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Wired for War
stoolpigeon writes "The US Army's Future Combat Systems program calls for one third of their fighting strength to be robots by 2015. The American pilots seeing the most combat in Iraq and Afghanistan right now do so from flight consoles in the United States, and they are controlling Predator unmanned vehicles. Every branch of the US military has aggressive robotics programs in place. This is not anything unusual. Other nations are also developing and purchasing robotic systems designed to be used in combat. Advances in communications, software and hardware make it inevitable that robotics will have a profound effect on conflict in the future. The development of these systems has been rapid, and while technology hurtles forward, culture and understanding seem to lag behind. Similar to the way our legal codes are playing catch-up with new technologies, combat-enabled robots raise questions and issues that did not even exist a short time ago. Wired for War by Dr. P. W. Singer is an excellent opportunity for anyone interested to dive into just what is going on all over the world with regards to robotics and their use by the military." Read below for the rest of JR's review.
Wired for War: The Robotics Revolution and Conflict in the 21st Century
author
P. W. Singer
pages
499
publisher
The Penguin Press
rating
10/10
reviewer
JR Peck
ISBN
978-1-59420-198-1
summary
The robotics revolution and conflict in the 21st century.
Singer is Senior Fellow and Director of the 21st Century Defense Initiative at the Brookings Institution. His focus and study on changes in modern warfare have made him one of the world's top experts on the nature of modern day combat as well as what developments are likely to come. Singer is an academic, but Wired for War is not a strictly academic approach to the issue of robots in war. He has made an intentional effort to make the book approachable, delivering a large amount of information wrapped in the context of popular culture and current events. The average geek is going to feel right at home in the sea of references made throughout the book as they often turn on sci-fi. This is not to say that the book dwells in a possible future of far-flung vaporware. Wired for War is divided into two large sections. The first is "The Change We are Creating" and deals with the definition, history and current technology of robotics. Some of this is talking about robotics in general but primarily with a view to military applications. Singer makes it clear that he believes that robotics is going to have a huge impact on many more areas of society and culture, but war is the focus of this work.
The last chapter of the first section, "The Refuseniks: The Roboticists Who Just Say No" is an interesting look at those who are not comfortable with the direction they see technology being deployed. It makes for a very natural segue into the second section, "What Change is Creating for Us". It also serves as an excellent illustration of just what Singer does in this book. There is not a lot of highly technical detail or information. The discussion of various technologies in play deals primarily with capabilities available as opposed to how those capabilities are achieved. This is in keeping with Singer's stated desire to keep the book open to a wide audience. It also serves to reinforce what I believe is the real purpose of the book, though it is more subtly stated. That purpose is to educate the members of democracies on what is going on in the militaries of their nations, so that they can be more informed in how they participate in the political process. This is as much a sociology book as it is a technology book and as much as it gives insight into how the military uses technology it also gives insight into military trends and subcultures. Primarily the examples given and information shared deal with the U.S. military. The Chinese military gets some time as well but it is quite small in comparison.
This would probably be my only disappointment with the book. (Well there are two but the second is very specific and small. John Scalzi is called Joe Scalzi on page 369 and in the index.) It is understandable that most of the information is U.S. centric. Singer has been involved with America's Department of Defense and the American military is one of the few that is spending the amounts of money they spend on such a wide array of robotic systems. Singer does discuss how others are getting into the game, and even how less likely players, like insurgents can make use of robotic tech, but there is never the same depth of analysis and information for any other nation as the U.S. It's not that large an issue, the book is still excellent but I would love to see a work of the same depth and breadth that dealt solely with abilities and programs that are not American.
As I mentioned the second section deals much more with how all of this change is apt to change us. Singer deals with questions about not only what robots do to war but what they do to warriors, military leaders, governments and civilians. There is a lot here to chew on and to be honest I found the book to be more than a little frightening at times. Singer doesn't just point out new machines and revel in the engineering challenges that have been overcome. He digs in to see what the ramifications are for all of us and some of it could be very bad. At the same time Singer is not against technology and can see the good side of many developments. I think that what he fears most is that many will remain ignorant of just what is taking place and by the time they are all playing catch up it will be too late. I try to stay current on unmanned systems and military changes but there were quite a few revelations to me in the pages of Wired for War. Singer does not shy away from tough questions and I think his previous experience studying warfare, especially in the third world, comes to bear.
This isn't just a book for gun nuts that love to see stuff explode. This is a book for anyone who wants to be up to date on the technological changes that have come and are coming to warfare. As I mentioned, Singer emphasizes the importance of being informed about these things for the members of any democratically governed society. The people of such a nation are culpable in the actions of their leaders and how force is is deployed against others. How can they rightly use the power they have if they are ignorant of the capabilities and the very nature of the systems their military uses? And even more importantly what happens if they do not question the changes in perspective that robots in warfare bring not only to those who deploy such systems but to those who are the targets of automated violence and finally those who look on from the sidelines?
The book covers a lot of ground but does so in an eminently readable way. Part of this is that the notes do not occur at the bottom of the page but at the back of the book. In the back they are numbered but those numbers are not placed in the text. This can make it very difficult to find just how the information fits together. I can see the up side of not interrupting the flow but at the same time it could be frustrating working my way through to be sure I had found the matching note. This also reflects the book having part of one foot in the academic world while the rest of it stands closer to popular literature. The index is decent. This book will in all likelihood be quoted quite a bit and stand as the standard on military robotics for a while. There is a center section of black and white photographs featuring current robotic systems, military and civilian.
Singer addresses the debate over the rate of change in technology and the views of some that we are approaching the singularity where all bets will be off. Whether or not change is gaining momentum at an exponential rate, it is taking place quickly and at some point the technology that Singer covers will be old news. That said, the majority of the attention is given to questions and issues revolving around ethics and morality that will not go away any time soon. This book is going to be a fascinating read for many while educating and expanding their horizons at the same time. I recommend it without reservation.
You can purchase Wired for War: The Robotics Revolution and Conflict in the 21st Century from amazon.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
The last chapter of the first section, "The Refuseniks: The Roboticists Who Just Say No" is an interesting look at those who are not comfortable with the direction they see technology being deployed. It makes for a very natural segue into the second section, "What Change is Creating for Us". It also serves as an excellent illustration of just what Singer does in this book. There is not a lot of highly technical detail or information. The discussion of various technologies in play deals primarily with capabilities available as opposed to how those capabilities are achieved. This is in keeping with Singer's stated desire to keep the book open to a wide audience. It also serves to reinforce what I believe is the real purpose of the book, though it is more subtly stated. That purpose is to educate the members of democracies on what is going on in the militaries of their nations, so that they can be more informed in how they participate in the political process. This is as much a sociology book as it is a technology book and as much as it gives insight into how the military uses technology it also gives insight into military trends and subcultures. Primarily the examples given and information shared deal with the U.S. military. The Chinese military gets some time as well but it is quite small in comparison.
This would probably be my only disappointment with the book. (Well there are two but the second is very specific and small. John Scalzi is called Joe Scalzi on page 369 and in the index.) It is understandable that most of the information is U.S. centric. Singer has been involved with America's Department of Defense and the American military is one of the few that is spending the amounts of money they spend on such a wide array of robotic systems. Singer does discuss how others are getting into the game, and even how less likely players, like insurgents can make use of robotic tech, but there is never the same depth of analysis and information for any other nation as the U.S. It's not that large an issue, the book is still excellent but I would love to see a work of the same depth and breadth that dealt solely with abilities and programs that are not American.
As I mentioned the second section deals much more with how all of this change is apt to change us. Singer deals with questions about not only what robots do to war but what they do to warriors, military leaders, governments and civilians. There is a lot here to chew on and to be honest I found the book to be more than a little frightening at times. Singer doesn't just point out new machines and revel in the engineering challenges that have been overcome. He digs in to see what the ramifications are for all of us and some of it could be very bad. At the same time Singer is not against technology and can see the good side of many developments. I think that what he fears most is that many will remain ignorant of just what is taking place and by the time they are all playing catch up it will be too late. I try to stay current on unmanned systems and military changes but there were quite a few revelations to me in the pages of Wired for War. Singer does not shy away from tough questions and I think his previous experience studying warfare, especially in the third world, comes to bear.
This isn't just a book for gun nuts that love to see stuff explode. This is a book for anyone who wants to be up to date on the technological changes that have come and are coming to warfare. As I mentioned, Singer emphasizes the importance of being informed about these things for the members of any democratically governed society. The people of such a nation are culpable in the actions of their leaders and how force is is deployed against others. How can they rightly use the power they have if they are ignorant of the capabilities and the very nature of the systems their military uses? And even more importantly what happens if they do not question the changes in perspective that robots in warfare bring not only to those who deploy such systems but to those who are the targets of automated violence and finally those who look on from the sidelines?
The book covers a lot of ground but does so in an eminently readable way. Part of this is that the notes do not occur at the bottom of the page but at the back of the book. In the back they are numbered but those numbers are not placed in the text. This can make it very difficult to find just how the information fits together. I can see the up side of not interrupting the flow but at the same time it could be frustrating working my way through to be sure I had found the matching note. This also reflects the book having part of one foot in the academic world while the rest of it stands closer to popular literature. The index is decent. This book will in all likelihood be quoted quite a bit and stand as the standard on military robotics for a while. There is a center section of black and white photographs featuring current robotic systems, military and civilian.
Singer addresses the debate over the rate of change in technology and the views of some that we are approaching the singularity where all bets will be off. Whether or not change is gaining momentum at an exponential rate, it is taking place quickly and at some point the technology that Singer covers will be old news. That said, the majority of the attention is given to questions and issues revolving around ethics and morality that will not go away any time soon. This book is going to be a fascinating read for many while educating and expanding their horizons at the same time. I recommend it without reservation.
You can purchase Wired for War: The Robotics Revolution and Conflict in the 21st Century from amazon.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
I'm glad that there is no such thing as machine sentience, and probably won't be (at least with binary-based Turing archetechure).
As an Air Force veteran with two draftable daughters, I'd say relying on robots rather than having our troops shot at and bombed is a GOOD thing. But... I can't help but thinking of a Star Trek episode titled "a taste of armageddon".
Free Martian Whores!
Do the ethics or morality of killing people change because of the tool?
Please put the chair down, Steve.
Free Martian Whores!
"I like being butcher, you know exactly who you are killing. And why." - Boris the Butcher.
War is hell, but soldiers know what they're signing up for. It's the civilians I'm concerned about.
Will robots take away any responsibility or accountability for war crimes or atrocities? When 20 people are wiped out by a "robot malfunction", is it any less heinous? Who is held responsible in these cases, the manufacturer, the operator, who?
The wars of the future will not be fought on the battlefield or at sea. They will be fought in space, or possibly on top of a very tall mountain. In either case, most of the actual fighting will be done by small robots. And as you go forth today remember always your duty is clear: To build and maintain those robots.
We already seen several movies were infiltration with lower technology ended using weapons against their builders. Ok, Independence Day alien mainframe hacking could not count as credible, but hacking Terminators is pretty close to what is proposed here. And no matter which hard crypto technology they put into... the human factor is still there (and no, you don't want to put machines at helm)
I worked on some of the technology back in college in the late 90's. I was part of a lab that participated in an international competition that was designed to further autonomous aerial vehicle tech. One year after the competition we were invited to a military symposium and got to see the real stuff. I remember something like the predator was there but called something else. There were a handful of other aerial vehicles but i guess the predator thing won out in the end.
A couple of semesters ago I went back to school to finish my CS degree and started working in the same old lab from the 90's. Sensors and things had vastly improved and the bulk of the work was now being done on computer vision instead of autonomous flying. The aerospace engineer ace in the lab was planning to work for General Atomics, i'm guessing on the predator, after he finished up his degree. I worked on a target recognition and tracking system using the OpenCV library up until I formally graduated.
It's really interesting stuff and I considered entering the field but I already have about 9 years in the healthcare industry and I can't bring myself to stop capitalizing on all my specialized healthcare knowledge.
I came to the datacenter drunk with a fake ID, don't you want to be just like me?
Colin Gray's Another Bloody Century talks about the information warfare side of things and concludes that despite the hype, it's not a huge deal yet. He also talks about the inevitability of space warfare. It's a good book and after reading it you can why he made it onto the Air Force reading list (albeit with another book, "Modern Strategy").
It must be strange times to be in the Air Force - I read somewhere that the USAF turned out more unmanned than manned aircraft last year. Seems like a sea-change for them; something along the same lines as converting from the "big bomber carrying nukes" role.
The Army reading list
The last thing we need is an army robot piloting pussies murdering millions from Lazy boy recliners by remote control. We would officially be worse then the Nazi's at that point.
Maybe I'm nuts, but I worry about the possibility of the wrong person gaining control of a military network containing killer robots. It's not a new problem or anything, but if lots of these things are deployed, then you just know security will be less stringent in some situations than others.
Robots will only be employed when the cost to 'lose' one is less than a human. I wonder value is used for 1 soldier.
If America could go forth and kill people at little cost in lives or money using robots, do you think Americans would care as much?
A work that expires before its copyright never enters the public domain and thus enjoys eternal copyright protection.
"The wars of the future will not be fought on the battlefield or at sea. They will be fought in space, or possibly on top of a very tall mountain. In either case, most of the actual fighting will be done by small robots. And as you go forth today remember always your duty is clear: To build and maintain those robots." --The Simpsons
That's weird, I'm currently working on an asynchronous distributed network of satellites which can be used coordinate the efforts of robotic forces and adapt to an enemy's tactics.
While it's in its early stages, we're just calling it Skynet--not having anything better to call it. We'll change the name once it's ready to go live.
-John Connor
Faith is a willingness to accept something w/o complete proof and to act on it. Reason allows you to correct that faith.
When you DON'T do that the results are obvious.
Germany: won. We destroyed the army, roughed up the citizens for being a bunch of nasty losers, and then set about making them BFFs.
Vietnam: Lost. We blasted the NVA, turned the VC into terrorists, ruined the food supply, killed the citizenry, treated them like dirt, carpet bombed the place, and generally acted like a belligerent bunch of assholes.
Iraq: draw. We destroyed the army, and then sat on our hands as the country fell apart, causing great immiseration of the citizenry. We handed over the meatiest stuff to political cronies. After several years of clear failure, Iraq is now a marginal state whose future is up for grabs.
Afghanistan: lost. We went into afghanistan. Fail. No one wins in afghanistan. Afghanistan is where empires go to die. Alexander the Great, the British,the Russians, now the USA. Afghanistan is not winnable, no matter how nice you are to anyone there. The way you be nice to these people is to leave them the fuck alone and let them stew in their own pathetic juices.
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
(Wasn't this book reviewed once before on Slashdot?)
That book is all about the previous generation of military robots. Take a look at the next generation:
Wait until China starts cranking out these things by the millions.
O ye of little faith! Surely by 2015, Barrack Obama the Friggin Messiah, will achieve Peace on Earth, and get us into the friggin Federation of Planets, there will be no crime, no poverty, no disease, and the sky will be just the right shade of pink. Disclaimer: there will also be no people.
"Wired For War". That's about Americans, or people in general?
Come on boys (and girl?), this is about remote controlled ucav's mostly, we are nowhere near to build even a dumb robot / computer system, let alone an abstracting intelligent one.
Not back to topic: robotics aided <strike>murder</strike> homeland defence is an interesting technology, but form a law standpoint the question is still: who pressed the button(s).
War is about a political issue solved through the use of force. A limitation on wars is the perceived politcial costs among your own population. (I.E. dead soldiers mean problems at home with political support)
If you remove the human costs you also remove the politcial costs. So in essence a roboticized military will probably encourage wars....
Service guarantees Citizenship! Questions Guarantee GITMO.... Amerika Uber Alles!
I've read the first few chapters and other than the lame introduction, the book is quite good. I haven't read any discussion yet of the philosophical implications of automated warfare, though I hope there will be (and not just from professional 'ethicists'). Mostly the author discusses the pragmatics of building ever smarter weapons and intelligence systems, which is mighty relevant to the present, and most assuredly the future of war.
Even when the author doesn't use the word "robot", the trend he describes is clear. Tomorrow's war will involve ever increasing amounts of separation between finger and trigger. Is this a bad thing? Obviously I want our side to win and I don't want any US or civilian casualties. But I also don't want war ever to seem as easy as Bush, Rumsfield, Cheney, and Wolfowitz assumed. Automatic War is a sure recipe for an infinite series of mindless incursions and body counts. This book should serve as a wake up call to the many aspects of war-by-wire, from technology to policy to ethics to cost. Going to war must never devolve to the pressing of one red button.
Randy
I see the introduction of robotic weapons to be a dangerous and ominous development. When you kill someone face to face, you experience it more directly, and you put yourself more directly at risk. When you use tools to kill from a distance, the risks are less obvious and wrongs are easier to deny. Was aerial bombing of cities in WW II a good development? The consensus seems to be that it was, but I'm not sure. And at least then there were men in the aircraft. Now a president can order an unmanned attack on a group of terrorists, or a wedding party as the case may be, at very little political risk, since there is no pilot to be captured or killed. And the scale of this sort of thing will become much, much larger. Of course a lot of such developments are inevitable, particularly once the genie is out of the bottle, but we do have some ability to change our trajectory a little bit.
The Skynet disaster won't happen, because computers aren't even remotely close to dangerous intelligence. But something similar could happen with men at the helm, using the technology to maintain their lifestyle at everyone else's expense. How long before some really strong countries start using nuclear weapons and unmanned surveillance and delivery systems to extort wealth from less powerful nations? I mean more overtly than happens currently? I think it will happen, not far in the future probably.
On the positive side, we could finally end up with a "robotic lone gunman" but for some reason those "lone gunmen" always seem to take out the good guys, not the psycho-creeps (does Cheney design robots???)
Robots were build by men...
... and they have a plan.
The wars of the future will not be fought on the battlefield or at sea. They will be fought in space, or possibly on top of a very tall mountain. In either case, most of the actual fighting will be done by small robots. And as you go forth today remember always your duty is clear: To build and maintain those robots. Thank you.
If the camera on the plane beams that video to the US, then a pilot reacts to whatever obstacle he's about to fly into and his control signals work their way back to the plane, while the plane is moving at 100's of mile an hour, I would expect some issues.
people protect themselves own team by covering up embarrassing mistakes
ha ha.... ^themselves^their
As an Air Force veteran with two draftable daughters, I'd say relying on robots rather than having our troops shot at and bombed is a GOOD thing.
I'm not sure I agree. While it would take soldiers out of the line of fire and reduce casualties, it would also make pointless, bloody wars a lot more palatable to the populace, and far easier to justify... after all, the populist tide didn't turn against the Iraq war until the US body count really started going up.
Spot on. Furthermore, the more acceptable a war is to the populace of the attacking country, by way of making it look like an arcade game, the less acceptable it will be to the people on the receiving end of the crossfire who have their houses blown up with their children inside, have surviving relatives who were previously ambivalent about jihadism, and who don't have their grief paraded on a continuous loop on Fox 'News.' I wonder how many moderate people the US has managed to radicalize since this unprovoked war in Iraq was started.
Can you say 'Blowback?'
Drill baby drill - on Mars
Is that Japan's going to win any war based on giant robots.
congratulations, you get a cookie
why is this modded informative?
After all 911 was certainly peanuts compared to the death toll US troops caused in other countries so far. These new weapons just make it more easy for the stupid US redneck solider to kill. Possibly in return he gets bombed in a baseball stadium.
Politicians wanting to show manly action by going to wars will win as there is no backlash by the stream of bodies coming home.
Economy wins as it has to produce endless stream of efficient and automatic killing machines.
let me see, did I forget somebody... hmm can't recall
It comes down to treasure. You can not win a wired war against the wireless. People have been writing variations of this crap ever since the first crossbow was invented. Nothing has significantly changed.
No, it cost them literally a few dollars and perhaps as much as the lives of one or two of their people to win a battle (i.e. road side bomb, blowing up hotel, crashing an airplane ). It cost us billions of dollars in hardware and manpower, and often hundreds of both military and civilian lives just to stop one. Most importantly, they determine when and how the battle if fought, in spite of the white house and pentagons best PR efforts to tell you the battle is in the mountains around Afghanistan or Pakistan. They can simply deny us any time they like the ability to engage them, and relocate the battle field to a place and time better suited them.
Now, the technology that they are trying to implement is simply a reaction to that battle field. We are the British still standing shoulder to shoulder to be picked off from the guys behind the trees. They figure if they can remove the human body from the battle field, they can do what the enemy is doing. It is a day late, a dollar and a war short. Yea, the body count will be reduced, but that does not win the war. Not engaging open armed conflict is the only way to win such a war. In order to match the enemy, you have to not present the target (in both terms of resources and lives). This is a war more suited to cold war tactics of intelligence and espionage, than to tanks and planes.
The U.S. wars in the middle east are political theater not military theater, and the enemy is winning.
Living in Chile
Not all of it, but the parts that aren't Linux are RTOSs or similar embedded system products. Selection criteria include support for real-time and safety-critical applications, IA accreditation/trustworthiness, and minimizing hands-on/SysAdmin support.
Would Steve B. fly in an airplane running Windows for its avionics?
What happens when the rest of the world has nasty-bots that can take on our nasty-bots? Either they'll start targeting the makers of the nasty-bots (the factories) and the controllers of the nasty-bots (hardenened bunkers---hmmm...I wonder which will be the easier target), or they'll realize that they're just letting their toys battle and they'd best learn to settle their conflicts by playing a few rounds of Pokemon.
I use irony whenever I can, but my shirts are still wrinkled...
The wars of the future will not be fought on the battlefield or at sea.
They will be fought in space, or possibly on top of a very tall
mountain. In either case, most of the actual fighting will be done by
small robots. And as you go forth today remember always your duty is
clear: To build and maintain those robots. Thank you.
Hi, I am an active duty US Marine who works with UAVs. The Shadow and the Predator are both controlled by Solaris workstations, running CDE as their desktop environment. The operators have no difficulty learning the system and never have to open a CLI. In fact, me as a tech, really never have to either.
Iraq: draw. We destroyed the army, and then sat on our hands as the country fell apart, causing great immiseration of the citizenry. We handed over the meatiest stuff to political cronies. After several years of clear failure, Iraq is now a marginal state whose future is up for grabs.
A draw? I think when viewed from the top of the pyramid, the state of Iraq as we see it today was always the desired result. --Actually, I'd say that every one of the wars you outline was a roaring success from the organizer's standpoint. Tons of money shifted from the public purse into private holdings, and lots of fear and chaos resulted; the perfect environment for the psychopath to expand and entrench its world view within the popular collective mental environment we all have to live in.
Politicians and industrialists like war, but regular people only pick up arms after significant mind conditioning has taken place. --After all, regular Joes are the ones getting their limbs shot off for their trouble. All the little Bushies and Daddy Warbucks' don't risk a damned thing.
As such, I think you might be making the common mistake of believing that the stated objectives as they appear in the propaganda are in fact the REAL objectives. --But once that little cognitive snag gets straightened out, the world suddenly makes a lot more sense to the observer.
-FL
I find it interesting to compare this stuff with its first incarnation - or perhaps the seed from which it grew - the infamous 1980s Strategic Computing Initiative.
Back in 1983, the DoD was asking for natural language, speech, machine vision, autonomous vehicles, and automated battlefield management systems to happen on precise schedules within ten years, which would make both the original Terminator movie and WarGames into fairly conservative extrapolations of sober science of the era. It didn't happen that fast, which led to the AI Winter and the downfall of Lisp and the rise of the lolintertubes instead - but it looks like parts of that 'autonomous battlefield robot' vision still *are* happening.
You are not a brain: http://books.google.com/books?id=2oV61CeDx-YC
The wars of the future will not be fought on the battlefield or at sea. They will be fought in space, or possibly on top of a very tall mountain. In either case, most of the actual fighting will be done by small robots. And as you go forth today remember always your duty is clear: To build and maintain those robots. Thank you.
For Al Qaeda, I mean. They can point out what a bunch of cowards Americans are, and how they are too scared even to touch the ground where Al Qaeda operates. They can point out how immoral the country is, since their dead relatives aren't even considered human, only "collateral damage."
Let me put it another way. The way America conducts warfare make it obvious to any outsider the that it's motivation cannot possibly be moral. No one is willing to die in order to protect local civilian populations. No leader is signing up their close relatives. A good portion of the fighting force is made up of mercenaries charging hundreds of thousand of dollars per soldier. There's very little difference to local tribes between Soviets cruising around in their helicopters and the Americans remotely controlling their UAVs.
Things like unmanned aircraft and the development of robotic weaponry are just helping to prove that point.
Potentially a great idea, but what happens when the opposition/enemy figures out how to block/jam the First-Person-View Fly-By-Wire carrier waves used to control these planes? YouTube has some excellent videos on First-Person-View model airplane flying with conventional technology for the home hobbyist. Just type in 'FPV RC plane' to get a list of videos. I suppose if the enemy/opposition were to block the carrier waves, they would be lobbing bombs at themselves in a very uncontrolled manner.
The American pilots seeing the most combat in Iraq and Afghanistan right now do so from flight consoles in the United States
I'm sure this has been addressed in previous articles, but I'm surprised they get acceptable performance with the latency that entails. I have a hard enough time steering my dwarf rogue around Northrend when I'm at 400ms ping, I'd hate to be flying multi-million dollar killing machines under those conditions.
Media that can be recorded and distributed can be recorded and distributed.
-kfg
Nigger comes from the word black. Why the fuck can't you be less lazy and use other racial slurs like chink, spic, towelhead, etc? Ugh, fucking little kiddes wanting to feel big...
Taking people out of the equation will eventually make matters worse. A robotic UAV can be tasked to perform tasks that would never have been dreamed before with pilots or soldiers. What is the worse that could happen? No one would be captured--just a disabled robot.
I think as more of the UAV are upgraded to think more on their own and not require a pilot controlling remotely, the politicians will then reach too far and direct the military to do more harm as they will have no consequences if it fails.
Isn't this already done in South Korea, where Terrans, Zerg and Protoss fight online on a daily basis?
I have to say as soon as I saw Boston Dynamics' "Big Dog" I knew that was something special. Its a quantum leap over the status quo in robotics. This im sure is the beginning of a series of rapid incremental advances in robotics and robotic applications both civillian and military. The Japanese robotics nerds who hang around with the Japanese software nerds who brought you "RapeQuest" are going hell for leather to create real doll "sex bots", while I can imagine the imminent automation of army tanks so we have remotely or autonomous tanks fighting alongside real troops, who themselves carry much of their losistics into the battle field on robotic transports like big dog only bigger and better. Basically I can believe that all the sci fi robot machines in pop culture movies will be possible due to advances in robotics. Ie those giant walking four legged machines in star wars and those two legged long legged walking machines seem in reach from here.
http://www.anticharisma.com/
We really are quite a petty, pathetic little species, when all is said and done. Can't blame any aliens, if they exist and manage to find us, from putting us out of our misery, or anyone else's for that matter!
"I'm 98% percent sure this miniature organic meatbag wants you to help find his fellow minitiare organic meatbags. The other 2 percent is that he is just looking for trouble and needs to be blasted, but that might be wishfull thinking on my part."
A UAV is not a robot. Your car is not a robot (unless your car is from that DARPA challenge which drives itself).
Battlebots were not robots, they were remote controlled cars with weapons.
Utilizing the synergization of benchmark e-solutions to pre-workaround action items!
if it uses a computer remotely, it can be hacked.
problem is this scenario:
president: "general, the president of (omitted ) just called me and said that one of our ..."
predators just bombed their new nuke plant."
general: "yes sir, we know"
president: "what happened? i dint give the order to bomb (omitted)'s nuke plant!"
general (grinning): "WE didnt bomb the nuke plant. somebody hacked into our network and stole a predator"
president (thoughtful): "i see
Some things are found to be explosively offensive exactly because they are true.
Put another way. . .
"The enormity of the reaction often indicates the power of the truth being commented upon." --When one points out the elephant in the living room, those who are struggling most stridently to ignore that ugly, stinking beast which has such a terrible hold on their souls, will rather than do something useful about the problem, instead tackle the offending commenter to ground and stuff a sock in his mouth. Before returning to their FPS game of choice to breathe the addict's sigh of relief.
You know who you are, and despite all your rationalizations, you also know I'm right. You don't even have to look so very deep down inside, and that's exactly the problem, isn't it?
-FL
If another country had a predator unmanned aircraft fly over my house, which is highly unlikely since NORAD would most likely shoot it down before it could get anywhere near land. But still if an unmanned foreign military aircraft flew over my house... in California, it would not be flying much longer.
and don't forget that they use depression (and it's resultant unemployment) to force state takeover of corporations and indeed people to do their bidding for them.
Anyone remember what major conflict occurred after the Lusitania was deliberately sailed into German u-boat channels (after the great depression)?
WWII
"..it was the Pakistanis that funnelled the majority of the weapons and supplies to the more radical Mujahadeen during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan."
No, the weapons were funnelled through Pakistan - but bought and paid for, and under the direction of the CIA & Pentagon - that is such an accepted fact of history no effort should be wasted on even recounting that.
Sufi Islam was the norm along the Afghani border prior to Brzezinksi, along with funding and the help of the Saudis, importing extremist elements along the Afghani northern border. The history of military funding by the US to Pakistan predates the Soviet invasion, with Pakistan ostensibly serving as the bulwark against Communist Chinese expansionism, while antipathy existed between India and the US due to India's ties with the Sovs. (At that time 20 families controlled Pakistan; today the number is 22 families - I guess that's called progress!)
And "al Qaeda" means "the base" and it first appeared in a Washington Post news article - in the early '80s - during an interview with a CIA field operations officer who was describing their database of Mujahadeen fighters.
Was that KL restaurant the really nifty-looking one situated at the bottom of a waterfall?
Now if we could only have robots living in the target areas ...