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First Armed Robots on Patrol in Iraq

Posted by CowboyNeal on from the number-johnny-five dept.

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."

6 of 661 comments (clear)

  1. Mass Production - NOW by teknopurge · · Score: 0, Troll

    We can build more robots, and faster, than the taliban can make humans. Now we don't care if our soldiers(robots) are blown up by suicide bombers. Keep the economic squeeze on and we just might win this thing.

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    Website Hosting
  2. Re:Great Ideas don't work in the military by chebucto · · Score: 0, Troll
    - It's a nitpick, but when you talk numbers of people killed, it looks less callous if you take the effort to write the number out, or spell it out. Using shorthand makes it look like you value a human life as much as you do a unit of currency.

    - I think the GP's point is that, in the long term, this won't make war any better/safer. Once both sides have kill-bots (eg in the next war, or the war after that), there will be more robo-suicide missions and more human casualties. Just like with the Gatling gun - once both sides have it, more people are killed faster.

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    The English word fart is one of the oldest words in the English vocabulary.
  3. Good! by ccmay · · Score: 0, Troll
    Excellent news.

    That shit hole is full of Islamist scum who need killing, but are not worth one drop of an American soldier's blood.

    Can we deploy them in Detroit and Finsbury Park?

    --ccm

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    Too much Law; not enough Order.
  4. Re:Great Ideas don't work in the military by shilly · · Score: 0, Troll

    Horseshit. Since you overthrew Saddam, there have been about nearly three-quarters of a million Iraqi deaths in just four years. You didn't kill the majority of them, but the US has certainly killed thousands, if not tens of thousands. 80%+ of the dead are civilians -- and of course, a high proportion of the militants you've killed were not militants at the start but took up arms against their oppressors.

  5. Re:Asimov must be spinning in hgis grave... by cmdr_tofu · · Score: 0, Troll

    Yes we all know that the American military is not responsible for any crimes
    and American military doctrine has not resulted in genocide of indigineous peoples or wars of aggression. What rules of engagement did the armed forces follow when they slew Al-Jazeera *reporters* in Iraq?

  6. Re:Asimov must be spinning in hgis grave... by Afrosheen · · Score: 0, Troll

    Judging by the formatting in your post, I'd say you're the resident expert on dumb console terminals.

    P.S. They make displays with more than 40 columns now. ;)