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The Future of Battlefield Robots

Alien54 writes "The Pentagon is drafting the Segway two-wheeled scooter as part of a plan to develop battlefield robots that think on their own and communicate with troops. Dean Kamen, the Segway's inventor, says he had no qualms about enlisting his brainchild into the military."

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  1. I have a slight problem with this... by Lord+Kano · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Ok, we will all concede that losing fewer lives is the goal. However, there is one good part about potential losing lives. It is this, the people of your country (assuming that it is a free country) are not going to tolerate unnecessary loss of life. This keeps most leaders from provoking wars unnecessarily. If the cause is to stop Hitler, people understand that we may take heavy losses, but in the end it is worth is.

    If the cause is removing Milosovic from power, people are going to tolerate much fewer losses before they start to demand that we bring our boys home.

    Removing this from the battlefield of the future does two things, one it will allow future world leaders to bully less technically advanced countries even more than they do now and two it will increase the amount of terrorism directed at civilians. If I can't kill your people on the battlefield because there are no "people" on the battlefield, I'll do what I have to do to take the war to your "people".

    We should proceed with caution.

    LK

    --
    "Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano