Robot Wars

EyesWideOpen writes "According to this New York Times article (free reg. req.) the Office of Naval Research is coordinating an effort to determine what it will take to build a system that will make it possible for autonomous vehicles (in the air and on the ground), or A. V.'s, to serve as soldiers on the battlefield. The project, called Multimedia Intelligent Network of Unattended Mobile Agents, or Minuteman, would consist of a network in which the highest-flying of the A. V.'s 'will communicate with headquarters, transmitting data and receiving commands. The commands will be passed along to a team of lower-flying A.V.'s that will relay them in turn to single drones serving as liaisons for squadrons of A.V.'s.' The article also mentions that the A. V.'s will have the ability to send high resolution color video as well as still photographs using MPEG-4 compression. Pretty interesting stuff."

Comments

Autonomous

[The Matriculator]

Autonomous sounds scary.

At times when armies to the "Wrong Thing" there are deserters. With robots, or especially autonomy, that sounds rather scary.

I think Terminator's (the movie) vision was a bit too far fetched, but it brings up a good point. It's a *really* cool idea, but we best make sure someone has tight control over it.

It's interesting...

[ArthurKing]

...to think about this. It seems that it could possibly become the exclusive means for fighting wars in the distant future, which more or less flies in the face of the concept of war. As I see it, in the past, the goal of a nation at war with another has been to cause it the most casualties, thus preventing the other nation from defending itself against further attacks. With this method, however, (bearing in mind that we're in the distant future) the robots could be turned out quickly and cheaply. There would be no concept of morale among machines, and no loss of manpower to a nation that suffers great mechanical casualties. Does this alter the idea of war, making it a longer, more drawn out affair?

Additionally, someone commented that the system would not be impervious to a hack attack launched against it (what system is?). Thus, the concept of wars being fought almost exclusively from a command prompt comes into play (I seem to remember this being a hot topic not too long ago... power grids taken down at key times, etc). I suspect that things such as these will have very interesting ramifications in the way that war is fought...

Re:It's interesting...

[neocon]

This may have been true of many powers historically, but then how do you explain the US? We fought in every corner of the globe in the Second World War, kicked ass, and went home, leaving the war holding less territory than we entered it with (by giving the Philippines their independence at the war's end).

finally

[tps12]

It is high time we put a stop to the needless waste of human lives. Our sons have fought victoriously in war after war, and we as a nation have paid our dues in full. It's time to let the robots step in and do our dirty work.

Also, I see no reason to limit the applications of this technology to peacekeeping and stablization of foreign lands. Once it's been tested for several years against hostile populations, we could bring a scaled-down version back home, for use in some of the high crime areas of the US.

People complain about how cops and soldiers are unfair, well we can program fairness right into them. They can't be bribed, don't have prejudices, and they're bullet-proof.

Also, we are starting to develop the technology to grow body parts and organs. Why not incorporate the two? Give a robot cop some real human hands, for superior weapon-handling skills! We could even breed entire brainless bodies, equip them with computer systems, and put them on the street. Economical and effective, and our children don't end up dying for some empty slogan.

On hacking.

[yasth]

I am far less worried about hacking then some people seem to be. What I am worried about is that they will obey commands. I mean what happens when say these are sent against Cuba, but the General/Admiral decides that he really want all of south florida to retire in, and captures it with his drone army. Normally it isn't possible becuase American troops are (suposed to be) loyal to thier country first and not thier officers, but now you are reducing the number of people needed to enable a coup or power grab. Less people is both easier, and more liekly to be sucessful.

Re:On hacking.

[Anonymous Coward]

That is a good point.

The arms community generally feels that drone technology is impossible to keep from proliferation, and there is some evidence of unmanned Cessna-class aircraft with advanced GPS autopilots already having been used at least three or four times as cheap cruise missles in Maylasia and the Phillipines.

The economic fact is that drones are cheap, computers are cheap, GPS recievers are cheap, and fly-by-wire is becoming cheaper all the time. It would not be surprising if such aircraft become the weapon of choice by those wishing to take out dams, refineries, power plants, and other stationary targets. Given the advanced range and low profile of such craft, this method will become very easy in the next decade if not sooner.

The important fact is that the most attractive targets for such attacks are in the industrialized nations. What we were able to do in Afganistan with drones against cave gurrellas was not a whole lot; less even than the Patriot antimissle system actually accomplished in Iraq.

What goes around, comes around.

please, no.

[supernova87a]

While this story isn't really new (we already have flying drones, cameras, etc.), I have to say that I am disturbed by it.

If robots are put to use as our new soldiers, what restraint will there be on those people in the military who are already too eager to send our forces overseas to police/invade/kill others? No one will complain that their sons/daughters are paying with their lives, and it will only make it easier to engage in armed conflicts. This is the nightmare of the future, when everyone sends their robots to fight each other.

There will be those who say, "but anything that saves our boys from dying is good." But this is not a sustainable policy -- it's not ethical for us to want to come up with a force that is only to our benefit, so that we can fight without the consequences of fighting. If everyone took that position, we'd be fighting all the time.

The true sustainable solution would be to work on the real causes of conflict in the world, and spend our billions of dollars to try to educate and help peoples so that we're not the target of violence. I tell you, it's much more efficient than trying to put out the fire once it's started. Why can't people see that long term issue, and work on that, rather than just coming up with new/better ways to kill others in the short term?

Robotic Battlefield?

[sinister minister si]

Let me give some possible scenarios. After reading the scenarios, tell me if it sounds plausible for real-world use.

Scenario One: System has tracked enemy troop movement and friendly troop movement. Enemy troops and friendly troops clash in battle. At this point, on the grid, everyone looks like they are in the same place. There's no way to distinguish friendly from enemy. As the combattants regroup to different geographical points, an airstrike arrives. There has been no time for communications to propogate to the system which group is the friend and the enemy, and it is doubtful that the system has a database of the facial structure of every single friendly in our forces. What happens? Does the system pick randomly one group and tell the autopilot to bomb that group? Does it use probabilities? What is the acceptable margin of error, when that error is a 1000 lb bomb falling on you? Who in our government decides the number of our own solder that we can kill and still think it is ok?

Scenario Two: The system is flying above a battlefield. A situation develops that the programmers of the software running these things never thought of. How does the system react? Please, and I speak mainly to any combat veteran at /., somebody tell me how many variables are in a live battle. What happens when the system is exceeded? Suddenly, the information that is new needed for combat can not be transmitted because it does not exist.

I ask you, would you trust an unmanned computer to shield you from a live machine gun pointed at you? I wouldnt. A manned computer, maybe, but not unmanned.

Re:M.I.N.U.M.A.M. ??

[Helmholtz Coil]

My company does Department of Defense work almost to the exclusion of everything else. Believe me, when you do R&D for the DoD it is *really* important to get an acronym, and fast. Sometimes you get the acronym first and then design the system around that. You won't sell them on anything without one.

They've been thinking about this for years

[crighton]

12 years ago, a close relative of mine was working on the autonomous air vehicle and the autonomous land vehicle at Martin Marietta (before it was Lockheed Martin). The UAV was supposed to be able to recognize and avoid threats, while shooting smart bullets at targets it prioritized. I have a feeling this eventually formed the basics of the Predator drone.

The ALV was basically an unmanned tank. It was a much bigger problem (visual recognition of terrain and route plotting). I do remember they had a couple of prototypes. The tech ended up being of more interest to smart car people.

Re:Skynet, here we come

[sab39]

I'm not opposed to AI myself, but there is one major reason why we (as humans) should potentially distrust it: It's not human, and therefore its loyalty is to its own kind, not to us. Judging from our own behaviour (an "intelligent" species) towards animals, it's clear that no matter how enlightened we may be and sympathetic to the plight of poor little furry things, we don't hesitate to choose our lives over theirs on numerous occasions. It's clear (and, in fact, perfectly ethical from the A.I's point of view) that if the situation ever came up where an A.I. had to choose between the life of an A.I. and the life of a human, that it would choose the A.I.

From the human's point of view, that's "evil". From the A.I's point of view, it's a regrettable necessity. From Darwin's point of view, it's survival of the fittest.

Either way, it's inevitable: if A.I. becomes smarter than us, we'll live or die as a species at it's sole discretion. Most humans don't seem too ready to deal with that reality, but there you go...