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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."
What could possibly go wrong with this?
IMHO the term "robotic" implies some kind of autonomy. Don't these drones more qualify as really cool, but terrifying, RC planes?
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...
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.
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!
Who do you think is sitting in those darkened control rooms flying these things NOW?
I've learned that they're worthless, so I don't read AC comments anymore.
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.
Wrong!!
The actions of the US Government ARE the Actions of the United States. The actions of individual citizens without direct government sanction are not.
If you feel the government is not acting as commanded by the people you are obligated to remove them from office.
But hey. The current war in Iraq was well and truly on and known to be a fraud before the last presidential election. Even so Bush was returned to office. That tells me he has the approval of the American people. Those who disagree are free to do so vocally and repeatedly but don't delude yourself.
These planes are being deployed by the United States of America.
--= Isn't it surprising how badly I spell ?
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
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
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
One assumes that your point is that, being autonomous, the *military* drones could "go wild" and should have some type of *civilian* override. Which would be insightful, except that
a) The drones are not autonomous; they are remotely piloted. A human is always in control (RTFA for that one)
b) The military already IS under civilian control, in the form of the President and the Secretary of Defense. You may not like them, but the are civilians. And the US hasn't had a military coup or direct military rule in a looong time.
c) Civilian control of tactical military decistions (and these are tactical devices) is a miserably bad idea. Ask how well it went when Johnson and McNamara per personally picking each day's bombing targets in Viet Nam.
So, your comment would be insightful, except that every premise in it is completely incorrect.
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
Sure, anything "can be defined" as just about anything. The key issue here, is that violence is not defined that way by anyone except you!
:)
You're technically correct, joto - the best kind of correct
I think the point was that the more physical distance there is between the inflicter and the victim of violence, the more emotional distance there tends to be as well. Obviously there's not a statistical correlation between meters of distance and degree of violence, the point is that the more detached the inflicter is from the scene of violence, the more willing they are to be brutal and abusive. The Milgram experiment is excellent proof of this.
A good example of this is how many, many people are perfectly willing to eat a hamburger without a second thought, but would balk at the prospect of killing a live cow themselves - or at least be uncomfortable doing so. The psychological "distance" from the actual violence makes it much more acceptable to the average person.
http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/meast/10/11/iraq.de
BALTIMORE, Maryland (CNN) -- War has wiped out about 655,000 Iraqis or more than 500 people a day since the U.S.-led invasion, a new study reports.
Violence including gunfire and bombs caused the majority of deaths but thousands of people died from worsening health and environmental conditions directly related to the conflict that began in 2003, U.S. and Iraqi public health researchers said.
"Since March 2003, an additional 2.5 percent of Iraq's population have died above what would have occurred without conflict," according to the survey of Iraqi households, titled "The Human Cost of the War in Iraq." (Watch as the study's startling results are revealed -- 1:55 )
The survey, being published online by British medical journal The Lancet, gives a far higher number of deaths in Iraq than other organizations. (Read the full report -- pdf) Even if we go with Bush's numbers, that's 30k dead. And I'm sorry but he fudged numbers to get us into this war, I don't think it's unreasonable to assume he'll fudge numbers to keep us here. Now someone please mod me down for trolling with facts.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
Quick observation: being successfully invaded by America has historically been the best thing for a country's economy.
Reapers will be deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan. If the enemies there had SAMs, they would be shooting down a lot of Predators already.
Also, most man-portable SAMs are heat-guided. A Reaper has its engine and exhaust vents on top of the ship and flies at 50,000 ft, so it would be resistant to heat-guided SAMs. It doesn't travel fast enough to heat up the leading winig edges. I bet it's stealthier than you might think.
A NYC lawyer blogs. http://www.chuangblog.com/
Perhaps the people of Iraq should have tried to invade Europe, Asia and Africa before deserving such treatment?
It's called a helicopter.
I know what you meant, but since these drones are remotely controller rather than autonomous, I see it more of an additional cost than an asset right now.
Besides, why invest money in damage assessment aircraft when you have the local news media willing to do it for free? The local news station here on the Alabama Gulf Coast has a helicopter with a very nice pan-zoom camera system.
These comments are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of my employer or colleagues...
Uh, no. Not really.
q .ap/index.html?eref=rss_topstories)
want to kill every man that is not a muslim
Not really... Koran 5:32:
"For that cause We decreed for the Children of Israel that whosoever killeth a human being for other than manslaughter or corruption in the earth, it shall be as if he had killed all mankind, and whoso saveth the life of one, it shall be as if he had saved the life of all mankind. Our messengers came unto them of old with clear proofs (of Allah's sovereignty), but afterwards lo! Many of them become prodigals of the earth."
and rape every woman that is not a muslim
Nope, not that either...
"A person who commits this act (sexual intercourse outside of marriage) is not a true believer of their faith" Imam Bukhari and Muslim (See Ibn Al-Atsir, Jami al-Ushul, XII/329 no. 9330).
What they want is the non-believers out of the Arabian Peninsula.
"The only reward for those who make war upon Allah and His messenger and strive after corruption in the land will be that they will be killed or crucified, or have their hands and feet on alternate sides cut off, or will be expelled out of the land. Such will be their degradation in the world, and in the Hereafter theirs will be an awful doom..." Koran 5:33
Are they willing to distort and corrupt their own religion to do it? Sure. Are they evil? You bet -- our lives mean very little to them.
But you've gotta ask yourself two questions...
#1 why are we on their land?
#2 why are we creating more terrorists every day by acting just like them? (http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/law/07/15/marines.ira
Respectfully,
A rational non-Muslim
"You disturb me to the point of insanity. There. I am insane now." - The Sprockets
Here is what happened in 415 B.C. — when distance you are talking about was zero (unless archers were used):
All of the genocides recorded in history — starting, perhaps, from the one mentioned above — were performed with rather low-tech implements, in the immediate proximity to the victims. They were using machetes in Rwanda — to hack the men and to cut the women's breasts off (so that they would not be able to feed their babies)...
In other words, your attempts to redefine, what the term "violence" means is bullshit.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Perhaps you should say what you really think instead of hiding behind "playing devil's advocate"?
Your argument ignores differences between Arabs and Germans/Japanese, who have more of a tribal than national structure.
The Japanese civilians did not quit. Their emperor quit, with the result that the militaristic aggression of the Japanese stopped in unison (with the exception of a few living out in the jungle who did not get the message). And Germany was occupied, and the press seized by the occupiers (which was the effective mode of communication between leadership and rank and file).
To get the Iraqis to quit in unison is a lot harder. The hierarchy is a lot lower level, and thus harder to control. That's part of the reason they don't tend to do well in organized, large scale, European type battles, but do well at irregular type warfare. Easy to invade, hard to control.
There is also the question of the pretext of the war. On what grounds is the US justified in carpet bombing Iraq into submission? WMD or bringing democracy?
If I have seen further it is by stealing the Intellectual Property of giants.
I'm from Mexico, and all the times that my country has been invaded by the USA, things didn't improve. The same for most countries in Central America.
Mexico: 100% conservative's America now!