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Armed Robots Not Actually Gone From Iraq

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the someone-call-for-an-exterminator dept.

NightFalcon90909 writes "You may have heard that armed robots were yanked from Iraq after a gun started to swivel without it being told to do so. 'A recent news report that armed robots had been pulled out of Iraq is mistaken, according to the company that makes the robot [Foster-Miller] and the Army program manager. 'The whole thing is an urban legend,' says Foster Miller spokesperson Cynthia Black, of the reports about SWORDS moving its gun without a command.'"

16 of 263 comments (clear)

  1. The Government Said So... by SeeSp0tRun · · Score: 3, Insightful

    So the United States Government says this didn't happen... They also said the prisoners of war were treated fairly...
    coughWATERBOARDINGcough

    Yep, the government must be right!

    --
    Something witty.
    1. Re:The Government Said So... by jellomizer · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Question is what if the government is telling the truth...

      You cant trust the government if it hides anything.
      You cant trust the government if fully discloses everything (they must be lieing)
      You cant trust the government if it give you need to know.

      How do you convience Joe Six pack that we did go the moon.
      That is the problem of Conspericy theories, The more proof that you give them the more elabrate the conspericy is.

      --
      If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
    2. Re:The Government Said So... by spun · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Sure, because we've redefined what prisoner of war means, what you say is technically true. So I'm sure you won't mind if the Ministry of Truth operatives come and apply some 'joyous fun electrical stimulation' to your 'special happy place.' Hey, words can mean whatever we want them too, right? If we capture someone and they aren't wearing a uniform, they must be a terrorist and not a P.O.W., right?

      Saaaaay..... are you wearing your uniform?

      --
      - None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
    3. Re:The Government Said So... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      Jeez. 9/11 really did a fucking number on your head, didn't it?

    4. Re:The Government Said So... by H0p313ss · · Score: 4, Insightful

      No P.O.W. was waterboarded, as a matter of fact. If you have evidence to the contrary, please, post it here. Otherwise, post a retraction. Thank you.

      A valid point, but the doublethink used to consider the prisoners NOT POWs would make the signers of the declaration of independence spin in their graves and George Orwell and Joseph Stalin nod sagely.

      There are no POWs here... and no Americans in Baghdad...

      --
      XML is a known as a key material required to create SMD: Software of Mass Destruction
    5. Re:The Government Said So... by msuarezalvarez · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I do not accept that waterboarding anyone at all is acceptable. But, in your view: how do you know that the person you are waterboarding is willing to kill or aid in killing thousands of civilians? If you can be so, so wrong that your intelligence can make you invade a whole country in search of weapons of mass destruction that do not exist, in howany ways can you be wrong about the intentions of a person?

    6. Re:The Government Said So... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      No, you've got it completely wrong. The problem with conspiracy theories is that they make unsubstantiated, often ludicrous claims that persist despite a lack of - and often in spite of - evidence.

      You can't trust the government. (Note the period.) That much the conspiracy theorists get right. Government's should not be viewed as trustworthy. We should always require transparency and evidence.

      The veracity of the government's claim in this case can be verified by analyzing the evidence or lack thereof. If there is evidence of the guns swiveling sans command then the government is lying. If there is no such evidence then the government is telling us the truth.

      Now, there may be a cover-up, but if so then evidence needs to be provided for that.

    7. Re:The Government Said So... by Torodung · · Score: 2, Insightful

      A little study of military history would have revealed that throughout the Revolutionary and Civil wars (among others), any prisoners captured out of uniform were almost always denied treatment as "prisoners" and were often instead promptly executed as spies. Yes, and in those same days it was common law in England that you should hang for stealing a loaf of bread.

      Why are you suggesting we dial back legal precedent 200 years? Because "military history" somehow demands it? It is absolutely not practiced with the same ruthlessness today, and your "guideline" is not part of the rules of engagement for urban warfare.

      Urban centers contain masses of civilians who have an intrinsic, and sometimes legal, right to defend themselves from well-armed, crazy-ass militias and gangs like the Mahdi Army and foreign funded gangs like Al Quaeda or Hezbollah.

      That right to defend oneself from thugs and warlords is one of the foundations and reasons for the second amendment right to bear arms, the other being the right overthrow a despotic government. Perhaps the Founders were a little touchy about despotic governments, but people in a city where civilization has broken down have a right to their lives. This means people, with guns and uncertain allegiances, are out of uniform, and they are not shot as spies in accordance with some absurd, 200-year-old "guideline." They are detained and processed whenever possible.

      I imagine that belligerents we pick up alone in the countryside are still occasionally executed in accordance with your "guideline" so long as no one important will witness it or come looking for the person. That has been the history of war since Cain and Abel, but it is nothing to be honored.

      Obviously, if we followed your "guideline" as widely as you claim, we would have no need for Gitmo. We'd just dig graves instead of building a prison. It's cheaper and more efficient.

      But undermining the Geneva Conventions and undermining U.S. Law in the unlawful suspension of habeus corpus and counsel rights in the case of Jose Padilla, deserved scumbag that he may be, is wrong. You give a citizen access to a lawyer and you prosecute, no matter the uncertainty of the times, unless the country is in a total war or a full-scale rebellion.

      And if we are in such a total war, why do we not have ward captains running weekly terror response drills? Why aren't we rationing? Because it would harm consumer confidence? Too late.

      Moreover, waterboarding is torture. The Bill of Rights, the inalienable rights that inform it as set out in the Declaration, and basic human dignity, are not something a President can suspend simply because "times are bad," and certainly not because our barbaric history of warfare demands blood. We should provide the best rights to our detainees that we can, not keep them in some alegal halfway house for political prisoners.

      As far as I'm concerned, total war or full-scale insurrection (like the War Between the States) is the only justification for the suspension of basic rights, and nothing justifies cruel and inhuman treatment.

      These policies are a gross overreaction that need to be denounced, discontinued, and apologized for as quickly as possible. We are on the wrong path.

      --
      Toro
  2. Re:It's Inevitable by Rob+T+Firefly · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I know nothing about these things or guns in general so maybe I'm off base, but if the bit that makes it swivel engages without being told, what on Earth makes you so confident that the bit that makes it shoot will not engage without it being told?

    --
    Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
  3. No autonomous but.... by Kjella · · Score: 2, Insightful

    "It can't shoot anyone [without orders]," Black says. "It's not an autonomous vehicle." It doesn't have to be autonomus to do bad things. Say for example you can order it to rotate the turret and to fire its gun, then the radio transmission is jammed. If you programmed it really stupid and it kept waiting for a stop command that never came, it'd fire in circles until it was out of ammo. Obviously this is a very naive example, but sure the robot can do plenty harm unless it stops cold any time the transmission is having a hiccup. Even then I'm sure there's ways to make it react unintentionally.
    --
    Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
  4. Re:Someone who works on robot sensors by TTURabble · · Score: 4, Insightful

    But did you implement the three laws?

  5. Re:WTF is double-soldered? by MightyYar · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I ain't no smartifitician, but I think the varmants went and made two solderifications. Twice. Double. Redundant. Two. So if one fails, the other still survives. Another solder connection. One extra interconnect. A more reliable connection.

    Any mod with a sense of humor will mod me Redundant.

    --
    W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
  6. ROV by TomRK1089 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    So it's basically a Remote Operated Vehicle, not some kind of autonomous drone. Makes sense that they wouldn't want to give up on a potentially useful project so quickly then. If they had, I'd say they were throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

    Of course, on the other hand is the fact that the Middle East has to be one of the most inhospitible environments for robots, what with the extremes of temperature, sand getting into internal parts, et cetera. I'm curious on what kind of tests they did with SWORD that these connections and such weren't fixed before deployment. Did they not understand that "Works perfectly in a sealed lab environment" doesn't translate to "Will work in field, without regular maintenance, in a non-ideal environment?"

  7. Re:Someone who works on robot sensors by Kartoffel · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Rembmer, Asimov's laws of robotics are science fiction. They are relevant in same way as the laws of the old testament: both are prominent literary works...of fiction.

  8. Re:Someone who works on robot sensors by Jtheletter · · Score: 3, Insightful

    "There was never any chance of a weapon being fired," Clearly they have developed some magic bit of electronics and fool proof code.
    Let's go over the various realistic reasons for why there might not have been a chance of a weapon firing:
    1) Weapon safety was on.
    2) Weapon was not loaded.
    3) Weapon was not attached to robot base.
    4) Firing system was not installed/powered/engaged.

    Remote firing circuits while not 100% perfect (only because nothing is) are a mature technology. They are used all the time in law enforcement and especially in EOD remote detonations. Could you also please tell us all what certifications were passed for this firing circuit? Until you can point to that specific data and tell us why it fails, then you're guessing at things you don't know.
    --
    -- I'm not a pessimist, I'm a realist. It's not my fault that life sucks so much. --
  9. Re:WTF is double-soldered? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    You can mod down your enemies and supress points of view you disagree with. Ability to silence unpleasant oppinions gotta be worth something.