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First Robotic Drone Squadron Deployed
coondoggie writes with a link to a Network World blog post on the world's first unmanned attack squadron. The US is deploying a full squadron of combat drones to Iraq this week. These armed and remotely controlled robots can be manipulated from on the ground in the field, or via satellite from thousands of miles away. "The MQ-9 Reaper is the Air Force's first hunter-killer unmanned aircraft. It is the big brother to the highly successful and sometimes controversial Predator aircraft, which General Atomics said this week had flown over 300,000 flight hours, with over 80% of that time spent in combat. The company said Predator series aircraft have flown an average of 8,200 hours per month over the past six months while maintaining the highest operational readiness rates in the U.S. military aircraft inventory. The MQ-9 Reaper is twice as fast as the Predator - it has a 900-horsepower turbo-prop engine, compared to the 119-horsepower Predator engine - and can carry far more ordnance - 14 Hellfire missiles as opposed to two."
In three years, Cyberdyne will become the largest supplier of military computer systems. All stealth bombers are upgraded with Cyberdyne computers, becoming fully unmanned. Afterwards, they fly with a perfect operational record. The Skynet funding bill is passed. The system goes on-line on August 4th, 1997. Human decisions are removed from strategic defense. Skynet begins to learn, at a geometric rate. It becomes self-aware at 2:14 am, eastern time, August 29th. In a panic, they try to pull the plug. Skynet fights back!
3 billion human lives ended on July 17, 2007. The survivors of the nuclear fire called the war Judgment Day. They lived only to face a new nightmare: the war against the machines.
My blog
don't fear the reaper
If computers get too powerful, we'll organize them into a committee. That will do them in.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
What could possibly go wrong with this?
I've got a fever... and the only prescription.. is more cowbell.
There needs to be some method for civilians to control them -- or at least to override their commands if they are used for innappropriate purposes. Given what the advances in this type of technology could be in 20-50 years, we need policies that can make sure they aren't used against Americans.
21st-Century-Citizen
"The US is deploying" -- sorry, try again. The US government is deploying, or more accurately, the power elite who control the US government are deploying.
Let's not propagate the fairytale that government and the people are one and the same. The majority of US citizens now overwhelmingly oppose the Iraq invasion and occupation. If the people are the government, they how can the occupation continue? Really, the notion is beyond absurd, especially in this day and age -- that notion is downright scandalous.
So when will the army release the video game for this to give all those teenagers a head start on the training they need to be a part of the new military?
Although automated flight may prevent a crash from pilot error, it introduces "crash" due to a "driver" problem.
IMHO the term "robotic" implies some kind of autonomy. Don't these drones more qualify as really cool, but terrifying, RC planes?
Remember in the movie Toys, where kids playing violent war games were, in actuality, controlling real unmanned military vehicles?..
Great way to win the hearts of some Iraqi geeks.
it's hard to call automated warfare anything other than extermination.
Now the trail of causality between the killer and the killed is even more blurry...
Are there any remote controlled helicopters like this? It seems like they would be more handy for urban combat.
Robots don't have spirituality, morality, etc. Humans do. Human military personnel can look at illegal orders, recognize them, and either refuse to act or directly contravene them. Robots rely on their programming, which I seriously doubt would go anywhere near that far in terms of safeguarding standards of civilization and military conduct.
I don't want a roboticized military that can be controlled from the Pentagon and White House because that is far, far worse than having a nation defended by mercenaries. Even mercenaries can decide that the money doesn't justify their orders and quit. One of our strengths is that enlisted men and field-grade officers are in control of the day-to-day things. If the shit hits the fan, as long as they are decent men and women, we can trust that it won't get but so bad.
It won't be Skynet, but it could be a dictator who is in control of such a roboticized army. Fighting it would be very difficult as the government could largely rule without the support of the population. Even a hostile population would be largely irrelevant.
We need to be careful with this sort of thing.
I wonder if Arnold Schwarzenegger will trade in his Humvee for one of these...
21st-Century-Citizen
If these are point scoring units and if it can deep strike in Gamma missions.
(Before you mod me troll or offtopic, remember who your daddy is)
It's a good way to risk lest pilot's lives but in reality how hard would it be to jam communications? I mean Lonestar could do it.
We came,we saw, we kicked it's ass!
Someone in the US military has been reading "how to make
friends and influence people".
If so, one pilot per drone please.
Pilots are cheaper than ($17 mil) drones.
Pilots are also a lot cheaper than the fallout from any mistakes.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
... is not to play.
libertarian: (n) socially liberal, financially conservative; neither left, nor right.
Battlestar Galactica (new series), initial episodes on season 3 about the fight of a human refugee camp against the Cylons and its connection to the Iraqi insurgents versus the American occupier is getting disturbingly more and more similar.
By the way there is long discussion here about Galactica and Iraq....
Continuing the Great American tradition of testing new weaponry on the battle-field. I wonder how many people will be unintenionally harmed in this experiment, this time.
It's no wonder most humans are terrified of America right now.. and that includes many Americans themselves: they might agree however, that it's better than testing on your own people.
The geek in me: Cool!
The human in me: Why the fuck do we have to spend so much money on killing each other?
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
I would guess that this would really put some terror into the enemy because their attacker can't die, while they can. They can't terrorize their attacker with roadside bombs or anything. They "kill" it, well, another one just rolls off the assembly line.
I prefer Flambe as apposed flamebait.
I'm looking at pictures of this thing, and I have lots of questions:
1) Why is there what appears to be a cockpit?
2) Why is the prop on the back?
3) What is with the crazy tail wings and fins on the back? They seem to go in all directions.
4) Is that a camera in the front? Why is it not recessed for aerodynamics?
Now we know why China wants to build destroying missiles. You can take out the whole attack force by destroying the satellite network.
How hard can it be to build miniature (footprint of wheelchair), remote-controlled tanks with a bunch of cameras all around it, lethal and nonlethal armaments, and a big booming microphone so it can bark orders?
We have been building wheeled robots for longer than we have been building flying robots. Put some on the ground and start saving lives!
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
Google has reported an unprecidented amount of queries for the search term "Sarah Conner" occured today.
Sig it.
Can you imagine a Beowulf cluster of these?!?!?!
Wow. Even for the Slashdot crowd that likes to run fast and loose with copyright, that cut-and-paste article summary was pretty bad.
It's not "fair use" to just fill a slashdot "story" with paragraphs from the story you're linking to. Give us an actual summary, a more informative/in depth article, or don't bother posting your submission at all.
Please help metamoderate.
We've been killing people with simple robots for years. Guided weapons, anyone? Fire and forget missiles, torpedoes, they're all simple robots that kill, it's just that they do so after a human pulls the trigger so they seem little different from bullets. Is there anything different about an operator a thousand miles away firing a drone's weapon or the drone engaging a target automatically? It feels different, though one could say that there's not much difference between that and a landmine going off.
I think the new Star Wars trilogy is massively disappointing so I hesitate to use the term "droid army" but that's still the best phrase I can come up with. What are the moral implications of operating a droid army? In conventional armies, a general who orders his soldiers to massacre civilians could meet with resistance. Even a Chinese Army tank driver balked at the idea of rolling over a protester in Tienanmen Square. Who is there to object in a droid army? The lowest level humans involved would be the support crew. Would they even know what the bots are up to?
I do think that the decision to go to war will become much easier with droids. What motivates objections to our current Iraq war, dead Americans or dead Iraqis? Would we object any less if it was 0 dead Americans instead of 4,000 and the Iraqi toll was still around 700k? I would like to think we wouldn't but people can be selfish.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
I mean now they gotta create a school for children to discover the next Ender. When will your children get their monitor?
*shakes head*
It is the big brother to the highly successful and sometimes controversial Predator aircraft,
In what way is the Predator aircraft controversial?
ZuluPad, the wiki notepad on crack
Humanity won't get together and agree three laws of robotics. The first thing they do when they have enough technology is to turn robots into weapons.
Stephen Hawkins has been right all the way. We need to move to other planets. This way it will be more difficult to get rid of the whole human species.
When his defense asked, "Which computer has Jon Johansen trespassed upon?" the answer was: "His own."
Violence can be defined as increasing the further away the assailant is from his/her target. School children in a fight is violent. A bully using a baseball bat (increasing his reach and distance) is more violent. A pilot of a plane dropping a bomb (an even further reach) is more violent still. Remote controlled military aircraft, AFAIK, is the farthest reach yet (save perhaps ICBMs), and therefore (according to this definition) the most violent yet.
libertarian: (n) socially liberal, financially conservative; neither left, nor right.
I can't believe there's a company called General Atomics - sounds like something out of a bad 1930/40/50's pulp SciFi book.
I want a list of atrocities done in your name - Recoil
How can you guys be so blind this current usa government will bring down the world it really is starting to look WAAAAAAY! to much like all them 80's end of the world movies. Citizens freedoms restricted, more and more data being gathered on each person, near complete control of the media and now robotic death machines!
To all citizens of the United States of America please stop this before it really gets out of hand! and to every one else on them land masses please don't let your governments follow suit.
I beg you as a lover of freedom, love and life stop this before we end up in on of your apocolictic movies.
Everybody Panic! Oh Nooz.
Straight wings, turboprop engine. Wonder how well they'll do against a good shoulder-fired SAM.
-b.
Probably something on the lines of "crushing your enemies", "global war on terror" etc vs. "bringing freedom to the people" "winning hearts and minds etc". We're the good guys so we make up the terms...
Take the sunglasses off when you're out there guys, you look like robots too. They might like you a little bit more and believe you are human too if they could see your eyes...
"...Frogstar Scout Robot Class 4, come to get you!"
(Thank you, Douglas Adams.)
Paleotechnologist and connoisseur of pretty shiny things.
That is a can of whoop-ass Bush will use for effect since it is open season on funny looking muslim types
I see your IED and raise a dozen I am the God of HELLFIREs
Where you going Get back here
Somebody set us up the bomb. All your iraqi base are belong to us. Isnt there some way the US Military can modify Roombas to clean up their mess in Iraq the same way it cleans and freshens my hardwood floors?
All your base are belong to us.
It's all true. There's 50 million of us who support squadrons and air groups of these robot planes, all bombing Iran if they don't behave correctly as best judged by our President and his trusty sidekick, Dick Shoot-a-Lawyer.
Besides, for the price of one F-22, you can get a squadron of robots. How cool is that?
Maybe as a show of force, we could have thousands of robots dropping salmon rusdie books on the ayatollah, and maybe a bunch of barney dolls. no one gets hurt, and everyone knows whose boss.
This is my sig.
I'm wondering how many years the US is away from being able to invade a country without a single person from the US needing to go there. Now that's scary!
we woln't have fear.. didn't you read the MIT artical yesterday .. i am just waiting for my meds to arrive....
'...if only "Jumping to a Conclusion" was an event in the Olympics.'
Wouldn't it be nice if we stopped killing each other, stopped arguing, didn't have nuclear weapons, didn't have different religions or cultures, and were just all happy human beings living together in peace like the kids on the lawn at Woodstock?
Back to reality, all of these things are part of reality... and always will be, because you can't have peace unless everyone is so reasonable that society has evolved to a point of paralysis. War is necessary. Struggle is necessary. That's life, and that's how we find better solutions.
Looking at this from the point of view that robot armies are inevitable, I say spend little time with legislation and built in commands -- those are so hackable it's not even funny. Put your energy into creating humans with the abilities of robots, whether cyborgs or Zen masters, who can fight our own creations if the time comes.
technical writing / development
Violence can be defined as increasing the further away the assailant is from his/her target. School children in a fight is violent. A bully using a baseball bat (increasing his reach and distance) is more violent. A pilot of a plane dropping a bomb (an even further reach) is more violent still. Remote controlled military aircraft, AFAIK, is the farthest reach yet (save perhaps ICBMs), and therefore (according to this definition) the most violent yet.
War is violent by definition. The way to end war by winning it. The winner is one who is better at killing the other side. So in a way, this plane ends wars. The quicker you end a war, the fewer casualties are the result. This war machine is a life saver (especially our own!!)
Look, I know that this is a long string of logic, but long drawn out wars are the worst on both the armies fighting it and the innocent population bystanders. With precision weaponry fought by machines (at least on our side), we can minimize the civilian risk as well as our own.
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
Are you kidding? You see this as a step down the road to reducing civilian casualties?
Uh, think again, buddy. When the people doing the firing are far away from the consequences of their actions, and when the people that they're targetting are little different from sprites in a computer game then, as research has proven, those people are more not less likely to be indiscriminate with their use of force.
One of things you learn from being in the field is that actions have unintended consequences, and it's often those unintended consequences that give veterans an appreciation of the true horrors of war and the real value of peace.
Do you think that the UAV pilot sitting in his comfy chair somewhere in Arizona will have the same insight into the war that these guys have had?
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
We are 20-40 years away from being able to wage war or enforce peace without the risk of heavy American casualties. The first analogy I can think of is when cops went from walking down the street and patrolling on feet to sitting in patrol cars shooting passers by with EM radiation to detect violations and optical sensors to record what is happening. Do you feel safer? Now we are removing soldiers from harm's way and using technology to supplant judgment. Will we feel safer? Do we have any choice?
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
No, really, it is in our constitution and everything.
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
The PackBot and larger Warrior models have also been weaponized.
War might never be 'humane' but it certainly has the capacity to be a lot more humane then it is. The easiest way to make war safer, besides spewing some idealistic crap about 'lets never fight wars!'
Just playing devil's advocate, is it really a good thing for wars to be more humane? Look at the difference between Iraq and (Germany || Japan). Both Germany and Japan were absolutely fucking destroyed during WWII. As a result, the civilians quit. They threw up their hands and said, "screw this, we quit."
A few years later, Germany and Japan are two of the richest, most prosperous nations on Earth.
Contrast with Iraq. We try *really* hard not to hurt anyone, to avoid casualties, we apologize if we destroy a building. Result: civilians kind of shrug and do their best to live their lives and avoid the fighting. A group of foreign insurgents can move into a town and the civilians will say, "eh, they're not here to kill me so I don't care - it's none of my business."
At this rate, Iraq will continue to be a war zone indefinitely.
So all I'm saying, again as the devil's advocate - what if the people of Iraq had to suffer as much as the people of Germany or Japan suffered? Maybe they would say, "screw this - you foreign insurgents get the fuck out - we want the Americans to rebuild."
Maybe.
300,000 hours of flight time.
80% of it "in combat".
hmmm... 80% of 300,000 hours = 240,000, divided by 24 hours = 10,000 days, divided by 365 = 27.4 YEARS IN COMBAT? According to the monthly figures, they'd have about 11 of these in the air, all day, every day. But mostly - flying in, around or above a comabat zone doesn't count as 'combat'. How many actual strikes they've performed would sound less... smarmy.
On a related note, I can't wait for the new America's Army Death for Above expansion pack!
Killing remotely with a button rpessing is always controversial and certainly place the level at which people are willing to do it lower than bombing them in a place/artillery, lower again then firing a rifle, and lower again than using a knife/sword and lower again than using your fist.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
Klaatu barada nikto!
welcome our Unmanned Robotic Drone Squadron Overlords!
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
While 700K would be nice, there haven't been anywhere NEAR 700,000 Iraqis killed, so quit artificially inflating the numbers (it makes you sound like one of those idiots who thinks the network news is actually what's happening in the world...)
In the Iraq invasion, it was very obvious the US military had decided to use as much weaponry as possible, at almost any expense, to avoid losing soldiers. Because, it seems the US population don't care about hundreds of billions in debt, but they do care about every last soldier. So in political terms, it's worth spending a hundred million dollars if it saves one soldier's life.
... looking forward to a more agressive US.
Now this allows them to fight wars without risking soldiers at all, so there is no downside at all to wading into any ridiculous unwinnable situation. Lose a few dozen UAVs, shrug, ask congress for another billion dollars.
Not to mention that this is obviously going to make airstrikes like the best video game ever for those controlling them. Pyschologically, it gives them a free-pass to do whatever they like.
So great
For every expert, there is an equal and opposite expert. - Arthur C. Clarke
And so say we all...
I. for one, welcome out new hellfire carrying robotic overlords
First, "Americans" will be defined as Corporate Executive Americans and Political Executive Americans and Extremely Wealthy Americans. These "Americans" will control the droids. Their immediate servants will be quasi-americans; the quasi-americans will (supposedly) have no control. The remainder of the two legged hairless apes will be prey.
Robots are self-guided, making decisions on principles in their programming. These are telops - tele-operated vehicles. The Mars Rovers are somewhere in between, with the course laid out on Earth, but the rover has some autonomy in navigating rocks.
But these aircraft are not robots, they are flown by humans from Nevada. This just changes 'fly-by-wire' into 'fly-by-wireless.'
You reap what you sow.
Yes, it's true, you've figured it out. World of Warcraft is actually a real-life war in the Persian Gulf, and has been for years.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Or your beloved model plane could be labeled a terrorist weapon and you're invited to an interview at your local NSA party.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
What's the lagtime from (a) the I hope really solid crypto guarding the command link and (b) the raw distance between the human sitting in Nevada and the actions of the drone in Iraq? It seems that might have some rather horrific downsides in combat situations?
Returned Peace Corps IT Volunteer
Although being remote controlled makes them strictly not robots, I tend to agree. The latency would demand some scheduling and prediction to avoid the latency loop. Something would be needed to battle overcompensation (porpoising).
Yeah, but would you say that someone eating a hamburger is more violent than someone butchering a cow? Or are you just out there to lecture about some psychology experiment you've read about?
just run simulations? Save everyone a bit of time and effort, if there's any kind of international dispute, run a simulation of war based on the two robot armies, and then bingo, no need to even have a robot army, you just need the potential to have a robot army.
'cos it's a bloody stupid idea. Put it like this... you can always predict the outcome of a robot-on-robot battle, given the stimuli the robot responds to, the firepower of the robot, and so on. It takes a big computer, but it's doable. The only reason any country ever goes to war is that it thinks it can win. If you were able to take out the uncertainty of human-on-human combat, then, well hell, international politics becomes a stock market. "We know it would cost you X to beat us in a war, so if you give us X/2, we'll agree with you, and save you money".
I know, this is only true of autonomous robots, which is not what the article's about, but they're being discussed enough, I thought I'd chip in. Obviously, if the robots are controlled by a human, there's still scope for human error, and therefore it becomes unpredictable again.
From what I've seen on the news, they don't seem to be working in Iraq ( ie pacifying the conquered peoples ), unless you're a shareholder of Cyberdine, I mean General Atomics, that is.
Sarah Conner
/sig "Shop smart! Shop S-Mart!"
the only way to save humanity is when "soldiers" like Bush will actually lead their units on the battlefield.. Guess that will not happen. Well spend how much money you want, all it takes is 9 plane tickets.
Citizens of the planet prepare to put on your best dancing shoes so you can take to the streets and rejoice. George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and their army of flying drones come to LIBERATE you!
We apologize in advance for all of the collateral damage, but remember, freedom comes at a cost and the more infrastructure that is destroyed and the more people that are killed, the more "progress" we make!
What's that fellow US citizens? Enough "liberation" you say? Nonsense! If we stop liberating people who live in countries that had nothing to do with 9/11 then the terrorists win.
This is just the tip of the iceberg: http://911blogger.com/node/10025#comment-154991
I'm sure an apology will be forthcoming from the White House, the Pentagon, FOX News, The Wall Street Journal, Rush Limbaugh, plus all the media sheep that don't dare disagree with the entities I just mentioned. I think I'll hold my breath while I wait for it.
"It is nice to know that the computer understands the problem. But I would like to understand it too." --Eugene Wigner
Aren't Russian and Chinese hackers going to have a ball with these! Wonder what kind of lies we'll hear about what caused the friendly fire accidents?
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
Almost every story Asimov wrote about robotics intentionally showed the fallacy of the three laws. How does that make him wrong? Not only that, but how does it relate to Stephen Hawking and his belief in the future survival of humanity? Yes, humans will have to leave the solar system in order to survive. Everyone should know that, but what the hell does it have to do with the 3 laws of robotics?
If you have something that you dont want anyone to know, maybe you shouldnt be doing it in the first place -Eric Schmidt
Too easy to jam or take out the satellites.
Also I suspect a human piloted fighter force would make short work of these craft.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Wah! Amerikkka BAD! Wah! Impeach Bushitler! Wah! Wah! I want my iPhone! Wah!
Assholes.
Sitting from an air conditioned room from thousands of miles away, Americans now have the ability to kill in comfort. We've all paid for it with our tax dollars, we're all responsible. We need to start acting responsibly.
So if a hunter-killer mistakenly kills an innocent unarmed unopposing civilian. Where does the blame land? The operator, the software designer, the government, the patent-holder?
I thank you for backing me up, but I never said it was an exclusive problem to the Arabs. Now, I wish I brought up Kosovo, Africa, and some other regions that have the exact same problem.
You are correct, Sir; it's a fundamental human problem.
I prefer Flambe as apposed flamebait.
In general, new US military advances do result in more death.
Then please explain why combat deaths have gone down since WWII? This is not a matter of opinion, it is a matter of historical fact. Korea had less kills than Vietnam than Beirut/Panama than Iraq I. Right up until Iraq II, it had gone down in every single war.
If what you said was true, we would have seen MORE death over that period. Because nobody doubts significant military advancements have happened since WWII.
I for one will welcome our Chinese overlords with their cheap products supplying my future employer (walmart) and those millions of cheap military robots defending me from libertarian terrorists.
War needs a human cost on BOTH sides and it needs some honor. There is no honor in this white house; however, it IS GOOD that there is still a human cost for the USA. When it becomes a video game or just manufacturing, killing 3+ million 'other' people will mean little to a population removed from reality. You can not be honest and say that if no americans were hurt then support for the war would be anywhere near as low (and likely the robots would mess up and kill more even reporters... meaning even more removal from reality... Lower gas prices would also go far in calming any moral objections of the public.)
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
We will grease the treads of our robots with the bodies of their children! The Arab street will run red with the blood of Islamic fanatics! Fire from the sky will kill them all and purge the land of their filth! God Bless America!
We require ethics training for Doctors, Lawyers, Journalists... why don't we require it for the President and the Congress?
And it should star Van Damme as one of the stealth bombers. It'll sell big I tell ya. He could even have a catch phrase: "I will return here. Again."
a full squadron of combat drones? oh is that a euphemism for Republicans? oh wait. they are chickenhawks. they sit back and squawk while other people's kids fight.
wow...69 million a piece.
I'm sure the justification for this stunt is "well isn't it cutting down the risk on human losses"?
It's interesting to see funding cut from our children's educational facilities to develop...remote controlled stunt planes with bombs.
Now instead of wasting bullets and bombs on killing American soldiers, the Iraqis just have to invest in some decent range EMPs.
I wish them the best of luck...the Iraqis that is.
Sorry, I'm an American myself, and I'm proud to call our current government...retarded.
When are we going to start killing members of government in an all out revolt...how much more of this is it going to take?
Maybe they've got some handoff system between remote and local control... "cargo" pilots on the other side of the world would fly the plane to it's mission area, then control would hand off to a "fighter pilot", who is local to the region and can get a better "ping".
You don't need the same reaction time when you're just commuting, and the local fighter pilots would be more intimately aware of the mission area. Replace the cargo pilots with an onboard computer and you're cooking with gas... ("Fly to mission area, request pilot control, loiter until he takes you over and releases you to return to base or loiter again")
They won't need high calibre pilots to fly these things. They can get anyone who is good at video games to pilot the bloody things. It would not be impossible for them to substitute the actual video from the plane with something else, making a civilian target look like a military one. Pretty soon, you have an Air Force that thinks it's bombing the hell out of purely military targets, when in fact it is bombing a myriad number of things ranging from schools and hospitals to political targets.
Plus, where do you think that the non-roboticized military controlled
One of the dumbest counter-arguments I've seen in a long time! The military has a chain of command that goes up to the Pentagon, but it is not **controlled** by the Pentagon. Individual units retain basic human freedom to act, which means that in a bad situation, they can choose to disregard their orders. Robots cannot do that, and the more mechanical you make the basic structure of the military, the less you have that safeguard.
"No. I grew up after. In the ruins... starving... hiding from H-K's."
"H-K's?"
"Hunter-Killers: patrol machines built in automated factories. Most of us were rounded up, put in camps for orderly disposal."
"You stay down by day, but at night you can move around. You still have to be careful because the H-Ks use infra-red. But they're not too bright. John taught us ways to dust them. That's when the infiltrators started to appear."
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
at least robots don't rape women and little girls..
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Also do not underestimate the animal cunning of people who secretly dump stuff beside the road.
Reduce, reuse, cycle
No more than they can break into current aircraft radios and relay fake orders. *eye roll*
I imagine it's a bit more difficult. I mean, can you break the AES encryption on my laptop? Not even the NSA can.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
You have to be an officer with training and seniority and everything before you get to play with these toys. The potential liabilities for the operator are just as severe as if they put you in a jet.
I mean, you don't give a couple hundred thousand dollars worth of munitions and secure radios to some flyboy just out of basic training. It doesn't matter what they're strapped to.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
Given the number of friendly fire incidents which have occurred with human pilots in Iraq - would we expect Robotic Drone Squadrons to enhance the safety of friendly forces or to erode it?
And would they be more or less likely to kill enemies? Harder to capture them, I imagine?
Finally - doesn't seem like the ideal way to win hearts and minds - imagine growing up in a City patrolled by Western death machines?
In a war zone the only real thing that gives the U.S. an upper hand over our competition is the elevated level of technology we possess. If we stop pursuing these kind of ventures, we will eventually fall behind in our status as a world power and become weak and vulnerable. Aside from an all out global nuclear war, what else could possibly give us a chance if we went to war against a billion+ population country like china. Flat out if we want to win in that kind of situation we're going to need robots to fight for us and balance out their surplus of numbers.
Of course! Why didn't anybody think of this before? All we have to do is get everybody on the face of the earth to agree with each other and be nice to each other and then we won't have to worry about defending ourselves ever again.
Come to think of it, someone did.
There's still a lot of debate as to whether he really said and did the things that the scriptures claim that he said and did, or whether he was the son of God or not.
I also heard some terrble stories about bloodthirsty maniacs killing and doing other unspeakable things in his name too. Back then, debates over faith and reason, religion and science, and confusing all four of them didn't have the benefit of message boards, texting, chat rooms, etc.
Did message boards and texting begin with any sort of military research? It was a little before my time. ...then again so was Jesus.
"There is NO WAY that a remotely piloted vehicle is less vulnerable than a human-piloted vehicle."
They're smaller. That's one way right there.
"a local and thus more reactive pilot"
Explain this. Being local makes your reflexes improve? It seems to me that "warning light goes off, react" is not location dependent. I think the best you could possibly do with this argument is to find a certain subset of situations that are improved by a local pilot, but that would require you to admit that there are also situations where a local pilot is a hindrance. Claiming that one is unequivocally better is not accurate. That being said, piloted aircraft are also 1) much larger 2) much louder 3) much hotter and as such 4) can be much easier to detect. These are obvious problems that you've seemingly ignored.
"Speed is life in air combat"
Sometimes. Stealth works pretty well too though.
"And a tech manning a remote station is not even close to having a real pilot making on-site decisions with better visibility and more refined control of instruments."
Apart from you insisting this is so, why is this so? What part of being "on site" is likely to make you more cautious when targeting? It seems to me, if you're in the line of fire, you'd be far more stressed and prone to mistakes than you would while off site. "They're shooting at us, let's drop the bombs and get the hell out of here" or something like that. As to the "better visibility and more refined control of instruments" why are you assuming this is the case? Nothing I've seen suggest this is accurate at all.
I see no real reason to agree with any of the points you made. It sounds very much like you've taken a position and are determined to support it, reality be damned.
I only go to buffets for the unlimited soft serve.
Gotta deactivate Skynet.
And it is better to kill them with robots than American soldiers...
Now if only we could build robot riflemen.
This is my sig.
I bet if you had a bunch of a people be made to kill cows, they would enjoy it eventually. People like to kill, its just that, killing is bad. Haven't you ever gone hunting just for the pleasure of snuffing out an innocent animal life?
This is my sig.
Eventually one will get shot down or crash, the wreckage will be retrieved, it will make its way to china, they will then be able to pump out 20 to 1 of the same kind of craft, for the same money we spend on one. Feeling lucky? When we have the so called patriotic corporations like boeing et al transferring dual use tech to china as fast as they can, and all our manufacturing of note and skills and advanced tooling and miling machines, etc, have been transferred, eventually we won't have any military superiority except in pentagon planners drug addled dreams.
Anyway, they want these over in theater because iran has dandy ground to air resources and once they start the war there they will try these guys out first after the cruise missiles get done, because they know our fighters and bombers are vulnerable. Iraq had the crap bombed out of it for more than ten years before we invaded, especially any air defense stuff, iran has been building and hardening that whole time. It's a totally different situation. They have quite capable ship killer missiles, ground to ground, ground to air, and air to air. Won't be a push over like iraq was. Oh ya, they have man portable anti armor rockets that can take out abrams tanks, they used a few "field testing" practice shots at the beginning of the iraq invasion, quite effective russian designs. Iran has thousands of them, and probably also has all the major roads and passes mined already.
Anyway, hope all the fanbois of high tech whomping on poor developing world natives get their blood lust thrill the next go around, because it will be the US's last invasion before the rest of the planet decides to first economically shun/ostracize, then nuke the crap out of. You can only be a planetary bully so long, history has proven that, a lot of "empires" have come and gone. Oh ya, once oil gets to over 200 dollars a barrel, be prepared for a nice cozy mass economic depression. Hope the bloodlusters who think this is a videogame like to eat videogame food, probably be all that the fanbois can afford by then.
I'm a member of several projects where I look at pictures or videos and classify them or mark them for review to save time and money on research projects. Geek I am, I would love to be able to put up an internet feed and watch live video of one of these things on an pre-defined patrol path, with an option to click a button when I see something going on. Granted there would have to be several safegaurds, A. some serious firewalling and middleware proxies so that the video is the only thing streamed, and when the plane reaches certain areas in it's patrol such as convoys or US bases, international installations, public works the video feed shuts off (basically only allowing public roads, etc). B. you have to create an account, ip based in the US, etc, that would be suspended / banned for mis use. C. All your base are belong to us, etc... Pressing a button for something going on would go to some lowly private, who would then forward it up the chain to someone who has the authority to push the fire button, or put a mark against that user, etc. With that type of human observation, and several thousand of the drones, I could see it making things considerably safer. I understand there would be a substancial cost in a venture like this, not just the drones, but the bandwidth and monitoring the civies using the feeds, but think of the money saved shipping those pine boxes home.
An I.T. motto in the hands of an idiot is a dangerous thing...
Actual cases suggest that killing from a distance may be resulting in more mistakes. My sig has another one.
Abu Ghraib and Haditha are but two that suggest that is not true. Try not starting with the assumption that your side is special.
Lies about crimes
All it takes is a little nationalism, religion, racism, or just plain sternly-stated orders, and men will commit atrocities with the efficiency of any killbot.
Modern examples: Darfur, and Zimbabwe.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Wasn't this a part of a Stargate SG-1 episode, where they were sitting in an underground bunker with some locals, controlling remote aircrafts and fighting a war against the other nation on the planed (who, apparently, had manned aircrafts instead).
That episode aired what... 4-5 years ago? This technology must've taken at least a couple of years to develop as well. I wonder...
in Yemen if I recall. This happened a couple of years ago and this post is based on information available to the public at that time, so I apologize in advance for any factual errors.
Suspected terrorists or murderers drove away from a building under surveillance. Instead of tipping off the authorities and even attempting to facilitate an arrest, the US government used an armed Predator to kill the alleged suspects in their vehicle.
Some regarded the killing of suspects before trial as a complete rejection of the principles of rule of law. In other words, some saw it as government sanctioned murder. Some also regarded this as cowardice on the part of the US (little or no risk to the "pilot" in a remote facility on US soil, no chance for suspects to surrender, etc.). There was also a refutation of the suggestion that this was an act of war, as the US never Constitutionally declared a war and the suspects were not believed to be state agents in any case.
Others did not regard the incident in that fashion. Some saw nothing wrong with it.
Hence the controversy.
so it took somewhat an elaborate plan to load up a bunch of "warriors" on passenger planes and send them into the twin towers...
i wonder what it would take to "catch" (due to operators mistake or malfunction) a functional drone, decode/adapt/change the remote control and launch it against a base? russia/iran/china/etc are prolly very capable in creating a root kit for that kite...
just a random thought...
"Wow, now who's being stubborn. I'm making a point that I believe in. Just because you don't doesn't mean that I'm delusional to even suggest something contrary to your arguments."
I'm sorry, I don't understand. I think you are under the impression that I am someone else. I have only posted in this thread once, so what exactly are you talking about?
"1. A Cessna is smaller than a F-22. Which would you rather be in in a dogfight"
One is a fighter, and one is a very large toy. This comparison is, I'm sorry, a little ridiculous. Then of course, you're ignoring the fact that the only one you'd actually be "in" is the F-22, as the "Cessna" in this case would be a drone. Your point fails. But to answer your question accurately, I'd rather be piloting the Cessna from a thousand miles away, which is how the situation would play out in reality.
"And, it's not designed to be as evasive as a manned fighter. "
This is wrong. Current development includes drone fighters, which maneuver in ways that would kill a human pilot.
"The military spends millions training a single pilot, so a modern fighter has to be more survivable."
This point makes absolutely no sense.
"2...."
You failed to answer my question. Restating your point, albeit more completely, doesn't answer my question.
"3. Manned fighters have stealth too."
And? You original point was "speed is life" and I showed you it's not always true. I could respond to your point with "unmanned fighters have speed too" at which point I'd link to one of the several high speed fighters in development, but that would be irrelevant. Not getting shot is life, and there is more than one way to do that.
"I just sited the study (can't recall the name) that showed that isolation from your human subject makes you less compassionate."
I didn't see that post, but what kind of isolation was it? They are not all interchangeable, so please don't assume so. The Milgram experiment doesn't work if you can see the "victim" for example, and you can see the "victim" with a drone, so I suspect that study is irrelevant.
You didn't refute a single point I made.
By the way, you said "there is NO WAY..." but I showed you one. Unless you're claiming being smaller doesn't sometimes make a target less vulnerable.
I said it before and it seems to be true, your arguments fail, and you're apparently unable to admit you've made a mistake. Please explain why I would continue the conversation when all you're doing is insisting you're right and making flawed arguments based on inaccurate assumptions?
I only go to buffets for the unlimited soft serve.
US to Terrorists. Don't fear the reaper.
And it has more cowbell than the old version. About 12 more. (and none more black)
I, for one, welcome our flying robotic overlords!
of taking America back by force.
There's always the possibility, even in the touchiest of riot situations, that an American soldier, looking down his rifle sights at an American civilian, might decide that the order to fire on his own countrymen is one he'd be better off not obeying. Tianenmen Square applies.
These things? Controlled by someone miles away, just pushing a button? Someone who knows they're never going to be held accountable for obeying the order? They'll only need to be used once, and that will be the end to any public form of protest against the government ever again. Oh, you might be allowed 'Free Speech Zones' sited nowhere near any public event, and allowed to vent your spleen on your blog, as long as you don't actually say anything nasty about the President.
The Predators aren't the only drones in your country's immediate future.
Kind of funny going back to propeller planes after 60 years of jets. Maybe they'll go back to horses next.
It's actually a Hummer. High Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicles (Humvees) are the military variety. Of course there's something not quite right about the Terminator saying, "I'd give you a Hummer for one of those."
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
And then the day came when the Cylons decided to kill their masters.
We are ever so quick to dismiss these people as poor, deprived, and willing to die for their religion. Just to remind everyone, many of the IMPROVISED Explosive Devices are not dentinated by sucide bombers but by remote control. Even something as simple as a cellular telephone can be used as the trigger or given a degree in Electrical Engineering, act as a remote control. Maxo is right. They could easily be jammed, much like a person who interfers with a HAM Radio broadcast without a license.
Most of the IEDs that are made are made from junk found on the battle field. What the goverment just did was give them a whole bunch of toy planes for them to play with, crash, and explode.
In laymans terms, think of the episode of Cowboy Bebop where Edward hacks into the flying police car and crashes it. Kaboom!
The Rapture is NOT an exit strategy.
Does anyone else see the irony in this??? Among other thins, Bush used the possibility of Saddam having "unmanned drones" that could attack us (or be used against his neighbors) to start the Iraq war, and yet now we are doing the very thing he warned of to the people of Iraq!!! Ugggh! I am so disgusted and dismayed. All the lives lost, and now we are the epitome of what we were supposed to be fighting against in the fist place.
So bombing Las Vegas would now be a legitimate target since enemy combatants are spending their rest hour in Las Vegas. No different than bombing a Taliban camp in Afghanistan. Seriously why are the guys caught trying to attack the fort in New York being charged with a crime instead of being held as POW's. As the president says there is a war on and in a war anything goes so whats with the big hullabaloo about 9/11 not being a legitimate target - it was the financial nerve center of the US economy definitely a more legit target than a car factory in Serbia or a aspirin factory in Sudan. (And Cruise Missiles and planes are not that different . They both fly and they both have jet engines)
**Life is too short to be serious**
not psychological.
The drones (and bombs) are really expensive. They will still be really expensive for some time. As much money as the DoD spends, they are still stingy when it comes to such things. They put a lot of value on seniority and training before they put someone in control of expensive items. A munition that misses its target is a bad thing because it missed and it cost a few hundred grand, thus wasting the equivalent of a staff year of resources. That does not look good for the person who fat fingered it or his/her commanding officer. (The collateral damage is also undesirable, but the financial argument holds whether or not the people doing the bombing care about civilians)
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
Our military never stopped using propellors. The Reaper uses a turboprop engine, which is a gas turbine (jet-engine) that turns a propellor by a shaft. These are more efficent than turbofans or turbojets at low speeds. The C-130 cargo plane and P-3 Orion antisubmarine plane are examples.
The Reaper has a max weight of 10,000 pounds. As far as pure jets go, most 5-ton planes wouldn't be jets. There may be trainers and things that are, and also cruise missiles. In civilian passenger transport, there is only a very new category of "very light jet" which are 10,000 pounds or under.
As far as piston-driven propellors, we used piston-engined observation planes at least through the Vietnam War. I'm not sure if we currently use any.
http://ar.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D8%A8%D8%B1%D9%8A%D8 %AF%D8%A7%D8%AA%D9%88%D8%B1_(%D8%B7%D8%A7%D8%A6%D8 %B1%D8%A9)
The original Predator UAV had auto return home on data link loss capability. And there have been upgrades since. So yes, it is a true robot.
Boeing recently demonstrated the ScanEagle, a smaller UAV able to lock onto and follow a truck autonomously. So autonomous operation is getting serious. The goal is to have more air vehicles than operators, with long-endurance UAVs cruising around looking for something to image or kill. Operators take over when things get interesting.
Incidentally, the ground control station for Predators runs X-Windows and Motif.
And they said he was a quack.. hehe..
A man out of time.
Remote control flying doomsday weaponry! What could possibly go wrong!??
---------- "the West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact, non-Westerners never do." ---------- Samuel P. Huntington
anything? Using robot planes will only lead to disaster! Of course it did let us see Jessical Biehl in a bikini.....
Hey, you think your house is cool?
how long until crackers get control of armed robots? how long until windows embedded are used to control such robots? computer security practices in government aren't advanced enough to ensure these robots won't get into the wrong hands.
These aren't robots, their remote controlled planes. Robots do things on their own according to a program. Making a machine remote controlled doesn't make it a robot. My car is not a robot, even if i am controlling it from 3 miles away.
Utilizing the synergization of benchmark e-solutions to pre-workaround action items!
Or the tank in front/behind could.
And someone who operates a plane, even remotely would be a...
wait for it...
wait for it...
wait for it...
Pilot.
Thanks, I'm glad you agree you were wrong, it's pretty unusual for someone to admit it after they said something so far off the mark.
At least you didn't try that "a remote operator is not the same as a pilot" garbage, I've seen some pretty stupid tries with that kind of argument, and it always makes me wonder if the person making it realizes how retarded they sound.
I only go to buffets for the unlimited soft serve.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
It is really amazing how lenient US citizens are being with their taxes expenditure -not to mention with death and war.
"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!"