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."

Comments

First Skynet!

[Anonymous Coward]

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!

That can happen in a smaller way

[MikeRT]

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.

Re:That can happen in a smaller way

[Shihar]

Personally, I see a robotic army as just another step down the long road to minimize civilian casualties. Take a squad of marines armed to the teeth with enough firepower to rip the face off of a building and destroy pretty much everything in a one block radius, and now give them the ability to call fire support from the air and artillery from support bases. We are talking about a group of humans with a superhuman capacity for destruction. Now, surround these super (but still very mortal) humans a few snipers in a heavily populated area. They have the choice of dying or returning fire knowing that civilian losses are likely. Keep killing them and make them desperate, and the amount of firepower that they will pour into the surrounding will only increase. The result is that soldiers often pick their own lives over the lives of those around them. This isn't terribly surprising, this is just human nature at work. Few people willingly let themselves die.

Now, drop a squad of robot soldiers into the same situation. Sure, the controllers don't need to see the carnage that they inflict. That said, they also do not have their life threatened. If the order from up high is to "don't kill any civilians", then they can happily let their little robot squad return fire with the weakest and most precise weapons they have at their disposal and if they are over run? Eh, a few thousand dollars into the shitter. It isn't a happy ending, but hell, when you already pay a few thousand for the lid to a real shitter, it isn't the end of the world.

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!' is to take the survival of soldiers out of the equation. With the survival of soldiers out of the equation and human controlled robots that will happily let themselves die rather then tear apart an apartment complex where a single sniper is shooting from, we have the capacity for a war with far fewer civilian causalities.

As for the squadron being discussed in the article, these are UAVs, not 'soldiers'. The difference between flying a UAV and an attack airplane is that the UAV is cheaper and you don't die if it gets shot down. In both cases, you see what you are blowing up on a little TV screen. UAVs don't go down any 'slippery slops' that we have not already wondered down.

Re:That can happen in a smaller way

[Lord Ender]

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.

1) They are remote controlled. Humans still make the decisions.
2) Despite what you want to believe, everything from the Milgram experiment to the Holocaust demonstrates that humans can easily be programmed to kill with complete disregard for "morality," just like robots. 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.

Re:That can happen in a smaller way

[Socguy]

Why *wouldn't* you want pilots to be able to fly warplanes from a safe place? 1. Just wait till Al Qaeda/north Korea/Iran/Russia etc. gets their hands on this.
2. It's psychologically easier to kill people the farther removed from them you get.

It's a fucking remote control plane! ....with enough firepower to wipe a good size town off the map.

It's not "roboticized military that can be controlled from the Pentagon and White House", it's a remote control plane. My bad, I thought we were talking about a US military, pilot-less, remote controlled aircraft that can carry up to 14 Hellfire missiles.

Re:There should be some way for civilian control

[CaffeineAddict2001]

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.

It's also a psychological weapon.

[iknownuttin]

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.

Is that really a good thing??

[oni]

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.

Re:War is Violence ...

[ArcherB]

Populations are not innocent until they prove themselves to be innocent. Allowing your government to be hostile on your behalf does not make you innocent.

That's the exact same justification the 9-11 attackers used.

Re:There should be some way for civilian control

[Kadin2048]

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.