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Pentagon To Send Robot Soldiers to Iraq
conJunk points out this AP story carried by Salon (also covered by various sources linked from Google News) "about the Pentagon's plan to send robot soldiers to Iraq in March or April. The program, Special Weapons Observation Reconnaissance Detection Systems, uses Foster-Miller TALON robots, and is said to be "years ahead of the larger Future Combat System vehicles currently under development by big defense contractors such as Lockheed Martin and General Dynamics Corp." If it's successful, maybe our men and women in uniform will have to team up with the United Auto Workers to fight the robo-threat to their jobs." Note that (whatever other considerations you might have about such deployment), the Rules of Robotics that some readers have linked to don't really apply to remote-controlled drones, which is what these are.
Note that (whatever other considerations you might have about such deployment), the Rules of Robotics that some readers have linked to don't really apply to remote-controlled drones, which is what these are.
Uh, more like note that the "Rules of Robotics" don't apply in real life.
Seriously, unless these bots have 360 degree vision, some sort of self destruct mode you are going to quickly see these bots, and their guns being put into the other sides hands.
Robots have no loyalty, they obey the RC.
How soon till we have robowarrior-takedowns.
EXAMPLE:
Some dude walks up behind this bot and using Cloak, drill, and Tinfoil! covers up the bots recieving antenna and cameras. Takes the 200K POS apart and sells the gun(whats the going rate on the armament of these things, anyone?)
Brainwash complete!
I think people are the best weapon, and the cheapest.
Check journal for info on Anti-TextBook, an idea by me.
Somehow, I have this feeling that anything which reduces the amount of outrage at a war is a bad thing. Why? Cause wars are bad things. Why? Cause killing people is a bad thing. Why? Well, I don't think anyone knows the answer to that. It's just a given.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Baka, Striking military targets is not terrorist action. To say it is, is to diminish the horror of attacks upon civilians. As a group they are insurgents, some (maybe many) are war criminals (striking from mosques and the like), some are terrorists (willfully striking civilian targets), but insurgents helpfully contains everything. So that is why it is used.
As for the Iraqis not liking this, well it is probably true, even if the police were hunting a band of criminals with robots in my home town, well robots covering me with automatic weapons would not be the most pleasant situation. That doesn't mean I woduld want them to stop, but it would be bloody freaky.
As for the tactics effectiveness, if it is used with restraint (i.e. mostly on those who are hostile, and not just all the time) then it could work really well, they would hate it, and that is a good thing. Sometimes you have to scare people, and riskless killing from heartless robots would probably break morale very quickly.
The risk would of course if they were used as the face that most iraqis saw of the Coalition, hard to trust somebody who is aiming a weapon at you from a block away. Would you try to help someone who always apears as a robot? Would you risk your life to support them?
There are also fairly serious abuse concerns, I mean if a bunch of guys shoot up someone, eyewitnesses might be able to finger them, but an anonymous robot? It is the perfect tool to frag a comander that you don't like. Or to settle scores. Though that is more novel stuff, give it time, and someone will probably try it.
I'd do something interesting, but my server can't handle a slashdotting.
They are robots. They'll require soldiers to operate them. In fact, I hesitate to call them robots. They're more like glorified waldoes. I suppose if the mass of hydraulics that assembles cars can be called a robot, so can these.
But they are not soldiers. There's a lot more to being a soldier than combat.
REM Old programmers don't die. They just GOSUB without RETURN.
If only one side has drones, it sanitizes slaughter entirely too much. It would actually distort the meaning of democracy altogether. I would like to think a "democracy" is a nation where its people would be willing to place their lives in danger to protect their freedoms. Robot armys would seem to me to be a tool for empire building, and of tyranny.
Democratic societies seem to abhor seeing their sons and daughters killed in war.
And all societies with different government structures don't???
It's not like wanting your offsprings to live is a basic human trait, or a basic animal instinct common to most critters on earth or anything, no no no, that's specific to democracies!
You can't take the sky from me...
I realize this may become flamebait, but I just gotta answer.
First, I agree with the relevant sentence: "..lower the bar for ethics and morality.." There is a danger that the ability to kill with impunity (in this instance, no danger to yourself) will lead to gross abuses of power. Sadly enough, it happens all the time.
Terminator sci-fi scenarios aside, however, I believe that the end result will be a more complicated battlefield with just another offensive/defensive capability. It's happened before, and it'll happen again.
Etc, etc. Technology (digital, material, nuclear, whatever) increases our killing power, but eventually everyone (relatively speaking) either gets to an approximate base of technology or it's abandoned altogether.
In the end, however, wars have always come down to a soldier/marine/Zulu standing on a piece of ground and saying, "This is mine." Technology simply expands the size of that piece of ground.
To back it up, I spent 16 years of my life in the Marine Corps and Navy, and we studied it, argued it, and practiced it. A lot of work and sweat goes into war (preventing or fighting one), but the basic principles always remain the same.
Magic 8-ball prediction: Lots of hype, overblown claims of success/failure/abuse, then a real application of the concept over the next 10-20 years.
(BTW, you can probably guess my thoughts on the first part of the above post.)
Never confuse movement with action. --Hemingway
Having recently watched Fahrenheit 911 I find it interesting that the Carlyle Group is mixed up in this. Are George Bush Sr and Jr still part of the Carlyle Group or are they now only friends and former business associates with its investors?
Anyone else realize that the acronym for this operation is SWORDS?
Special Weapons Observation Reconnaissance Detection Systems.
Fun!
You're joking, right?
A robot could commit war crimes, and it could easily be blamed on a 'technical fault', the manufacturers, or anyone other than the military.
You also forget that a robot would follow every order given to it, without question. Think about that for a moment.
Striking military targets is not terrorist action.
Halle-fucking-lujah!!
Someone who finally understands the definition of terrorism!
Terrorism is not bombing convoys or suicide bombs against mess halls. These are military targets. Even the crashing of a plane into the Pentagon was not a terrorist act, since the point was to attack a military target. The victims families might not like it applied to their family members, but those civilians killed on the plane were what is termed "collateral damage" in what was a military attack by definition.
Taking civilian hostages and killing them if your demands aren't met is terrorism, but much(or most, hard to tell from the watered-down news in the USA) of what the insurgents in Iraq do is not terrorism.
I agree, but I think the side that has the drones will not...
certainly, they will only be used to secure democracy, free enslaved peoples around the world, and protect against WMD's.
Really, I live in the US, I was out at happy hour at Mackies in DC when Bush made the announcement that we were going to invade Iraq.... everyone cheered. They bought rounds of shots for eachother. It was disgusting- you don't celebrate the start of a war, you celebrate it's end. We are already as sanitized to the violence, pain, and suffering of others. Just so long as it doesn't happin "on our soil".
Here's to finally giving Bush his exit strategy in November
Even if we use your defination of terrorism, wouldn't the fact that the plane was a civilian plane make crashing it terrorism? Civilian hostages were taken.
"Do I dare disturb the universe?"
So by that logic we should throw out all the body armor, armored vehicles, medics, and anything else that makes our troops safer.
Hell lets throw out all that modern technology and go back to the "good old days" like during the Civil War, where over 50,000 died in one three day battle (thats around twice the total number of deaths in the entire Iraq war). I mean because of the horrors of war back then, people were so peaceful and never engaged in violence to settle a dispute.
Hey, while we are at it, lets stop all those researchers making drugs to help AIDs patients. The more horrible the disease is, the fewer people will engage in reckless sex and drugs.
Mathematics is made of 50 percent formulas, 50 percent proofs, and 50 percent imagination.
Well, lets see... Who is it that actually LIVES in nature, grows the food you eat and mines the resources for your daily living. Who breathes fresh air and toils to make an honest living?
You do know that food production and mining in the US are inherently and inescapably unprofitable when in direct competition with other regions in the world and survive only by the subsidies given to you by those "city slickers", don't you? A little gratitude to them for preserving your way of life would be in order I think.
But if that is the definition of democracy, then Communist China, and even Iraq are democracys because the population consents to the rule. (Before y'all fling yourselves at you keyboards, I don't believe they are democracies. I am merely questioning what I believe is a flawed definition.)
In Canada, the definition of a democracy is responsible government. They who govern us must answer to us. And it isn't just the election every few years that holds them in check. We also have the fact that the Prime Minister has to answer to his caucus and his cabinet. They can depose him by several political means. He has to answer to the House of Commons every day that it sits and then some.
And who in the countries cited above in the first paragraph could say "Nay" to the leader. That's what made them non-democratic.