Slashdot Mirror
Robot Soldiers Are Already Being Deployed
destinyland writes "As a Rutgers philosopher discusses robot war scenarios, one science
magazine counts the ways robots are already being used in warfare,
including YouTube videos of six military robots in action.
There are up to 12,000 'robotic units' on the ground in Iraq, some dismantling landmines and roadside bombs, but
'a new generation of bots are designed to be fighting machines.' One bot can operate an M-16 rifle,
a machine gun, and a rocket launcher — and 250 people have already been killed by unmanned drones in Pakistan.
He also tells the story of a berserk robot explosives gun that killed nine people in South Africa due to a 'software glitch.'"
Are radio controlled device robots? Or, is there a certain amount of autonomy that is necessary?
Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong fix.
We have such machines already. The US DoD, and its counterparts in every industrialized country in the world, run extensive wargames and simulations for every possible scenario, and these days the results of these studies are pretty realistic. And you know what happens? When the people who want to fight the wars get numbers they don't like, they ignore the results and vilify the people who gave them realistic projections, and go to war anyway. Read up on Eric Shinseki for a recent example of this phenomenon, which has happened time and again throughout military history.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
I found the article to be annoyingly "Fear Robotic Death Machines, I Saw Them In A Movie".
I mean come on, using Terminator as a source? Sheesh, trash journalism with very few interesting facts.
We won't deploy an offensive robot that picks targets and fires, for at least 20 years. There just isn't enough information for a computer to process and pick targets accurately. Contrary to tin-foil hat skeptics, the Military has a huuuuuuge priority in protecting innocents, even more so since they've entered Iraq.
Defensive platforms however are different. We already have automated pillbox robots that can takeout trespassers, but that's just a much more humane mine field.
Our future is going to be robot platforms that are controlled by operators. Sure they might be automated in nearly every aspect required, but the target choosing will be decided by humans, for a very long time.
A sad side effect of this robotic warfare is going to be the loss of consequence to congress for beginning a war, however I believe it's an inevitable step we'll have to conquer, just as building the first wheel was.
I'm speculating here, but I don't think this is impossible, or even very far off.
We already have robots working in factories. If we ever get to the point where robots can be effectively used in war, we'll also be at the point where robots are capable of extracting resources. So, robots extracting resources, making robots, and fighting. Great, we've all seen this stuff in sci-fi, nothing new. But I've never encountered anyone talking about how this would affect world politics or the balance of power.
In todays world, the population of a country, as well as the will of the population, quality of military training, and natural resources all play a role in how well a country does in war. But if a country had robots as I just described, the primary factor in determining that country's power would be the natural resources available to it. If robots build robots you've got as many as you need, so the limiting factor is the raw materials and not food or population size or training etc.
So which countries have the raw materials? They win. For example, in this scenario Canada might be able to put up fight against the U.S. because Canada has alot of resources. As it stands now, Canada would get creamed.
This line of thought becomes more interesting when you think that the U.S. Military is developing robots as a way of making the U.S. army more effective, but maybe they are changing the equation so drastically that they might end up with much stronger enemies on more fronts.
Food for thought.
What is scary is you just know some general in the Pentagon is handing a weapons designer a picture of the T800 with no skin from Judgment Day and saying "See that? You just tell us how many bucks you need to crank us off a couple of thousand of those babies to start and we're in business!".
This whole rush to make killbots reminds me of an interview I saw with the director right after Blue Thunder came out in the 80s. He said 'I make this movie where I try to show exactly how bad giving such an incredibly deadly and intrusive weapon to law enforcement would be, and what happens? I got contacted by dozens of law enforcement groups wanting to know "How much do you want for her?" I saw the movie as a warning and they saw it as a sales pitch." and it is the same thing here. We all saw the devastation when the T800 was let loose upon mankind, and what did THEY see? "Damn! Would you look at the kill ratio of that bad boy! Gimmie 5000 of those puppies back then and I could have WON Vietnam! Let's see an IED stop that sucker! Somebody get me the guys that build them Predator drones on the horn.".
Somebody needs to save us from those in charge of "protecting" us when they see Blue Thunder and Judgment Day as weapon procurement ads.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
This is definitely a revolution in military affairs, maybe more than nuclear weapons, because this technology will definitely be used by all sides. A lot of third world countries could probably almost be taken over right now by remote control, and with improved autonomous capabilities I can't see it being much of a problem in the future. The possibilities for proxy wars are really interesting -- what's to stop the U.S., China and Russia from waging remote-control robot wars for control of resource-rich countries in the third world? The natives with AK-47's won't be able to offer much resistance, and the political cost to the robotic powers could be minimal if the only casualties are machines. I think this is the brave new world we're moving into: robot police actions vs. terrorists in failed states and proxy robotic resource wars between the major powers. Then of course there's the possibility of a modern day Saruman, some power mad industrialist, mass-producing robots instead of Uruk-Hai and unleashing them on the world for his own nefarious purposes. It should be quite interesting to watch this technology develop -- it all reminds me of a real life anime movie or Philip K. Dick novel.