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."

Comments

Great Ideas don't work in the military

[EmbeddedJanitor]

Gatling Gun: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gatling_gun

The purpose of this gun was to save lives. Dr Gatling figured that a gun that would shoot faster would mean that an army would need less soldiers to spray out the same number of buttets and therefore there would be less soldiers on the field getting killed and injured. Therefore the machine gun would save lives.

Of course it did not work out that way.

So now we have a bunch of robots running around. That should mean less soldiers getting killed, right?

Wrong: Bot soldiers will eventually be used to do suicide missions that the meat variety won't do. That means more intense and grubby conflict which means more injury and deaths - not less.

Re:Great Ideas don't work in the military

[mi]

So now we have a bunch of robots running around. That should mean less soldiers getting killed, right?

Yes, very likely. The high-tech of the war is astounding. We lost 50K Americans in the Korean War, for example — plus about half a million Chinese soldiers died and millions of Koreans (civilians and not).

This war? Less then 4K dead Americans. Technology helps a great deal — and not only to the side, that has it.

Wrong: Bot soldiers will eventually be used to do suicide missions that the meat variety won't do. That means more intense and grubby conflict which means more injury and deaths - not less.

The second sentence does not follow from the first. Quite the opposite. For example, instead of calling on Air Force to level a building with a sniper-nest on the roof, using these bots our forces could deal with the sniper without leaving dozens of residents homeless (and some dead).

Call me old-fashioned, but I do rejoice at my side's progress...

Re:Robot? That Ain't a Robot- THIS is a Robot.

[Kjella]

Ok - let us for a moment assume that invading Iraq was a decent idea and that Saddam was a threat that should be eliminated. The Iraqi army falls like a house of cards, all territories occupied, "mission accomplished". You also get full dictatorial power over the US military and an incredibly loyal public opinion that'll support any action. Now what?

There aren't exactly vast troops hiding in the jungle, because there is no jungle. Your enemies are hiding among the general population, striking at your troops but mostly at civilians supporting your side. Would you like to:

a) Withdraw and leave the whole country in anarchy and civil war
b) Create a "no-mans" land out of the cities (Nothing like a little genocide in the morning)
c) Start ignoring colleteral damage and/or retaliate against the civil population
d) Try to flush out the guerilla fighters in DisneyWar

If you go in with an army, fuck them up one side and down the other then leave them you'll only make things worse. That's essentially the tactic used on Germany after WWI, and all it did was create an angry and resentful population which led to nationalism, racism and Hitler.

Re:The Mysterious Dr. Zecca

[C0y0t3]

WHY NOT replace the human element, at least as a target? The first side that effectively does so wins. Hey, a generation didn't spend our youths' playing 1st person shooters for nothing. Americans would PAY (apparently around $14.95/month) to run them (so would many others I'm sure, a coalition of the willing, let the market decide), soldiers could hold the line and watch. It would be like sending in the hordes of Celts to soften em up for the orderly ranks who walk in and clean up the mess.

That is, until either Skynet becomes conscious, or The Singularity occurs and machine intelligence (MI) leaves we petty humans behind, or probably keeps breeding stock around just in case somebody fires off a global EMP weapon. But I digress... lets get out of Iran oh dear I mean Iraq (whichever) first.

After all, Eastasia has always been at war with Europa...

Re:Asimov must be spinning in hgis grave...

[iamhassi]

""This seems like it'd be a great idea in Iraq - breach a door"

and get hit with a chair. Millions of taxpayers dollars lost to breach a door lost to a $5 dollar chair."

Screw you flamebait. How about you go breach a door and have someone shoot back and see if you'd rather have the robot breach the next door.

And if you bothered to read the wikipedia article you'd see these robots are only $230,000, and could drop to 150k if ordered in large quantities. Dirt cheap compared to a couple of dead soldiers.

Also they're 100 lbs so they're not being knocked over easily and I really doubt a chair would seriously damage it... or if it did you'd risk setting the gun off. Would you hit a armed robot with a gun? Honestly you'd probably have better luck surprising a armed soldier with a swift chair to the chest than hitting this robot.