Slashdot Mirror
Bionic Bugs To Fight Terrorists
dptalia writes "Israel is looking to create a small robot, no larger than a hornet to follow, film, and kill terrorists. It's just one of a series of weapons the country is considering as an alternative to conventional technologies. Other ideas floating around include gloves that would give their user 'bionic strength', and ultra-miniaturized sensors to detect explosives on suicide bombers." From the article: "The research integrates nanotechnology into Israel's security department and will find creative solutions to problems the army has been unable to address, Deputy Prime Minister Shimon Peres told Yedioth Ahronoth. 'The war in Lebanon proved that we need smaller weaponry. It's illogical to send a plane worth $100 million against a suicidal terrorist. So we are building futuristic weapons,' Peres said."
We've been hearing about this type of thing in science fiction books, then movies, and then in magazines like Popular Science for at least the past 20 years. While I think we probably have the technology to create the hornets, I seriously doubt we have the technology to have them fly very far then deliver some type of lethal force (e.g. poison) to a specific target.
Plus, it's reasonable to assume that $100's of millions would need to be invested in such a "nanohornet" for it to be feasible. Heck, the current world's smallest flying robot is massive compared to a bee, and can only fly a few minutes (yes, this link is from 2003, and the the robot is still considered the smallest working prototype of a flying robot).
In my opinion, the israelis need to invest in far better armor and Unmanned Aerial Vehicles. During their conflict with Hezbollah, the UAVs were a huge success. Also, wouldn't highly armored robotic vehicles be better than a hornet? For example, maybe an armored ball (kind of like those hamster balls) that would essentially be indestructable and roll around doing reconaiscence and shooting things. Just a thought.
Crack - Free with every butt and set of boobs
What kind of bionic strength would gloves give? A bone crushing grip? You lift with your whole arm, not just your hands.
Demented But Determined.
Sounds like the flying robotic syringes in Dune, they silently fly around to find their target, then fly directly into them and inject some sort of fast acting poison (the spice?).
tm
Support TBI Research: http://www.raisinhope.org
It's very unfortunate. It will not be only for terrorists. We will soon have "terrorists" and our political and business leaders simply picked off by a small, unseen remote controlled insect carrying a poison payload.
As a staunch Israeli supporter, this really frustrates me. Yes, it will reduce civilian casualties. Yes, it will be able to destroy missle launchers without having to go in and do any fighting. Yes, it will render the Hamas tactic of hiding amongst their own people useless. But no, there's no way you're going to establish trust with a people when you have killer robotic hornets flying around their homes.
If only they were this creative and imaginative when sitting down to try to solve a conflict peacefully. This goes for both sides, and it applies in most conflicts.
Remember, no matter how intelligent the weapons inventors are, it's still violence; and "Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent".
Israeli governments seem to learn nothing from their history. Their solution to every problem is higher walls and more powerful weapons. This latest proposal, however, is to develop something which has proliferation implications as nasty as nasty as nuclear or chemical weapons. How is Israel going to contain it (even if their intention is not to earn foreign dollars by selling on to "friendly" states?)
Weapons of this type are destroyers of democracy. They mean that politicians have to hide behind ever stronger defences until they are incapable of living as normal people and cannot relate to them. It is an absolute tragedy that the people whose ideas are so much of the bedrock of modern civilisation seem to have an offshoot who are determined to undermine it.
Pining for the fjords
Peace is not going to be possible until those crimes are acknowledged and some reparations made.
But then we need to get the Palestinians to pay reparations to the people whose land they stole hundreds or thousands of years before, and we have to track down those peoples' descendents and make them pay reparations to the descendents of whoever had that land before that, etc. etc.
The Americans will have to pay reparations to the Native Americans (most of whom are only fractionally N.A.) for their land. The British need to determine how much French/Norman and Celtic ancestry they all have, and the people with less Celtic ancestry will need to pay reparations to the people with more Celtic ancestry. And then we need to go back farther in time and determine which Celtic tribes stole land from which other Celtic tribes, and determine which people are descended from which tribes......
Exactly how far back in time do we need to go in paying reparations? We're going to have to invent a machine to peer into time to see who owes who reparations.
"But no, there's no way you're going to establish trust with a people when you have killer robotic hornets flying around their homes"
What trust? With the Hamas vote, already half of the Palestinians indicate that they want the Israelis exterminated.
Where were you when the voynix came?
2) stealing the tank remotely
I have come to a conclusion that one useless man is a shame, two is a law firm, and three or more is a congress -J Adams
What kind of bionic strength would gloves give? A bone crushing grip? You lift with your whole arm, not just your hands.
True. However --
I assume that gloves are much, much cheaper to develop and build than full-arm augmentation. (For full-arm augmentation, you really need full-body reinforcement -- upper body augementation to support the arm, augmented lower body to support the upper body.)
Crushing grip alone can be very useful. Close-quarters action -- break a man's bones. Useful for black-bag specialists -- shatter locks, etc.
-kgj
-kgj
"In my opinion, the israelis need to invest in far better armor and Unmanned Aerial Vehicles."
In my opinion israel needs to invest in finding ways to get along with it's neighbors and stop it's occupation of 3.5 million people.
If I was hated by my neighnors (and lets face it disliked by most of the rest of the world) then I might ask myself why and see I could maybe change one or two things to see if I could get along better.
It would be cheaper too and as an american who funds the majority if not all of the israeli military budget I would appreciate that.
evil is as evil does
whose land they stole hundreds or thousands of years before
I took your skateboard 25 years ago. It is still in my basement.
My late grandfather stole your late gradfather's pogo-stick.
You don't see the difference there?
also, reparation shmeparations, just give me back my skateboard.
When people who are still alive who have been the victims of the acts in question, reparations are due. Perhaps extending to the immediate children and grandchildren of those people (I note that some Holocaust reparations have gone to heirs, not to Holocaust survivors).
Also, so long as political entities remain extant, so do their obligations. The U.S. has treaty obligations of Native nations, even if the people who signed those treaties are long dead. Similarly, as Jack Straw has admitted, Great Britian bears much of the responsbility for the fscked-up sitation in the Middle East, from the Balfour Declaration that started the theft of Arab lands for the benefit of Zionism, to the formation of Iraq; the Britian ought to live up to its obligation to people in those areas.
For land, no; but reparations are due for extensive contemporary treaty violations with Native nations, and for recent acts of cultural genocide. There are men and women out there now who as infants were stolen from their Native American parents and given to "good White Christian" families to be raised. (In a more good ol'-fashioned style of genocidal policy,thousands of Native women were compeled into sterilizion in the 1970s.)
Similarly, while slavery reparations may be a dead issue, reparations are long overdue for every person who suffered under segregation laws.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
Gee, I seem to remember Israel giving land "back" to the palestinians. What did they do? Went on a rampage, used that land to launch an attack and kidnap people. Use the land to fire rockets into Israel. I think you need to examine who is really the main cause of unrest in Israel.
Cliff Claven
K.E.G. Party Chairman
Founding Leader of: Koncerned for Egalitarin Governance
Any non-Jew on that land over there that we want to steal. This includes women and children. After all, the children will grow up into terrorists, and the women will give birth to future terrorists, so might as well get 'em early. Double points for a pregnant woman.
Software patents delenda est.