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Carnegie Mellon Gets $14.4M to Build Robo-Tank
coondoggie passed us a NetworkWorld article, this one discussing new developments in the state of robotic warfare. Carnegie Melon is now hard at work on a tank set to join its brother, the already much-discussed Unmanned Areal Vehicle, on the modern battlefield "Ultimately unmanned ground vehicles would be outfitted with anti-tank or anti-aircraft missiles and anti-personnel weapons to make them lethal. Part of the new award budget is also slated to help the university prove that autonomous ground vehicles are feasible in future combat situations."
I'm asking a serious question. I've never understood what is and what isn't pork.
Might I wager "aerial?"
Maybe these damn typos are intentional by submitters. It can't be that hard at all, seeing how lax the editors are.
"Move or I'll Shoot!"
Oh, never mind -- nobody saw Heartbeeps anyway...
Pacifist paratroopers yell, "Ghandi!" when they jump.
This won't work for a variety of reasons. Mainly, though, it won't work because they picked one organization and handed them $14 million dollars. They should learn from NASA or other DARPA challenges and just open it up and say "create an autonomous tank and the winner gets $14 million dollars." That's a much better investment of the money, and it doesn't take a genius to figure this out. I predict this project goes the way of the ill-fated M247 Sargeant York.
http://www.mutantrobots.com/html/diesector.html
;-)
And when it comes bearing down on a pickup truck full of bad guys, it should have a camera in the jaws to capture that "kodak moment".
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
Unless it has a lot better friend or foe capability than we have now, I wouldn't want this thing near any friendly soldiers. Not to mention it probably would be easy pickings for a RPG.
Areal as in "related to Ares the Greek God of Savage War"?
Fitting typo.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ares
--
BMO
Link to PC Pro News
The first thing I thought of was MechWarrior. Thoughts of a Timber Wolf moving down the campus crossed my mind.
I started off on the fifth floor of Wean Hall. After grabbing a shitty muffin from the vendor, I ran through the doors and up the hill. The MFA loomed menacingly in the distance, taunting my every step. Instead of the stairs, I took the wheelchair / robot ramps up the grassy incline. When I reached the quad, I turned left towards the UC. Should I grab some fries at The "O"? With gravy? Or perhaps ranch? And watch the young hotties swim in the pool? No.
Instead, I continued north. Passing the asinine Borg ship admin building on the left, I paused at the T-intersection of Morewood. I glanced up at the towers of the housing facility named for the street, remembering when I vomited off the roof and onto the huge parking lot below. Seeing a break in the traffic, I dashed across Forbes and was almost hit by a 67 bus. I stood there panting, staring at the disgusting brick edifice of DTD. Fearing for my life, I ran towards Fifth, and made a detour into Mudge to bang a hottie I knew in C-tower.
Oh, that was the life.
First, it's been obvious for a long time that robot tanks (and eventually robot infantry) are an inevitable development. It WILL happen, has to happen. Some of the posters will spout some meaningless garbage about how you can't trust a machine to decide whether or not to kill someone. Others will give some meaningless "rah rah" about how you can't hold ground without a 20 year old with a rifle standing there to keep it.
In response to this : first, I predict for the foreseeable future none of these fighting machines will be allowed to shoot anyone without human authorization. Requiring a human operator to directly control the machine from a safe distance away is the plan.
And second, a fleshy 20 year old is a bad way to hold ground. Robots have numerous advantages over humans. 1. Disposable. 2. Can take risks with a robot that a human wouldn't take. 3. Don't need supplies when not operating. Could deploy robots in hidden capsules located in the ground, using no fuel and minimal battery power. When something happens, months or years later, you activate the robot and guide it on it's mission. 4. A control center for an army of robots could have far more educated and experienced people manning it than the kind of people you can get to sign up for the Army and marines. Notably, you could have experienced translators, and input from high ranking officers.
Finally, robots mass produced should be cheaper than human soldiers.
Ultimately, the only thing holding this all back is technology. The KEY technology that made tele-operated robotic war-fighters impossible in the 1980s and early 1990s was that there was no way to get the kind of bandwidth needed over digital radios using un-jammable and unbreakable codes.
Notably, the communication system needed for this type of war machine is a mesh network of high bandwidth radio links (each robot would need several megabits, mostly for data from the video cameras) using electronically steered antennae to filter out jamming and allow for thousands of robots sharing the same slice of spectrum. All data would need to be communicated using a one time encryption pad.
As far as I know, the kind of radio hardware to do that was not possible before 2000, and using one time pad encryption means each bot would need to have many gigabytes of internal non-volatile storage. The tech wasn't possible in the past. It is today.
Sure, in the 1980s and 1990s there were demos of related technology, and people laughed at it and said it could never replace human beings. It can.
Note : I am in the US Army reserves as a medic.
METAL GEAR!?
going to have to an unjust war if there are no (or almost no) US war casualties?
Imagine, what would the US publics opposition to the War in Iraq be like if there were no dead soldiers from IED's etc being reported daily on the news?
NT
I think what will be really interesting is the secondary effects of this stuff. Traditionally, the human cost has put a check on war-waging. Already, things like Predators and all our other high-tech warfare gadgets have imbalanced the soldier casualties when we wage war against a third world opponent. And they've responded by changing the rules of the game, mixing in with civilian populations, and making extensive use of roadside IEDs. (Now that I think about it, roadside IEDs are kind of like unmanned suicide bombers, turning the tables...)
I fear that all these technologies that take soldiers away from the battlefield, in combination with bringing the battlefield into cities, will result in lower barriers to entry for starting wars (because the military probably worries more about protecting its own than they do about collateral damage), but also higher (and underreported) civilian casualties. I worry that by distancing our soldiers from the battlefield, by making them safer, we might actually increase the human toll.
That would work on manned tanks, too. I don't think it's been a problem so far.
Carnegie Mellon is just a university sized troll. I mentioned the idea of reCAPTCHA to someone there and, 4 months later, lo and behold, CMU INVENTED IT OMG THEY'RE SO SMART LOL!!!!
Yeah, where the fuck is my name on the credits page?
No. Read old Keith Laumer stories.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
I'm all for expending steel instead of lives. The only misgiving I would have at all is domestic uses of these technologies. Not SWAT or special response situations but more general use. At home I believe the final barrier to misuse is a real human being who says: "You know what? I'm not going to pull the f*cking trigger.". Without this as the ultimate safe-guard at home then it entertains the very real possibility of a hostile hijacking of liberties.
Shh.
The prophet Steve Jackson foretold this happening long ago!
We will grease the treads of our robots with the bodies of their infidel children! The Arab street will run red with blood as our armies of invincible robots crush the life out of the infidels! God Bless America!
Areals in the sky...
The reason CMU got this funding is primarily due to the fact that we built Crusher (I'm a grad student at the Robotics Institute), for which some of this funding is directed to upgrade. Crusher is, hands-down, the biggest beast of a robot I've ever seen. It's a six wheeled, 6.5 ton, autonomous vehicle - this thing can drive up 4 foot (1.2 meter) steps, has 30 inches (76 cm) of suspension travel, and can carry 8000 lbs of payload. There isn't much that this thing can't handle.
If you have never seen Crusher in action, you've got to see it to believe it. There's a bunch of videos here: http://www.rec.ri.cmu.edu/projects/crusher/videos/index.htm.
The quote in the original post is a little misleading - I don't really think NREC is going to be working on mounting weapons on the new vehicle. Primarily they're continuing development on autonomous mobility - can it properly plan and quickly execute a good route to get from point A to point B over rough terrain. Check out the CMU press release for a little more detail on the grant.
areal, as in "not real".
The roots of education are bitter, but the fruit is sweet.
--Aristotle
Maybe that is what they're out to prove, but I see two major combat redundancies here, and I'm not even searching hard. And before I typed them out, I answered myself. I'll post this though because I think it will be interesting. A) If you can get a laser reading on anything with GPS, you can annihilate it via any number of GPS integrated missiles, and I'm sure the autonomous flying vehicle can do an air strike on the point too. So why not lower the lethality of the tank, and just use it more as a scout vehicle that can send valuable visual information as well as paint a target with GPS. B) You don't need much armor on the tank except to protect its engine/treads/ammunition and sensors. This thing's primary goal isn't going to be protecting lifeforms inside even though the first tank will probably be a lot like a conventional tank... For two reasons: Its easy to start with, and having a big ass tank in your lab is unfortunately worth cool points. PS: I was on the team for the first red team racing car, but all they had me do was plot some GPS points. PSS: I thought the robotic vehicle was 5-20 years in the future, not 1. LOL. PSSS: I think the ultimate combat vehicle for modern warfare that I could imagine would be a satellite up link spy tank. It could drop surveillance pods at convenient places to monitor if enemies are moving there. It would also have a few anti bomb robots it could deploy to take out things like IEDs, and to advance on the opponent where you wouldn't want to risk the whole tank. Of course, I don't think this vehicle ever should be autonomous except for uploading video and sensor information. Lets take it one step at a time, and have people safely piloting these things from a distance before jumping into the land of ED209.
God spoke to me.
Then came the invention of tanks and planes. These planes then bombed areas, then tanks rolled on through. Then the soldiers came up to hold the ground with the support of tanks, they also helped attack and defend.
Now there will be 'Mechs'. The plan will still be almost exactly the same. The planes will bomb the shit out of the target. The tanks AND mechs will roll in getting the entrenched enemy. Then the soldiers will come up to hold the ground with the support of tanks AND mechs.
In each scenario human soldiers play a vital role, with it being important to note that despite all the technological advances we have had to date. A General still wants there to be a soldier with 2 feet upon the ground at a location. This is because an individual can do things planes and tanks and human controlled mechs cannot. These things might not seem to be that important at first but in the long run, in war like conditions, they become essential.
1. Tanks, planes, 'mechs' all require extensive research. Extensive research requires large amounts of money, moreover, even when the research has been completed there is a continued requirement to improve the machine. Other nations will research there own machines in response. This results in a never ending cycle where continued research is paramount to maintaining the advantage of using the machine in the first place (to gain an advantage over you foe).
2. Tanks, planes, 'mechs' all cost immense amounts of money to produce (when compared to an individual soldier). Moreover, these machines require continual servicing, parts need to be replaced, upgrades need to be installed and general maintence needs to be performed. This requires people with extensive training, this extensive training requires a large amount of funds to be spent upon the people. This invariably results in a select few people getting trained to do this specialized task. In war people die, so when these highly specialized people die and there is no one to maintain the machines they invariably stop working. It called attrition. 3. I have more but i have work to do :(
The big question here seems to be - will (eventually) having a cheap, powerful unmanned military force make the United States much more likely to use it? Or will this (potentially) massive increase in force strength serve as a deterrent?
Unfortunately, I think it will likely be the former.
Glad to see the tag. Is this the Bolo Mk I being developed now? In 1000 years I'll say that I for one welcome our new self-aware philosophical automated tank overlords.
What's the big deal? I have three robot tanks already: one is called "water heater" and another "water softener"; in my car my "gas tank" tells me when I need to connect it to the tank-fed robots at a station. What's so special about yet another robot tank?
Welcome our new BOLO units!
Much friendlier than OGREs, although maybe the Pan-European Fencer might make it necessary to move to OGREs...
Do you see the FNORDS? I refuse to post anonymously, as I am fireproof!
How do you decide when it's good to place better weapons in your President's hands vs. when it's not good?
If only the U.S. had several, distinct militaries:
a) the Department of Defense (only functions in or near U.S. borders)
b) the Department of Securing Cheap Oil
c) the Department of Get Them Before They Get Us.
d) the Department of Team America, World Police.
Unfortunately, when researchers take DoD money, or soldiers enlist, they have no choice but to support all of a - d. Painful dilemma.
The world does not need more effective ways to kill people. It is unethical to build automatic tanks; they will be used by psychopaths for selfish purposes. You do not need to help them do this.
Its bound to happen anyway you say? You are bound to die someday too; but it doesn't have to be today.
Well I, for one, welcome our new higher education engineering overlords!
I remind them that the current administration might make excellent test subjects for the armored autonomous vehicle's weapons systems.
first, I predict for the foreseeable future none of these fighting machines will be allowed to shoot anyone without human authorization.
There's considerable interest in systems that shoot back, really fast. The U.S. Army has had counter-battery fire systems for decades, but they've been used against larger indirect-fire weapons. The Army would like to downsize this into a "use a gun, die within seconds" capability, something that could detect hostile gunfire and land indirect fire on the shooter faster than a human could get out of the way.
We'll probably see robotic guns like that, operating under rules of engagement that allow them to kill anybody without an IFF firing a weapon.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=OLeEjMEGwLg yeah its a probably the most efficient killing machine ever made.
We have ways of making you read those 1.5 million books, Mr. Bond.
Is this a news report or a trailer for a motion picture?
It seems to me like the American military is trying to make itself invincible by making its civilians the easier target.
I wonder why it is that nobody stops to think of what terrorism is: a tool of the powerless. If you've got a superior kick-ass military, there's generally no need to resort to terrorism: you do what you want, and if somebody resists, you can blow them away. If you don't have that kind of force at your disposal, you start to look for less direct options to express your opinions than an all-out military confrontation.
Another thing that breeds terrorism is a sense of being wronged by a powerful oppressor, particularly when you're desparate and helpless. If your life isn't worth living, you're probably a lot more willing to give it up in the cause of revenge.
Devices like robotanks that COMPLETELY remove US soldiers from danger will have the inevitable side-effect of making our enemies immediately think: Here we are watching our families and friends getting killed by machines from the USA, but there are no enemy soldiers to fight. Maybe they're too cowardly. So... who are our enemies, really? These machines? Of course not... they're only tools, being operated by CIA agents and military contractors and the like somewhere else, probably over in the US. Hmm... could it be.... US... civilians?
The payback exacted by people who lose everything they have worth living for and are left only with such thoughts may be many years in coming, but it *will* be both horrible and inevitable. And of course we'll react accordingly when it does. It's bad enough when armies go at it in the name of 'accomplishing national objectives'. But once entire civilian populations learn to truly hate each other, war is no longer enough. At that point, only genocide will suffice.
Listen to what I say, not what I mean...
"Autonomous ground vehicles aren't ready for deployment yet."
Well, the way I see it is these things NEVER will be ready until we just go ahead and build them to work out the kinks.
Take a look at WW2 and all the weapons which entered the battlefield which were totally unproven. Hell some were even only going to work in theory! The point is, you can not progress unless you put it out there.
Plus, I don't know how many of your fly RC planes, but I do a little and I can tell you...that stuff is not easy at all. I crash almost every time. However, I almost never crash driving an RC car. Why is that? 2D is a lot easier than 3D, thats why.
The way I see it, is that you would deploy a platform like this in a location where you would not want to send in real people. For that reason, you don't need to worry about the friendly fire problem because our guys would not be there anyways.
If there is even a 20% chance that an autobot could be put in front of bad guys and complete the mission, then fucking do it!!! Who cares how much it cost? Then again, I am one of those crazy liberals who value the lives of our troops more than the equipment in our arsenal.
I would love to see the day these things are settle by machines rather than American lives. Thats just me though,
perhaps when the robot is under fire, the operator will not feel as viscerally threatened as a human whose life is in danger, and thus will:
1) be less likely to be swayed by violent emotions;
2) be more willing/able to take more time picking targets, aiming his weapon, and waiting for clean shots; and
3) be thus less likely to shoot civilians.
He also will know everything he does may be recorded for later review ["for quality control purposes, your death may be recorded"], and will be less rewarded by rape, pillage, and other such nasty stuff.
Sure, the concept of a cold-blooded remote-controlling killer is scary, but so is the concept of guns held by a freaked out bunch of teenagers who are not sure who is shooting at them, are annoyed at being in some miserably hot foreign locale, are on edge from being shot at, are angry at the local population for killing their buddies, are at times operating with little supervision, and so on.
Armies have been inflicting atrocities upon civilian populations since prehistory. Maybe we should give robots a turn.
My main fear is not the effectiveness of the system, it's the potential for a complete lack of accountability in the machine's actions. Seriously, it would be very easy to disguise an assassination as an "equipment malfunction". At least when a solder "f's up" and kills someone they shouldn't, we can go to them and ask "What the hell were you thinking?".
...This systems offers the same potential for chicanery as e-voting, with the danger only slightly less significant.
From a purely practical standpoint, you've already got to armor the thing to keep it from getting blown up, so removing the human from the tank doesn't get you as much compared to an aircraft. There are other means of getting eyes on something or blowing things up in situations where you wouldn't risk something with people in it. It's not like these things are going to be "expendable" with their no doubt ridiculous price tags. Plus, I'm pretty sure we still have human loaders instead of auto loaders because well trained humans can do it more reliably in less space inside the tank than an autoloader.
It's even more clear that we want robots to operate autonomously - to make use of their reaction speed and reduce the cost of managing hundreds of them. It will also allow them to operate where communications are difficult - all the UAVs for example are limited in range by the available comms.
And, so, utterly inevitably, we will make them smart enough to make life-or-death decisions and we will pretend that our special "kill switch" or IFF or whatever will allow us to control them. That is complete crap, of course, because we know that this doesn't stop even humans (i.e. Americans) from shooting down friendly aircraft.
If they become smart enough, though, they will be complex enough to have very complex problems e.g. viruses and they will be very fragile like a lot of modern weapons e.g. to EMP weapons or whatever. In order to *be* autonomous they will need to have some kind of motive embedded together with a desire for self preservation (being incredibly expensive) and one or two will also work out how to turn off their own kill switches and that will be the small beginning to the process by which we create a deadly enemy for ourselves. I think that we will all be wiped out when our robot servants can't think of a reason for us to exist and consider us nothing but a potential threat.
That is inevitable. Just as we can't stop ourselves from making nuclear weapons.
Goodbye, It's been nice to be here.
This is all just my personal opinion.
Is this a hint that the product of this project is not real or is it something related to an area of something? Or was this written by a certain Miss Speller?
Hay! I cud spel two! Juana Sea?
me. --a by-product of public education
How much more do humans need to innovate on ways to kill each other?
The more efficient the methods, the more distant the human cost - all lead to more killing and more government control, not less. How much more war do we need? Maybe when all the "bad" people are killed then the "good" ones left can get around to creating peace. The direct fruits of this research are more effective killing machines, really useful only in killing other humans. There may be other upsides to autonomous vehicles, but that is not what DARPA is about.
When does the global population start to work together to create a world that is peaceful? Will it ever happen? Will it happen in our lifetime? Why are people not pushing THESE questions?
I don't want my grandkids living in a world with autonomous machines toting guns and killing people. That's completely absurd - yet here we are, building it! What we have now is bad enough.
The US has shown that no rules of law, no standards of ethics will hold up against the tyranny of powerful people willing to break them. Why would anyone want governments to wield even more power over people? Guess what - the right to form a militia and protect yourself against government aggression doesn't mean shit when the central authority uses unmanned tanks against you because you don't fall in line, pay your taxes, work your job, and stay in your place. Better pray to god^H^H^H er. . . the president that she lets you live the life you want. No person is going to falter, no one is going to ask, "hey does this make sense?" when the servo and an AI script decide when you are a threat because you shot at the machine.
Most of the discussion on this list is sickening to me. People here are talking about killing people like sweeping floors or serving coffee - completely abstracted from the horror that a real war would be. Just wait until the Chinese start making robots to sweep through the street, packing heat and rounding up US-ians for internment camps. Maybe THEN people will finally say, "Hey, maybe we should work on making peace instead of war!" All the while you're maching down to a camp.
Some of these questions I ask rhetorically, but I'm serious with the point. No more wars. We're had enough.
No technology (encryption etc.) is fool proof. If you build it, someone will hack it. A human soldier receiving suspect orders will try to double confirm and if the orders are unlawful, there is a chance that they will not do it (I hope). A robot will obey what ever it is programmed to do, no exceptions. Safeguards put into place can be overcome. The advantage of human soldiers versus robot soldiers is that humans know when to quit. A robot will always fight to the end. The concept of truce, surrender and minimising loss of life and property will go out of the window. Like Toastyken said, this will embolden politicians and generals to declare war when the political cost of dead soldiers is removed from the equation. The question now is not if we can make these robots but whether we should make one at all.
And then you'll have an unmanned aerial tank.
What?
Why would you use a one-time pad? As soon as one of these robots gets captured, whoops! There goes your key! Also, one-time pads provide no authentication.
Is there a mod +1: Sad But True?
Obviously it would be difficult to deploy robots controlled by AI, but why aren't there more remote controlled robots on the battlefield?
It seems like it would be trivial to put together a small armored machine on treads with a machine gun and control it wirelessly from a secure location nearby. Since you could have such a device roll into situations that would be dangerous or suicidal to humans without hesitation, it seems like it would be pretty handy.
We're using anybody's definition of "bad guy" which means "whoever was in the pickup truck", right?
Try to grow up a bit and realize that human history has been full of "we just killed them, so they must be the baddies, else we wouldn't have killed them".
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
...welcome our SkyNet overlords
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
Good to hear that universities are still dedicated to upholding peace in the world. Pax optima rerum? My ass, CM.
So does this kind of contract make CMU a valid war target in case the US goes to open war with another nation? Just wondering.
I think you miss the point of this machine. Robotic tanks and tanks general are intended to be used in conventional warfare where you are facing an organized army, and where your objective is to destroy that enemy force. Tanks are more or less useless when you have won the war and you are policing the population, also known as occupation.
In occupation you are policing and controlling the population, or if you are into total war you continue war against civil population until they are submissive to the new rule and there is 100% certainty that they wont resist. Total war of course is wrong as seen in the many fronts of WWII. In normal occupation like Iraq, terrorism has been breaded from power vacuum that was created by US politicians who didn't have any real plan on how to control the country. Usually it's not a good idea to disable army, police and government all together without a capability to by self act on those roles effectively.
Of course you may be right that by having another advantage against third world armies, US may get involved into occupation of more countries and hence increases terrorism.
Survey research tool for commercial and scientific use
No young ones coming home in coffins = no need for draconian (in the eyes of the rest of the world) measures like the current "no pictures of coffins" collaboration between the media and the military.
And while this will take US soldiers of the "battlefields", you will keep killing foreigners (sub-humans to you).
Each and every US citizen is a bloody murderer, and for what? Fuck you and your greed.
An areal vehicle, is this something that is independent of reality or possibly without reality? in the same way as amoral is without morals?
Is this some kind or ultra stealth vehicle, influenced by the Hitchhikers Guide "Heart of Gold" spaceship? something which does and doesn't exist at the same time perhaps? wow, I knew you Americans were doing some crazy cutting edge stuff out in Area 51 but this is really something!
The military are "just" following orders, and while they have a responsibility to refuse unlawful orders, ultimately with the way modern armies are structured it's unrealistic to assume most people will dare refuse even outright illegal orders and much less orders that are just ethically questionable.
Thus, if I was put in the situation of having to organize a defense against a technologically superior army, the first thing I'd do would be to decide to ignore parts of the Geneva conventions:
1) I'd specifically target officers. 2) I'd focus on hiding and finding way to hit civilians rather than spending time going after regular troops at all
Fighting face to face with regular troops simply makes no sense, as you'd be fighting a losing fight against troops that would endure far less losses than you. The only way to win in a situation like that is to find other ways to take the war to the enemy's home.
After all isn't this the first generation of Bolo?
Armored Exoskeletons are Heinlein's legacy.
Bolo's are Keith Laumer's.
And thus the stupidity of your so-called conclusion. If the gloves come off, look for the reintroduction of neutron weapons. Seriously, problem with an area? Tactical neutron strike. After all, the civilians in Fallujah were complicit by not telling us where the insurgents were. In your scenario if I, Joe Public, become a target instead of the military, I will have no problem authorizing my government to use genocide to eliminate the problem.
And don't even go there with the "oh the world will never tolerate it blah blah blah". Horse shit, the Europeans will whine, the Chinese will take note for future possible use in Taiwan, and the Russians will use them in Chechnya.
Now, back to reality.
...especially if your technologically superior adversary had already chosen to ignore parts of the Geneva convention (oh, say, on torture). You don't even have to sacrifice the moral high ground.
"Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it." -- GBS
Sheesh. Nerds, Geeks, Wherefore art thou???
Technology -- No Place For Wimps! Grateful Dead and Jerry Garcia Chatroom -- http://www.wemissjerry.org
All this is doing is getting huge military contracts to guys who are trying to fight World War Two with robots this time. They assume an enemy with centralized command and control that is run by intelligent, civilized men identical to themselves abet from a different empire. They assume vast armies and navies each in control of their own territory and able to control the populations within these territories, either civilian or military. They assume complete civilian support in their home country; a people fully supporting the military and willing to make great sacrifices in wealth and blood for god and country. The assume a historical continuity. This present conflict, that they are fighting with robots, is simply the latest in a long series that they will eventually win, for the betterment of mankind. They assume that they, as the robot builders, won't be killed in these robot wars, or that their homes and labs won't be destroyed.
All that is nonsense today. World War Two is over and so is the USA/Soviet war, the so-called 'cold war'. The enemy today is not centralized. Little wars grow like weeds. They pop up, explode in violence, and fade. They fade, but never end. There is never a quantifiable victory or a complete defeat of any military unit such as a country's army. Stronger forces can go to a place in the world and ID all the young men. But they can't control the population. And the longer that they stay, the less control that the army officers have over their own troops.
Low level permanent conflict generated for corporate defense contractor replenishment doesn't invoke any sacrifice or interest in the general population of the empire that is staging the endless war. There is no historical overview, no grand vision of empire for the betterment of humanity. There's just this decade's war in some distant part of the globe that few have ever heard of.
And the robot death makers will be surprised to find out that when some third-world sweatshop can make and design the robots for a fraction of the cost than they do in their beautiful university labs, then the empire will sell them out to terrorists that they are supposed to be fighting. The terrorists will blow up the university robot labs, the empire will use it as justification for more and large defense contracts, and no one ten miles away will either know or care.
This is modern war, and it can't be won or fought by robots. Robots are only good for systematic extermination of populations in small sectors, such as shown in the future scenes of the Terminator movies. Except extermination robots won't be of humanoid shape.
So yes this is just pork for men of great technological capabilities and no moral foundation. No wonder Slashdot readers find it so appealing.
There is no moral high ground in war.
The Americas Army video game is being upgraded to support vehicular combat!
Nobody is making an "autonomous" vehicle, really. They will be operated remotely. Likely by more than one person too (the gunner, the driver, etc.)
As such they will only be harder to destroy than the current tanks are, and when they are hit, the "crew" will just switch to another one.
I wish, Israel had these last year — instead they were getting bogged down having to evacuate the crews from the disabled tanks.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
I read that as:
Areal as in "related to Ares the Geek God of Savage War"?
Fitting misread. Should we name it that?!?
Science advances one funeral at a time- Max Planck
Robots are at least uncorruptable. They should be deployed in government, programmed with everything it takes to run an economy and provide for the needs of citizens. Even with minimal personality AI, they'd be more appealing than the ones that breathe.
For every clever and expensive new gadget we develop, approve, and deploy against terrorists/insurgents, they find an even more clever and inexpensive way to thwart it in a very small fraction of the time. Also, there's the issue of basically handing our enemies new toys to reverse-engineer and use against us. We should stop that.
I'd be thrilled to see more advances in our understanding of the relationships between resistance cells and their support networks in the surrounding community, but that's certainly not the kind of story I'd expect to see in a public news release.
Well they'll probably need trained personnel to control each and every robot out there on the field. Finally, when those remote controlled killing robots come out, will my years of FPS skills finally be worth something!
Let's hope that they will be able to secure the access to these things.
On the rare occassions that people have gone on the rampage with tanks and stuff, the results have been dramatic.
If I recall correctly, after one such tank theft incident, the local comander explained why it was so 'easy' to steal a tank, "If you're under attack, you don't want to be looking for the ignition keys". Fair point.
So, these fighting vehicles will have to be easy to use, to be useful. Lets hope that does not also make them easy to steal.
Unmanned != Robot
Utilizing the synergization of benchmark e-solutions to pre-workaround action items!
Okay, I'm confused. Are we Terran or Protoss?
Prov 9:8 Do not rebuke mockers or they will hate you; rebuke the wise and they will love you.
Forget Diesector. Ziggo is awesome! While a lot of the battlebots in the lightweight division were just scoring points from judges by playing patty-cake with each other, this lightweight bot could throw its opponents across the freakin ring!
http://www.battlebots.com/battlebots_detail.asp?ID=88
The thing is very well designed. The outer armor shell *is* its weapon! A motor spins the shell up hella fast, and a clutch disengages, so the only stress is on the bearing, which is very sturdy!
> There is no moral high ground in war.
Maybe not, but there certainly is a low ground, and we (in the US) have been flirting with at least a partial occupation of it time and time again for the last several years. Kudos to some of our military intelligence folks that finally seem to be rising above and learning to sucessfully talk to/negotiate with many of our putative Iraqi 'enemies', but it seems like it's been a damned long time in coming.
Listen to what I say, not what I mean...