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Robots Go To War
JKT writes: "According to The Times (of London): Predators, which can operate for 40 hours at a time ... can hover at up to 25,000ft, taking photographs in all types of weather, and at night with the use of infrared cameras ... For the first time in any operation, the Predators, developed by General Atomics Aeronautical Systems in San Diego, are also armed with Hellfire anti-tank missiles ... if a Predator spots a potential target, the ground operator can launch a Hellfire missile attack immediately." The article covers all the various pre-attack surveillance mechanisms, including special forces units of various countries. Interesting stuff, especially because it appears that one of those recon drones has already been shot down.
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20010911/ts/iraq_u sa_plane_dc_4.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A457 0-2001Aug27.html
FAS has some more info on the bird here.
:wq
Actually the range of the predator is limited more by the 1998 INF treaty than by their actual range.
The treaty limits them to 5000 Km. I have not seen any info on their actually range which is no dount classified information.
There is a nice write up (and picture) on this rather funky looking bird in this article.
A hellfire missile on what is basically an expensive radio controlled toy. Anyone seeing a problem with giving something that is controlled by radio/infrared/laser/string something as lethal as a anti-tank missile? Sure, it probably has encryption and secure communications, but these things are never perfect.
Say one of these things are launched from a ship, and shortly afterwards its taken over by the enemy, and wham, the ship has a big gaping hole in it.
I'm sure the likelihood of this happening are slim, but why give these things the power to do that in the first place? Assuming they are launched from a ship, they could simply launch a missile to that target, no?
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Insert Witty Sig Here
The terrorists, on the other hand, no matter how well equipped they are, have a finite supply of anti-aircraft capability. Keep launching these things over their territory, float at a good height, and let them launch anti-aircraft missiles at them to their heart's content. (They have to try to shoot them down, the intel the unmanned aircraft gather are too valuable to their enemy to just ignore them.) Equip those things with a chaff dispenser in place of a missle or two, and you've got a great robotic attrition tool.
One of the worst things about guerilla warfare is your inability to wear down the enemy without taking vastly larger losses yourself. This stuff puts an interesting spin on that... bin Laden may have picked the wrong time to become a guerilla.
The terrifying thing is that robots can replace many of the tasks of ground troops, more and more. This means that there will be troops, but those troops may not be in the contexts where they can observe for themselves what they are doing and form their own conclusions about it.
More and more, troops fall into technical roles, controlling machines on great aircraft carriers and evaluating machine gathered data.
This contrasts with the role of the "grunt" in Vietnam. The infantrymen returning from that battlefield came back and relayed their stories to civilians, who used this information to form their (generally negative) opinion on the war.
Robots are under the control of commanders, who are indoctrinated differently than are ground troops and may be less inclined to feel sympathy or mercy when they push the button of destruction.
An enemy soldier, or a civilian, cannot plead mercy or beg for life to a robot; the commander controlling the 'bot may not even know a person is surrendering or begging for mercy.
I oppose anything that would distance us from the blood on our hands, including roboticization of war. You can read many science fiction novels that address these issues.
Goat sex free since 2001
Has anyone ever thought of cloning dinosaurs??? They could eat and digest victims, taking away the need for burial. There will sure as hell be little or no caualties, as dinosaurs would probably "kill" rather than "hurt". Whatever country grows the biggest and baddest dinosaurs wins!!! Plus you could make that a nice TV show... place Survivor contestents on the same island that you keep the dinosaurs on.
;-)
I'll shutup now
Does this mean nerds adept at playing video games and computer flight simulators will be operating the fighter jets from remote controls in the future, instead of the kinds of brave, tough men who fought conventional wars in the past?
We wouldn't need people on our side, but we'd be killing people on theirs. Is that right? Do we, as a developed nation, have the right to use that against those without much technology?
It seems to me that this reduces unnecessary casualties on the other side. A more humane thing to do. Go after the actual targets instead of just bombing everyone. Instead of large scale indiscriminate bombings, you get small focused attacks.
If this becomes more common it seems to change the perception of "war". At least the aerial part of it. You still need ground troops. But perhaps, no longer in the traditional roles.
It seems to me that as remote drones take photographs, they also send back their exact GPS coordinates. By piecing together the pictures into a much larger map, combined with coordinates, you can interpolate and come up with the exact GPS coordinates of the window or chimney of any building, or the mouth of a cave. Also along the lines of a technology war, you send in people who can blend into the background. They walk aruond areas, and push a button on a miniature GPS device that takes a "snapshot" of the coordinates of this bridge, or building. By getting coordinates of, say, a building, and interviewing the people who took the coordinates (were you standing on the curb, or the sidewalk, show me on this satellite photo exactly where you stood when you pushed the GPS capture button) you can interpolate the coordinate of precise features (i.e. chimneys) of buildings.
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
I find this concept very troubling. If we train robots to be killing machines, how can we expect them to become responsible members of society?
e _f uture.html
http://www.theonion.com/onion3522/robots_are_th
Know what I like about atheists? I've yet to meet one that believes God is on their side.
"Look, Bert, two guys hunched over a card table! Let's shoot 'em..."
"Hey, Ernie, what's that whooshing noise?"
It may also be our plan to get them to shoot it down. By getting them to shoot it down, a number of things are revealed. Where the shots come from. If radar was used, and from where. Get them to expend limited unreplaceable ammo on unmaned (possibly cheapo decoy) targets.
If you wanted to assemble large numbers of cheapo decoys, how cheap could each one be. Low tens of thousands? These are just big hobbiest RC vehicles. And even cheap decoys could have some capabilities, such as a camera and GPS. More capable unmanned aircraft might be indistinguishable from cheapo decoys.
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
I don't think these things are going to become super commonplace soon, and I don't especially don't see us waging war / keeping peace (whatever...) using things that hold one missile. I'm guessing the one hellfire is for a command apc somewhere, not to be taking out _____.
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There's alot of interest in these RPVs in the US and NATO.
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http://www.fas.org/irp/program/collect/uav.htm
Israel started to use them in the late 70s and 80s for Counter Battery imaging of Syrian and Hezbollah artillery. Then the US started a really horrible project called Aquila in the 80s that failed. By the Gulf War the Navy was using Israeli drones for real time imaging of targets for the 8 and 16 inch guns.
http://www.fas.org/irp/program/collect/hunter.h
http://www.fas.org/irp/program/collect/pioneer.
Global Hawk is really neat
http://www.fas.org/irp/program/collect/global_h
It can launch from Nevada, fly to Australia and then loiter for a spell before refueling. And it can transmit images to other aircraft or sats at 50-275 megabits per second. Australia is looking at the Global Hawk for recon on the north.
http://www.janes.com/defence/air_forces/news/mi
Recently the USAF and Army are testing RPVs for firing Sidewinder, Stinger and Hellfire missiles at a range of airborne and ground targets.
http://www.janes.com/aerospace/military/news/id
"IAI recently teamed with Raytheon Missile Systems to promote Cutlass (Combat UAV Target Locate and Strike System), which mates the Harpy air vehicle with a guidance system based on the US company's seekers for the AIM-9X and ASRAAM air-to-air missiles coupled with an automatic target-recognition and classification system. Other similar defense-suppression drones include the ARW-10 Lark developed by Kentron in South Africa."
Interesting stuff no doubt.
Of course, when you're 25000 feet (about 5 miles) away/up, 54 knots is pretty close to standing still.
Actually, the Hunter UAV is a reliable Hellfire system.
r /i dr010817_2_n.shtml
http://www.janes.com/aerospace/military/news/id
"More recently, the US Army has carried out similar evaluations. In 1997, a Hunter UAV carrying a laser designator illuminated targets for attack by Paveway guided bombs and Hellfire air-to-surface missiles released from other platforms. All three of the former and nine of the latter struck their targets."
Doesn't it seem that people will be replaced by many robots commanded by a few people in a hidden bunker somewhere. That is where it's going.
Just remember: in the future, wars will be fought be tiny robots. Your job will be to build and mantain those robots.
Stupid like a fox!
Go after the actual targets instead of just bombing everyone. Instead of large scale indiscriminate bombings, you get small focused attacks.
Exactly, and it's easy to tell who the Taliban are - they're the only people they allow to be armed. So, if you see a group with AK47s or pickup trucks mounted with ZSU23s, they're Taliban. It will also be easy to take out most of the Taliban artillary in the North - theirs are the guns facing North.
Without an antiair capability, they'll be at a great disadvantage - and they won't be getting Stinger missiles from the US, funneled through Pakistan. Russia and China certainly won't be helping them either, nor will Iran.
They're trying to kill Osama bin Laden and/or despose of the Taliban - this isn't accomplished by killing all of its citizens.
It could be acomplished by nuking afganistan. I don't (and most reasonable people) don't think this is the way it should be accomplished.
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
Their primary defense is their small size, low signature and height of flight.
For something that flies as slow as a Predator, the idea of defencive capabilities is kind of laughable.
Actually, the Simpsons quote that applies is "The wars of the future will not be fought on the battlefield or at sea. They will be fought in space, or possibly on top of a very tall mountain. In either case, most of the actual fighting will be done by small robots. And as you go forth today remember always your duty is clear: To build and maintain those robots. Thank you."
My Karma is so good, I'm the Dalai Lama...or something.
:)
:), you shoot? Blam! wrong move.
;) and besides, it's their own evil conceptual creation.
They don't understand Missiles, they don't care they're still gonna try to shoot it down... if you wanna fight terrorists with such a sweet device, you have to THINK like one and then translate this into a weapon to which they'll fear.
Let me explain: How do terrorists commit their acts? They have bombs, they strap their body with bombs and go kamikaze, same with hijaacks. So what do they understand? "if we have something that can destroy them all, they won't touch us", put that into practice and put a nuclear detonator on the device
Hmm this started as a joke, but the more I think of it, heh, the more I'd almost laugh seeing their face taken in pictures by a spy plane of all their camps and them looking at it without daring shooting it down in case it might release something nasty over them. That way you gather all the intelligence needed without killing to many soldiers, of course some are totally stupid and will shoot it down and get blown up to bits (so less troubles for the millitary to close down the camps).
This might almost work
--- Metamoderating abusive downgraders since my 300th post.
especially because it appears that one of those recon drones has already been shot down.
As far as anything the Taliban claims, I'll believe it when I see it with my own eyes..
It's a tool. And the concept is pretty brilliant.
You have one of these puppies orbiting around an area that is a potential battle site. If they soak it with stealth graphite/carcinogenic/wonderpaste and deploy it at night or in bad weather it can go on unnoticed just watching. When it picks up something interesting, wham, a nice wing of F-15Es swoops down and ruins everyone's day and then splits at mach 3. Talk about terror...
We have had "robots" like this for a while we call them satellites though unless we have one in geosynch over Afghanistan, they can only be tasked for a part of any given day. And even if one or two were, you could launch dozens of Predators to monitor dozens of battlefield situations.
As for the idea hanging Hellfires off of them? Weird, that presumes there is no air assets available to follow up on surveillance. Unless these birds are considered disposable, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense for them to break cover and open themselves up like that. Perhaps they are...
Anyways, I am pretty sure these particular tools are not going to facilitate "skynet" planning the overthrow of humankind anytime soon.
Um, no. Drones are not biological organisms, thus they do not constitute biological warfare.
True, but the real power of this sort of platform is that it can stay 'on task' for long periods of time (24+ hours). In Bosnia one of the big uses (of the DarkStar system) was to follow armored vehicles back to their base, and only then call in the cavalry. Going there, snapping a picture, and then going home is better accomplished by maned reconasence vehicles, be they an F-15 with a reconasence pod or a SR-71.
During the 80s there was a Black Helicopter Theory claiming that the US Gov't were specifically supporting aspects of the arcade industry. The intent was to raise a generation able (training hand/eye coordination, etc) and willing to fight tommrows battles. This was particularly needed due to previous generation's docile, pacifist nature.
The US Army being involved with a special edition of the ground-breaking arcade game Battlezone probably just added to the story.
I think its a rediculous idea. Sure, having generations comfortable and able to instinctively absorb technology would provide the raw material to train soldiers adept with new weapons systems. But being able to defeat the Boss on Level 32 of Super Mario Bros, or even surviving some period of time in Battlezone, doesn't make a soldier.
"The innocent will pay for our inability to reason."
Exactly.
The innocent are already paying:
According to a September 21, 2001 BBC story, Aid agencies prepare for Afghan tragedy, Workers in the WFP, World Food Program, have pulled out of Afghanistan because of fear for their safety. If you look at the story, be sure to see the face of the woman in the photo at the top. Her face tells everything. She is one of the innocent people.
The story says, 'According to latest estimates, as many as six million Afghans are now affected by drought, war or displacement. Aid agencies are issuing urgent pleas that the U.S.-led "war against terrorism" does not become a war against innocent civilians. Correspondents say the WFP withdrawal alone has left two and a half million Afghans without any visible means of support.'
The U.S. is killing people without firing a shot.And the craziness does not stop there. The U.S. taxpayer pays enormous amounts for all this. The Washington Post article, Unmanned U.S. Plane Is Lost Over Iraq, calls the downed drone aircraft a "relatively inexpensive, $3.2 million plane".
The CIA trained Osama bin Laden: What Should be the Response to Violence?
Bush's education improvements were
"doesn't seem unreasonable.
If you can get the 2,500,000 million people who are threatened with starvation to agree that this is reasonable, it's fine with me.
Also, your solution seems to assume that the Taliban are a bunch of intelligent guys sitting around talking. In reality they are poorly educated, highly stressed people who are sometimes half crazy, and maybe even hungry themselves. Osama bin Laden is a Saudi and an Arab. (Afghans are not Arabs.) Perhaps you presume more order than there really is.
"Reasonable" left Afghanistan several decades ago.
The secret U.S. government agencies control U.S. violence: What Should be the Response to Violence?
Bush's education improvements were
The Predator UAV is a very light self powered sailplane that saw it's first extensive use over Bosnia/Herzegovina. The aircraft, without any major modifications, usually stayed aloft for around 8 hours at a time.
The camera package installed with the package is top of the line, capable of multiple different uses. It is also very heavy though.
Two things really point against this being viable. 1 is the weight of a weapons rack, and missiles versus the aircrafts dimensions/capabilities. Given the Predator was built for a heavier load than it already has, it may be possible to add more items (AKA a heavier camera.) But, to add a complete new system, wiring, pylons, weapons... Call it a hunch, but it's going to severely hamper the planes abilities, duration, and Durability. (Have you seen the 6 foot landing gear on the plane? Imagine landing something like that with even MORE weight attatched.
The second thing is the planes construction. It was designed to be replaceable, but not as a suicide bomber. It's small size is great for security... you can't shoot at what you can't see... And it's construction minimalized the use of metal so as to provide a very small radar cross section. Adding large hunks of metal on an airplane will force it to fly slower, and lower, making it 1. Audible. 2. Visible. and 3. Picked out on Radar.
krystal_blade
It will be easy to motivate our fellow man; there is hardly anything people treasure more than not being annihilated.
Let's call this the Iron Eagle theory. Its the theory that given enough training on a simulator, an individual is ready for the real thing.
First off, we're giving these simulation games a lot more credit that I believe they deserve. Computer simulations are amazing - and pack quite a bit of detail. But having worked on some of the systems portrayed in these games (and scammed quite a bit of time in real training simulators) - they tend to lack distinct details from the real thing. That's not to say these games aren't very cool. But they're not a perfect simulation either.
But even if they were exact simulations, they'd still only provide one aspect of the training required. First off, there's nothing like the real thing. The US Military understands this, which explains why soldiers still train in the field with MILES gear and airmen fly training sorties instead of spending time in a simulator cockpit. And even then, the systems pale in comparison to real combat experience.
And even once one is intimately familiar with the weapons system assigned, there is another level to being a member of the Armed Services. We've just touched on it with field training and combat experience - knowing how situations feel and being familiar enough with them to act. Being able to interact with other service members effectively (even if you've barely met). The ability to handle pressure. Knowing what makes up a lawful order and when one is bound to disobey an unlawful order. Knowing the common heritage, traditions, and symbols that bind all this (and more) togeather.
Technology changes the face of the battlefield and the weapons deployed on it. It might require shifts in tactics, training, and specific skills. But there is still a requirement for the kind of grit that made up WWII heros. Don't expect to see that replaced by twitch-gamers anytime soon.
There was an old Star Trek episode like this. Rather than risking all out nuclear war, people built computer-simulations. When a nuclear warhead penetrated a nuclear missile shield, the people at ground zero would have to report to a disintegration chamber.
I'm sure there were many other sci-fi authors blithering on about similar subjects.
If I recall, as always, Kirk slept with their women, and threw their world into chaos.
There aren't many of these things. As of 1998, there were five units, each with four aircraft. A unit (ground equipment, 4 UAVs, and 55-person crew) costs $40 million, the USAF says. And it supposedly needs a 5000' paved runway, which seems excessive for something smaller than most light aircraft. It's not a robot; there's a pilot on the ground directly controlling the craft.
Here's the press release for the "Hellfire on a Predator" test. Probably hasn't been deployed yet.
Israel Aircraft Industries makes the most useful military UAVs. Theirs are smaller, with less range (which makes sense; their enemies are nearby), and are typically launched off a rail on a truck-mounted launcher, like a missile, then landed by parachute. The Israeli UAVs tend to be more autonomous; they assume they'll have serious jamming opposition and won't be able to maintain communications continuously. USAF UAVs are flown by a pilot with a joystick; Israeli UAVs tend to be controlled with a keyboard, carrying out a preplanned mission if they can't communicate
Predators do NOT carry Hellfire missiles in actual operation.
First of all, the "trials" weren't meant to develop the Predator into a weapons system. Only Phase I of the testing is completed. Before Phase II, they have to re-engineer the Hellfire, since it was designed to be fired by low-flying helicopters. After Phase II, "This will complete the demonstration of the objectives we set down at the beginning of this process, to demo the technology, and prove its operational feasibility." The tests they did this year were in ideal conditions, fired at a stationary target.
I spent 2 weeks at Nellis AFB, NV this summer, where the 11th & 15th Reconnaissance Squadrons are the only units that fly the Predator. I saw them flying, up-close, the trailer they control them from, and footage from previous flights. I even talked to one of the pilots that flew one of the Hellfire test flights.
It doesn't take much to verify facts online nowadays. Like the fact that the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment is in the Army, not the Air Force. The US Air Force has NO regiments, they do have a variety of special operations assets though.
Besides the obvious grammatical/editorial error in the first sentence, the SAS & American special ops troops work closely quite often. They're constantly deploying all over the world for training or operations.
I don't know how this kind of stuff gets printed by (supposedly) respected newspapers. The author (who's not just a reporter, but their defence editor) & source for this article are clueless.
Here is the official Air Force factsheet on the RQ-1 Predator
Here is the AF News article about the Hellfire tests
I tend to wonder why major robitic systems haven't been deployed, but I am certain there are good reasons.
I know of one system that was developed a while back (for the DOD, I believe) that involved a targetable mortar mounted on a remote controlled (it may have even been autonomous to a point) 4 wheel ATV. I saw some test videos of this on various shows, and even found some small articles about it in Popular Mechanics.
Odetics, Inc, in Anaheim, CA produced at one time (at least some finished prototypes) a six-legged robotics system called the Odex-1 - the picture of the Odex-1 getting into/out of a pickup isn't staged - there was video taken of it broadcast on national TV through shows like "That's Incredible" and "Ripley's Believe It or Not!" - which I have also seen. It was set to be a defence robotics platform, with weapons mounted on it. Whatever happened to this machine is a mystery - I haven't been able to find any information on it...
Anyhow, a friend of mine described a software system he developed, which I have no doubts about him doing, as I have other code he worked on for an earlier, more benign system.
Basically, it was a GA/AE system, in which he created a "tank" simulation. Each tank in the simulation had sensors and outputs. The sensors could sense such things as the location of the other units in the simulation, as well as turret position of the other units. The outputs controlled the firing of the cannon, and moving the tank.
Each tank was "driven" by a custom bit of code. Each tank was given a bit of semi-random code to execute, and the simulation was ran. After so many rounds of simultation, those tanks that had done the best were replicated and "bred" - exchanging bits of code (ala DNA/genes) - to fight in the next run of simulation.
Note that this sim wasn't run real-time with graphics - he said he ran it "in-memory" to attain the fastest speed, and had a logging playback system to slow it down for human consumption and study.
None of this is new or unique (well, other than the fact that he was playing around with this back in 1992 or so, as a senior in high school), but the results he related to me were suprising:
The tanks, after so many runs, started displaying curious behavior. First, a communications of sorts was "discovered", that involved "turret-waggling" and "bee-dancing" behavior. Soon after that, flock and group strategies for eliminating opponents (essentially, learning to operate as teams) came about. He said late in the runs, the tanks learned to exploit a bug in his VM for the scripts each tank used, a buffer overrun that allowed the tanks to "teleport" behind their enemies to close in for the "kill".
He told me he stopped the sim at that point - uncertain about continuing it.
He since lost the code, but I doubt it would take much to replicate it. Like I said, I have other code he worked on which was more benign, and involved the same sort of system, except this time with "bugs" competing against each other, and an environment (that both grows good "grass", and bad "poison grass"), as well as breeding and dying - a very fascinating simulation in and of itself. I have no reason to doubt that he went the next step.
What I wonder is whether such stuff has been developed for use on a real battlefield - matching the ATV mortars with such software, bred inside the "dismounted soldier" training system the DOD uses for training, etc - could such a system be used for real warfare? Anyone care to comment on effectiveness, problems, ways the enemy could use it against the aggressor?
Finally - I tend to wonder if such a system could be applied to a Battlebot/Robot War competition...
Reason is the Path to God - Anon