and subversives?
Doesn't the US military have a habit of farming out contracts to Microsoft?
Would you be happy if you friendly-fire avoidance system had a little pop-up "how do you want to avoid dying?" wizard?
vittal
Hopefully the system won't be running Windows. Imagine the surprise of the world if the new planes suddently take a break from fighting against other countries in war and suddenly engage in a tactical attack on Netscape Navigator's home base. =-)
"I have not failed. I've simply found 10,000 ways that won't work." --Thomas Edison
the reason why Quake bot are good is because they are IN the game. the real quake bot test would to run it on seperate computer with a video camera to watch the screen and an adpator to use the keyboard. If you made a Quake bot that actually played quake like a player does, you would a better indiction how a robot would handle real combot. My guess is very poorly, like a squirrel with a M-16. I think the future is remote piloting.
The UCAV isn't designed for maneuverability. It is designed for 'stealth'. The UCAV isn't going to get into a dogfight, it is designed for deep attack missions that are deemed to risky for human pilots (read, First Night of the War - lose the SAMs).
-- toolie
> Replacing the pilot by a ground controller cuts the price of each unit by two-third
Why not just replace these big fighter jets with Hundreds of Smaller ones. Perhaps something about 6 feet wide. Make them so small and cheap that no country in their right mind would dare shoot them down with their expensive rockets.
Or perhaps we could fall back to Sharks with Frick'n Laser beams attatched to their heads. < Evil Grin >
Make all your aircrafts unmanned and the next thing you know, your communications are being jammed and all your planes are suddenly down! You can make a communication system more robust to jamming (by using spread-spectrum, and other redunduncy), but you cannot make it totally jamming-proof.
Another problem with such an aircraft is that in order to be guided, the plane needs to emit (so the ground controller can see the data). This has two side effects:
1) The plane cannot be made stealth.
2) It would be all too easy to guide a missile based on those emissions.
I think the future of unmanned aircrafts will depend on AI. Of course, we're not yet there...
Opus: the Swiss army knife of audio codec
I thought the next war was going to be fought in cyberspace.
there is no such thing as friendly fire.
eudas
Blessed is he who expects the worst, for he shall not be disappointed.
Given there is no human occupant to protect, the planes can be made more aerodynamic, and more maneouverable.. and deal with forces much greater than our conventional fighters can.
(most, if not all, modern planes can handle forces and manouvers that would easily kill their occupants)
When you are piloting these things and you die you get one of two messages:
1. You have performed an illegal operation and will be shutdown.
2. You see a blue screen, and CTRL-ALT-DEL does nothing.
-- Cheer, Cheer, The Red and the White.
Alright, guys. We've all played toy soldires and are now playing Quake and such. Society took care of that. But do we really need to support, or even acknowledge a new technological development by the military complex? And why do we need to discuss almost 0 efficiency high-altitude military missions that took place far from the shores of the us and were never in any danger of hitting our own house (instead of a serbian truck wreck that was masquaraded as a tank)? And why should we support millions spent on military research while the scientists that work on more socially meaningful research have to scramble for pennies?
Does this remind anyone of terminator 2? the anmanned military took over. I doubt this would happen but it could!
Boeing's planned approach is to send operator commands (via a satellite or a relay aircraft outside the combat zone) to a single aircraft in the swarm.
imagine, one lucky missle and the whole fleet turns into one giant garbage heap! Take out the controlling aircraft and they all turn into falling tin cans.
Redundancy... Who neads it?
There are two major products that come out of Berkeley: LSD and UNIX. We don't believe this to be a coincidence.
Suppression of Enemy Air Defenses is the perfect use for the little pilotless bastards. They already used swarms of them in the Gulf War as radar decoys. Situational awareness is the key factor in whether you screw up or you don't in launching non-SEAD attacks. 2025 sounds about right for twitch kids taking over the red buttons. Not. Would you rather have a human or a swarm of TwitchGeeks on caffeine whom you don't know guarding your carrier group? It's more a cultural issue than a technolgical one. --kosmonot
Maybe we should start producing Tie-fighters. You know, like mass-produce cheap fighters and bombers. I mean, there's no risk to humans, so if a plane is lost, who cares?
Thus the decision to deploy a weapon on target will be made by its human flight controller using the vehicles sensor-array (have I slipped in Star Trek speak of what) and other suplimental information that might be available to the remote pilot.
This seems to me to be a Good Thing. Because the vehicle is not crewed it can operate at lower altitudes and take substantially greater risks than, say, an F-16. Consider the case in Kosovo where there was an alitude floor of 10,000 feet or so to keep the aircraft out of range of shoulder launched missles. This aircraft can get lower so target information can be better determined: less chance of tractors pulling wagons being identified from a couple of miles up as tanks.
Of course if the aircraft itself is too valuable the same sort of rules of engagement would apply and then not having a person's eyes in the airframe would be a detriment.
I think the sited report was filled with cheap shots.
The thing that you have either missed or chose to miss is that UCAV is not a ROBOT vehicle, it is merely unmanned.
UCAV is controlled by humans in remote locations, presumably out of harms way. UCAV does have some automated functionality, but nothing more complicated than cruise control.
Sheesh. You replace the pilot with a camera and suddenly everyone starts talking talking Asimov and Heinlein.
Hey, I've got an idea, while we watch the UCAV demo, lets put on our flying backpacks and eat some Soylent Green for lunch.
The moral of this story is that things are usually not as much as they appear to be, be it nifty, insidious, nefarious, exciting, whatever.
This space for rent.
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"First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win."
All this talk about intercepting or spoofing control signals is ridiculous.
If electronic infiltration were even a remote possibility with computer pilots it would be almost as doable with real ones, since a human pilot gets targetting info, terrain maps, base and target locations, and mission objectives from ground or satellite locations already.
Of course there is the human element of trust in calling the enemy "charlie" or naming different jets with various adjective/animal/number triplets, but that is just another type of encryption, really. It can't always be cracked by computers (as long as they're still failing the turing test) but enemy humans can crack it pretty well.
A human pilot could of course just use visual imput to complete the mission and get home if he had some reason to doubt ground or satellite info. But so could a computer pilot! If the checksums or codewords or protocols are a bit fishy, of if it sees one ally attacking another, the computer plane can go manual override and just do its own thing. Of course this creates the possibility for a Dr. Strangelove scenario, but the movie shows that humans don't do much good against that.
Personally I plan on getting on the robots' good side now so they'll let me live to do their menial chores once they take over.
Since the first generation of craft would be "wild weasles" going after enemy air defences their is no danger of them shooting at each other, thus them knowing each others positions is meaningless, they aren't looking for air targets. The freindly fire danger I see would be in one of these buggers getting lost and homing in on freindly air defences, either from their own bases or some other allied position. If the craft is damaged and "forgets" where the good guys are supposed to be the potential for it to destroy the first anti-aircraft radar it finds is kinda scary. I'd feel better knowing that humans and humans only can make the decision to fire.
IFF and other ident systems are mostly reliable, automated target recognition via radar profile is faster and more accurate by far than what humans can do, but radar signatures can be spoofed, IFF signals can be faked etc... It may be hard or near impossible today but it won't be impossible for ever.
Asides from the technical problems of completly automated combat systems there is of course the ethical dilema of allowing machines to make the decision to kill human beings. Humans, even the enemy, deserve the thought and consideration of another human before being killed, we owe each other that small dignity even in war. Modern warfare is already remote and cold enough as it is, removing any more of the humanity and allowing our weapons to do our killing for us makes the prospect of war all too simple a thing, all too bloodless an affair, and I fear that the decision to attack or not will be taken too lightly in such a case. Not to mention the very real (in say 50+ years) of our own AI's turning on us, and making the decision to kill all humans. If they've never been allowed to decide on their own to kill humans they would (hopefully) be less likely to see it as an option if they do turn on us.
Not that this story is giving me fears of SkyNet or anything, just some things to think about when considering the concept of allowing computers to do our killing for us.
"Listen: We are here on Earth to fart around. Don't let anybody tell you any different!" - Kurt Vonnegut
Boy. I can hardly wait. So now, hacking into some DoD computer and running some interesting looking processes will launch REAL weapons that kill REAL people. Yippy. And guess what? If all these unmanned mobile weapons are networked.. what happens when some hacker (the enemy?) 0wNz the network? I like Cyberspace a lot better when everything is virtual.
Knowledge is like ignorance.. too much can be just as bad as not enough.
Close air support is where the risk is the pilots and the friendly fire deaths. Aircraft already have friend-or-foe beacons in place to minimize friendly fire incidents involving aircraft. Also, bombers and other "strategic" air missions are already carried out from quite high altitude.
.50 caliber gun with a camera and a jet engine attached might be interesting. Need close air support? Slip on the VR headset, grab the joystick and a fresh disposable gets dropped out of a high-altitude B-52.
Where life gets hairy and where lives get lost is close air support missions -- attacking ground targets to support infantry in the field. I've seen numerous Vietnam documentaries where US troops literally called in air strikes _on their own positions_ because they were getting overrun or nearly so. You need to get in really close to make sure that the group of guys in green you're about to roast with a load of napalm aren't your own people. When you get in "low and slow" you lose the ability to maneuver and you become really vulnerable to AA and shoulder-fired munitions not to mention enemy fighters from above.
I really don't see a robot plane doing much for close air support. Tactical bombing missions, maybe, but those are relatively low risk right now and the high-risk, high-accuracy stuff they can do with Tomahawks.
If they could ever get the fly-by-wire experience down right, it might be interesting to see "disposable" close-air support planes that could be flown at the company or batallion level by people on the ground. A single-use plane consisting of a few claymores, a 20mm cannon and a
Eventually the enemy force will come catch who does those nice machines.. so I doubt it's ever going to turn into a robots game.. especailly since there is nothing like killing a bunch of humans to hurt other humans.. and war is just about that, isn't it ?
"I think the future of unmanned aircrafts will depend on AI. Of course, we're not yet there" a)how do you know that wer're not yet there? b)if/when we do get "there" everything else you said is invalidated. you have to realize that AI and ground control are not mutually exclusive. the plane would not "go down" any more than a human pilot would. in each case the plane and pilot must simply operate without intelligence support. This would be done in the case of a computer pilot with AI. 1), 2):the plane can be made stealth, and emits nothing. There is such a thing as passive radio where you can listen without being detected. Passive radar is up and coming on the next generation of SAMs.
They're already using windows on destroyers (or will soon anyway)
9 21.html
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/archive/13
The V-1 was NOT radio-controlled. They set a direction and a distance, and it flew that direction and distance as best it could. Once it reached the distance, the engine cut out and it dove. If it undershot or overshot, they changed the distance setting for the next one. However, the only evidence they had for where it landed was news reports and spies, and the British used the BBC and turned (double agent) spies in order to make the Germans think they were overshooting when they were undershooting.
The next Cmdr Taco duplicate will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and see it early!
the military relized a while ago that human pilots can't put up with all the g forces the planes can take. Pilots have been known to "black out" or "red out" when turning there planes to fast (there was a documentary on this a while back, complete with on plane footage of a trainie who blacked out and was resucued by his co-pilot instructor...).
If this works it could in theory be the best combat jet yet.
Scary as it is, it would still be a interesing thing to work on if I ever got drafted (working on it or cracking it).
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I think there was a movie or something with a plot just like that.
I appreciate your effort in explaining it to me.
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Keep it up and soon we'll have no more war. Countries will just play battlebots every so often to settle disputes
I don't think the story was trying to imply that humans wouldn't be involved in the control of the plane. Just that humans wouldn't be INSIDE the plane to control it.
[
I am a supporter of the right to bear arms, and since I found a nice factoid on a certain aspect of gun violence, I decided to make it my sig.
The problem was that the quote was much longer than 120 characters (max sig length) so I had to snip it and snip it and snip it to fit it in, so all of the support, reasons, etc, were gone and it was a bare factoid.
Bare factoids make bad sigs, so I should have thrown the sig out then and there. But, I'm stubborn, so I put it in anyway. (I spent 10 minutes reducing it to 120 characters, so I was going to use it, by gods!) When half of the responses to my posts were about the sig, though, I figured it was time to stop wasting people's time and put in my new sig. Thus, the new sig, below.
Maybe the state's highest function is to grind out insoluble problems. (Zelazny, Hall of Mirrors)
It will be interesting so see how this affects recruitment in the military.
Imagine a situation where the current crop of US fighter pilots can be outflown outgunned by a bunch of kids who've spent way too much time playing Wing Commander or something running a UCAV.
Why not use these twitchy-fingered kids to inflict maximum damage on enemy forces? YOU can get em young enough so they'll never question their orders, tell them theyre just flying another simulated battle and watch them lay waste to the 'enemy' with no moral issues whatsoever.
I gots ta ding a ding dang my dang a long ling long
It's all a matter of definition, but wasn't the V-1 in some sense the first example of this? It was radio-controlled in real-time, and carried a warhead.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
at taking the g forces jets can put out.. A modern combat jet can pull so many g's as to knock the pilot out. Its a limit on combat aircraft. So by flying remotely you can do better. It would really suck though if the computer system didn't work right. I think a fly by wire system with a human operator would be better.
Its also less risk to the pilot to be on the ground....
This whole story reminds me of that Star Trek episode where two civilizations had been waging war for hundreds of years..on a computer. And if the computer marked you as a casualty, you had to report to a "killing machine".
Oh how Science Fiction portrays real life.
Well, maybe, just maybe USA has gone a little to far (and i thoght we already did in Kosovoh(sp))
While the original poster felt the computers could
do targeting since planes can be networked to deal
with the IFF (identify friend or foe) issues, lets not forget that a LOT of air missions are for close air support, where the enemy may be very close to our ground troops. The infantry gets shot up enough without a targeting computer deciding that anyone on the ground in some area must be a bad guy... Even with decent IFF systems,
there were too many friendly fire casualties in the Gulf war.
It was Judge Woodlock, in the US District Court for Massachusetts, with a gavel.
The HARM can be used in different ways. You can fire it off a platform such as the F-4G Wild Weasel. In this case, the EWO (Electronics Warfare Officer) selects a threat, hands that threat to the HARM, and sends the HARM on its way.
But the HARM also carries its own threat table and can be sent after a target with little direction. In this case, a threat is identified in a general area and the HARM is fired. The HARM then looks for threats, identifies the highest priority threat according to its internal table, and then goes after that threat.
These kinds of abilities allow a HARM to be used with platforms not otherwise especially equiped for Wild Weasel missions. It also allows for more creative functions. A pilot can "pickle over the horizon" and send a HARM after a known target without coming in range themselves. And by extending a HARM's fuel capacity, it can "hunt" for an extended period of time awaiting threat radars to power up after hiding from the Wild Weasel aircraft.
Vicous stuff.
The sobering part comes from a few rare reports during the Gulf War. There were reports of "near misses" with HARM missles by friendly surface forces. The theory is that the HARMs mis-identified friendly radar or communications systems as a threat in its internal threat table.
How would that be any different? Would you fly on the equivalent of a RC aircraft?
Cruse missles are already computer controled, computers will only be able to replace humans in most missions when thye can adapt and make complex judgement calls.
As for using a network to keep track of them, I think that's a bad idea. Some commanders have been known to blanket jam a battlefield after preparing their troops and letting the small units slug it out without guidince from on high, assuming their troops will be better able to handle it
There's also the fact that jammers are really easy targets to find and hit.
not when it's an A-6.
Which leads me to another interesting question. If a massive first-assualt type of strike is used, generally, we lead-off with EW, jamming, etc. Blind the enemy first.
But with jamming going on, how could these vehicles participate in the strike?
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Did we not learn anything from the Terminator movies? Thats how it starts, unmanned, armed airplanes.
The M-16 was not designed to maim, as you say. Rather, it grew out of the armed services' dissatisfaction with the M-14 rifle. The main problem with the M-14 was its weight; it's a big pig of a weapon and ammunition for it weighs a ton.
By moving from 7.62mm ammunition to 5.56mm ammunition, the weight of the ammo was reduced by a factor of almost a third. The heavy use of plastics and minimized use of heavy metal components cut several pounds off the M-16, when compared to its predecessor.
The smaller bullet possesses less lethality, correct. However, it's not a tumbler round and it wasn't meant to maim people. In Mogadishu, Somali gang members were shot at point-blank range with M-16 fire and weren't incapacitated; the bullet tended to penetrate clean through, without causing significant wound trauma. If the 5.56mm cartridge was designed to maim, then it was pretty badly designed, because it doesn't incapacitate reliably. (The Israelis and British have reported similar problems with the 5.56mm round. The Soviets have the same problem with their 5.45mm AK-74s in Chechnya; the 5.45mm round is so inadequate that the Sovs have started fielding a 9mm assault rifle with their troops, just to get some stopping power again.)
To recap: the reason for moving to 5.56mm was to minimize weight, so that soldiers could carry more ammunition and fight longer engagements. A soldier already goes into combat lugging around over 100 pounds in his pack; every ounce of saved weight helps.
"67% of all statistics are made up."
83% of slashdot.org readers already knew that.
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Let's take a look at the gulf war. It was fought and ended quickly, with exceptionally low causualties on both sides. In the crusades, the WW's, Vietnam, armies would battle, and thousands would die in order to gain control of a single building, bridge, or piece of equipment. Now, with the pinpoint accuracy of available weapons, the same targets can be achieved in a fraction of the time, with but a handful of killed or wounded. True, technology is taking the gruesome carnage out of war, but that doesn't mean the person making the decision to use that technology will be able to make that decision any easier, if anything it would make it more difficult. Strange things happened to a lot of grunts in Nam, things that would make one think that abstracting "killing to a small blip on a phosphorescent screen far removed from the actual event" isn't such a bad thing. - just my 2 cents - Semper Fi - J.
BECAUSE CITY's DONT F*CKIN MOVE
That's in fact the main reason for the move from remotely piloted vehicles to unmanned aerial vehicles. The Israelis pioneered this concept, with a trailer-launched reconnissance UAV around 1980.
There's also the fact that jammers are really easy targets to find and hit.
Of course the FAA doesn't allow pilots to only use GPS intrumentation. The Army has a nasty habit of turning GPS at the first sign of trouble. Could you image thousands of aircraft moving at 500 miles/hour each within 5 miles of the other without instrumentation?
That's the idea. Read the article, especially re: secure line-of-sight and satellite-relay control systems.
It's just like the existing 'smart bombs' are able to be guided by secure channels, watching the video returning from the craft and aiming it with a joystick.
One pilot in a secure bunker can launch ten birds from different airports. She can punch in their waypoints to meet near the objective, and fine-tune one or two into their attacks at a time. Let those birds revert to autopilot while another two go in for attacks. Repeat. When done, land them one at a time by the same joystick. Let the airport jockeys put the planes away, while the pilot sips her tea.
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sattelite link via laser... or raido... jam that...
Hmm, The Economist is an authority on unmanned fighter planes but not the international space station ... Of course the former article was positive while the latter was negative ... I wonder if techno boosterism would have anything to do with this.
Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhh
I wonder if they will let us Total Annihilation freaks test pilot these bad boys.
I better go practice up.
I sorta like