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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!
If computers get too powerful, we'll organize them into a committee. That will do them in.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
IMHO the term "robotic" implies some kind of autonomy. Don't these drones more qualify as really cool, but terrifying, RC planes?
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.
Yeah, while we're at it, let's put trigger locks on M16s that only allow soldiers to fire when 10,000 people text message "SHOOT2KILL" to 1-800-FREEDOM.
yup. us navy has developed the mq-8 fire scout, and its not being used by bunch of branches of us forces. its designed to provide recon, and battlefield awareness to ground forces. im sure that there are others, but from what i remember, the marines and the army have tiny uavs (backpack size) that they can launch by throwing. they got little cameras on them, and can stream video. apparently the guys on the ground love this stuff.
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.
*shakes head*
Because spending more doesn't always mean killing more. Most of the money the US spends in R&D is into technologies that risk fewer lives, or are less lethal. Tossing a few guys with AKs into a meat-grinder is cheap. Firebombs that leave cities smoking ruins are cheap. Bulletproof vests are expensive. Smart bombs that only destroy limited targets are expensive.
If your theory is different from practice, then your theory is wrong.
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
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.
Klaatu barada nikto!
Flying at 50,000ft (just short of 10 miles!), with a really small engine, it would probably be hard to even hear the aircraft at all, especially in any kind of Urban environment. If you can't hear the aircraft, you don't know it is there. I couldn't find any information on a radar cross section, but I could imagine that it might be hard to target from the ground with a shoulder-mounted SAM.
For those that have seen Transformers, there is a scene when the Special Ops team calls in fire support and a Predator (or what is supposed to be one) comes over the sand dunes. From what I understand that is NOT how a Predator is used. They stand off a ways and take pictures from a high altitude (25,000ft).
What I would be really interested in hearing are anecdotal accounts by soldiers/airmen who have been either supported by or used the Predator systems. Assuming, of course, that they are allowed to talk about it.
Obligatory wikipedia links:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MQ-1_Predator Predator
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MQ-9_Reaper Reaper
There needs to be some method for civilians to control them
I agree -- we should replace our current government with one where the head of state and head of government is a civilian, and put them in charge of all our military branches.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
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