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First Armed Robots on Patrol in Iraq
An anonymous reader writes "Robots have been roaming Iraq, since shortly after the war began. Now, for the first time — the first time in any war zone — the 'bots are carrying guns. The SWORDS robots, armed with M249 machine guns, "haven't fired their weapons yet," an Army official says. "But that'll be happening soon." The machines have actually been ready for a while, but safety concerns kept them off the battlefield. Now, the robots have kill switches, so "now we can kill the unit if it goes crazy," according to the Army. I feel safer already."
Back during WWII the Russians built radio control "Teletanks" that were controlled by a human operator in another tank. They were equipped with far more firepower than SWORDS, so technically SWORDS is NOT the first armed robot. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teletank
The also used dogs w/ bombs strapped to them and trained them by feeding them under tanks. They set them loose on the battle field and the ones that didn't freak out ran under the tanks where they were promptly blown by radio control.
I don't see us putting a lot of value on the lives of people with Iraqi surnames.
No? Let me relate to you a fun story of mine.
About two and a half years ago, I was a squad leader in Iraq, just outside of Ar Ramadi. We had a pair of outposts on one of the major highways in the Anbar province, one on each side of the highway. Next to our outpost, there was a barracks for Iraqi National Guardsmen. We built it up for them, gave them beds, toilets, showers, water, food, weapons, ammo, training, etc. One night, two of them put on civilian clothes and their body armor, sneak out of their compound and begin digging a hole in the check point to put a bomb inside of.
One of my privates is on tower guard at the time and watches them do it. After radioing back and forth with the operations center, over the course of several minutes, he finally gets the authorization to open fire. He kills one and wounds the other. They flee back into their compound.
Long story short, the second guy went to Abu Ghirab and is probably in Guantanamo. You know what happened after we had unquestionable proof that we couldn't trust the battalion of Iraqi National Guardsmen? Not a damn thing. We continued working with them. We continued feeding them. We continued giving them water and fuel, working the checkpoint with them and going on patrols with them.
Next time you think that US soldiers don't care about the lives of Iraqis keep that in mind. We knew for a fact that at any time, we could get murdered by Iraqis that we had done so much for, but because it's THEIR country, we sucked up the danger and kept working with them.
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If I'm not mistaken, the ratio of wounded soldiers to dead ones in the 17th century was less than one, but now it is actually more than ten to one.
My cousin served two tours in Iraq and he glibly reports of ramming cars off the road and forcing them into concrete barriers and walls, often killing the occupants - simply because the car was on the road when a US convoy happened to be approaching. So, that's much better than shooting at them.
I'm sure it's all in the name of "winning hearts & minds" and brining democracy and freedom, so it's okay. I'm sure the Iraqis don't mind.
Oh yeah, my cousin's pretty fucked up now. I'll be really surprised if he doesn't end up in jail for assaulting or killing someone now that he's back home. He wasn't like that before he went. The irony is that he laughs about how some kid's head was blown apart but nearly cries about a dog they had to leave on a rooftop. It's amazing what we do to others and our own in the name of democracy.