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Air Force Planning New Drone Fleet For Pakistan
mattnyc99 writes "With tensions high on the border, a new commander in Afghanistan, and complaints of civilian deaths from robotic US strikes in Pakistan raising anti-American sentiment, the Air Force is sketching out concepts for new robotic hitmen, reports Esquire.com. Among the new drones (which are all very small) are the Suburb Warrior (loaded with four or five mini missiles for semi-urban environments), the Sniper targeting system ("that can lock on to multiple targets, allowing a single drone pilot to coordinate the attacks of a squadron of robots"), and a backup fleet of flying buggies that act as suicide-bomber snipers. From the article: 'Picking through the dozens of systems in this briefing, many of which will be flight-tested within five years, there's a clear set of goals: build smaller, even microscopic drones with smaller weapons that can hunt in swarms and engage targets in the close quarters of urban battlefields. And hunt as soon as possible.'"
Esquire.com top 3 stories:
This one.
The greatest karaoke song of all time.
How the american man "really" spends his day.
Not sure that I would put all my magical beans into that lone basket.
Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.
Skynet.
War is just a silly game of 'who runs out of soldiers first' played between two governments. If soldiers can be replaced by robots I'm all for it
When i hear something like that i must always think about what cool stuff all those scientists could have made if they would have put there efforts into something usefull like Space travel or something...im sure we could have a freaking warp drive *g*
usawarmachine
It's only a matter of time before anybody, anywhere in the world can be picked off by a robot without any warning.
It's modern technology, Bobby!
expandfairuse.org
and the USA can attack pretty much any country they want while their own are sitting behind a computer somewhere playing Americas Army with real targets.
It is much easier waging wars when you don't see crying mothers of dead soldiers on TV. Afterall, the others are just terrorists so the war is just and for us it is more like a video game.
Time to purchase stocks of arms manufactures....
I'm thinking the ancient drones from stargate is the goal.
-Ours is the wisdom of Solomon, the magic of Merlyn, the fall of Icaris.
If bad guys get hand on this technology which seems likely because these flying creatures will be ubiquitous and in close contact then no one will be safe even presidents of countries .
FTFS:
build smaller, even microscopic drones with smaller weapons
But what kind of weapons could a microscopic drone ...
OMG! They're planning biological weapons!
The /. summary proves it!
Have you tried turning it off and on again?
Most of these UAVs still require input from a human operator in order to receive authorization to fire. What happens when we fight anyone with moderate technical capabilities? The first thing that I would do when up against a drone army is to break out the RF jammer or a moderately powered microwave dish effectively denying the UAV access to the battlefield.
If bad guys get hand on this technology because it will be in close contact and ubiquitous then no one in the world will be safe from its menace even heads of states.We must first look at all the consequences before inventing something.
Seriously, it's 2009 can we please cut the bullshit? I'm so god-damn sick of hearing about this or that military technology wasting billions of dollars that could otherwise be spent doing any number of more worthy things.
Can we please go out and work on cancer, or alternative energy, or space travel, or designer gold plated diamond encrusted dildos. ANYTHING is better spending more money on yet another way to kill people.
On one hand, scary to imagine the world with warfare robots.
On the other hand, dude, I built RC planes in high school and designed my own jet powered drone which could theoretically carry weapons while in college. How do I submit my proposals to the USAF?
Karma Whoring for Fun and Profit.
Almost all scientific break-throughs/developments go through a clearly observable cycle. 1. Theoretical, 2. Experimental 3. Prototypical, 4. Militaristic 5. Commercial 6. Entertainment. Granted that a very few developments skipped a step or two, but for the most part, the cycle holds true. Which makes me wonder....how long it will be until we can be watching drones "police" us on Cops????
-Oz
The biggest issue of the 21st century is post-scarcity technology wielded by people still preoccupied with fighting over perceived scarcity.
Nuclear power, biotech, AI, robotics, nanotech, the internet, and social bureaucracy -- each of these technologies could make the earth a paradise if developed for humane ends.
Albert Einstein said: "The release of atom power has changed everything except our way of thinking...the solution to this problem lies in the heart of mankind. If only I had known, I should have become a watchmaker."
The same is true for robotics, biotech, and the rest. Even smart networked watches. :-)
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
When will it be understood that supplying one terrorist state (Pakistan) with arms to wipe out another group of terrorists never works.... It did not work when Afghans were armed to fight the USSR, look how that backfired.... It did not work when Saddam was armed to create disharmony in Iran, the last 5 years are proof of that folly.... How stupid can people be, oh well don't answer that, 8 yrs of a moron as supreme leader answers the question.....
It just occurred to me that this is just another weapon like gun, it will get distributed all over the world and we would have more of current violent condition all across the world.
It doesn't matter what guns are sent and whether they are manned or not, as long as there are Warmongering leaders across the world pretending to protect these kind of developments are more to come.
Just because military technology gives birth to greater breakthroughs it doesn't mean we can step over the damage it causes.
-- It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it. -- Aristotle
This stuff needs to be treated like nuclear weapons in terms of international condemnation. It is much harder to determine if a rogue country is trying to build such technology and is therefore MORE dangerous then nuclear weapons.
Drone weaponry, especially the microscopic crap they are dreaming about (but seriously working on), are just as dangerous as biological weaponry. Borders will mean nothing to the people that have this capability.
I don't care if it IS us that will have this technology. It needs to be stopped before we have ourselves another Cold-War, or worse, a real war.
I don't trust ANYONE with this tech.
Just last weekend I went to the American Modelers Association's Futaba Extreme Flight Championships. It was basically figure skating for R/C aircraft done to music.
The fixed wing aircraft were impressive for the things they could do that their bigger piloted cousins could never do (such as nose-up hovering). But the real eye openers were the helicopters.
The small R/C helicopters in those experienced fifteen-year-old hands could pretty much do anything you could think of: Instant transitions between vertical directions like they had vertically opposed rockets, instant recoveries from uncontrolled flight, rolls, twists, hovering while the fuselage was vertical, limited upside-down flight, etc.
One of my first thoughts was "Wow, you're not going to hit that with an RPG." I'm not sure about the range of their radios, or if such control could be extended beyond line of sight, but the thought of such controlled (and relatively low tech) chaos unleashed on a battlefield could gave me the willies.
Perpetual, low-level war.
Quack, quack.
No fear, our friend the AGM-68 HARM will come hunting for you. Or, the Brits' very nice ALARM, which will wait for you if you get scared and turn off your jammer for a bit.
Inquiring minds want to know!
Bet ya'all didn't see this one coming :)
all you have to do is:
1. stop people believing in something
2. stop people from having passions in their beliefs
war and love are permanent aspects of mankind, two sides of a coin. you can't have one without the other. both are immutable unavoidable implications of having passion in something. we will never stop waging war, or love, as long as we exist as a species
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
i view this as the enemy of peace, not the maintainer of it
a military technological development which leads to the inability of nations and states to maintain their integrity and borders seems like a good development to me
the world needs to move into a post-nationalistic world. so bring on the military technology which would destroy national integrity and borders. these are artificial constructs which render decisions based on tribalism and ethnocentrism. destroy all nations
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Robot drones patrolling the neighborhoods will protect little Johny.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Have drones working in pairs or larger swarms.
They lose contact - all drones switch to autopilot, start recording a video of the area, mapping the source of the jamming signal, while lifting off to a safe altitude and trying to recontact the HQ.
They then stream the video and the jammer's location to the HQ, where humans inspect the data, make a visual and/or thermal lock on the jammer and send one drone on a scripted assignment to take it out while others are used for visual confirmation from a safe altitude.
Not sure if that antenna is a civilian mobile network relay or a hostile jamming station? Order one drone to do a detailed inspection while others watch.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Not to down play the efforts of the men an women in are armed forces, but it sure take a lot fewer of them to do the job.
Part of it is technological progress. But a lot of it is the nature of our enemies. In WWII we fought industrialized nation states. They weren't quite as industrialized as the US, but it was a close call.
Today we fight a bunch of losers who couldn't even build an effective industry and military. They use guerrilla warfare, which is notoriously ineffective, because it's the best they can do.
-- Support a free market in the field of government
The point, once again, is to make killing massive amounts of people as simple as pressing a button, with no soldiers on the ground
Did you read the article? The point of this technology is to kill targeted people with as little collateral damage (= dead innocents) as possible. To quote the article:
Instead of dropping Hellfires or a 500-pound bomb on an insurgent hideout, one or more Suburb Warriors could fire a volley of mini-missiles at confirmed targets, without vaporizing the wedding reception next door.
-- Support a free market in the field of government
Wake me when we're fighting cyberwars in cyberspace with cybersoldiers.
as long as human beings exist, someone somewhere will be trying to impose their beliefs on someone else. nothing will ever stop such people from continuously being reborn in every generation
it is a constant struggle to subdue those who would impose on you. thus, there will always be war
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
The people that control these drones, and other remote 'killing machines' must feel like gutless cunts.
After all, this would make more compelling to attack soft targets and use terrorist tactics. Even using robots and modern tech, it is really hard to have full surveillance in a city; and without human inteligence, the risk of hitting the wrong target goes up. Certainly, instead of blowing up a wedding party, the operators of this weapons could kill only the groom, but you still will end with a bunch of angry people not willing to support your policies and diminish the legitimacy of the local government.
The problem in Pakistan is mostly a lack of legitimacy and the perception that the current government is only a puppet of USA. Those weapons will not change that, unless both governments really want to go to massive pollitical asesinations and rule only by fear.
Welcome to the new Middle Age!
Mexico: 100% conservative's America now!
Because it is believed that a Microsoft-based machine will likely have an error/crash, thus causing hesitation, such as happened with the USS Yorktown for a couple of hours.
seems to me the iranian people are doing a better job of that right now than i ever could ;-)
perhaps you should learn something about exactly what, not i have been saying, but what the iranian people are now saying, no?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Sounds like someone's been reading some culture novels, and instead of taking away some of the philosophy about responsibility and human interaction, they thought 'Wow! Knife drones are cool!'
Yay me!
The idea here being
"if we could just make super-judicial executions cleaner... then this Assassination business will be nice and tidy. No hurt feelings on both sides. It's a real win-win!"
Interventionism hasn't worked for several decades now (and has backfired catastrophically several times).
I don't understand how zapping people suspected of being "bad guys" is justified.
The implicit idea in this story is those people (Pakistanis) are not Americans. So the American goverment doesn't have to follow bothersome American laws and rights. Those laws and rights only hamper real "justice".
You might think " American's will get it right, they won't zap people indiscriminantly".
But that's one reason Guantanamo is a big deal. Some people wasting their life away in that concrete jail were put there based on hearsay.
That song ought to be changed to
"And I'm proud to be an American,
where at least I know I can watch the YouTube video of the swarm of missiles blowing some unlucky towelhead to bits in the middle of a sunny day in a city that's in a country deemed dangerous by the American military and I can feel safe knowing the American missile robot swarm is not hunting me
And I won't forget the men who died,
who gave their life for the American missile robot swarm so the American military didn't get bored and turn those robot swarms on me."
After I RTFA, I started to think of other uses of drones; fighting fires, spraying crops, search and reconnaissance of folks that got lost, and cargo transporting. If the military makes a working robot solder, I can see a lot theft happening. House Wives, and College students in dormitories would be the primary suspects. I can see the Joint Chiefs of Staff's indignity of watching their armies of vandalized T1000's mopping a floors, baking cookies, cleaning bathrooms, tending gardens, and the dreaded vacuuming, (my personal Nemesis).
Design a radio control airplane that can shoot these drones down.
If we don't do it, someone else will. No weapon of war remains un-countered for long.
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
I am THE anonymous coward, and now I can not only watch and track you from my secret control bunker (Mom's basement), but now I can KILL you motherfuckers without putting down my Mountain Dew. And you stupid bastards built it for me, I just waited until it was live.
Exit, stage left, any sense of security you though you had left.
And with the right proxy, I can pin the blame on anyone I want...
Oh, wait... that means they can pin their assassinations on me instead.... shit....oh, shit ...
My robots will find them. MUHAHAHA.
People are ignoring that its planned for places like Pakistan
mostly mountainous region where foot patrols are not practical, and robot surveys are more cost effective, in the end they are just doing what is cheaper
I dont see how a robot armed with a bomb is any different than a satellite guided missle from a cruiser. The satellite could be considered a type of robot, it sends a missle to blow up instead of itself
That illustration is down-town Los Angeles. I think I see a building that I once contracted at. Scary! Couldn't they use a made-up city for that pic?
Table-ized A.I.
So after the first presidential candidate dies, say around 2020, the urge to retaliate will be overwhelming. After that, it's tit-for-tat, all the way to hell.
Who are you and how did you find out the plot for my upcoming political thriller?
with one of the plot points from terminator salvation
and it didn't even work in a fantasy movie
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
The problem here is the way this intelligence framework is going to work vis-a-vis the Pak Military and ISI (intelligence services). It will almost be given, that there will be some sort of operational authority given to Pakistan - what is, however, unclear is the way it can be (mis)used to spy on Indian troop movements on the LOAC (Line of Actual Control - border between India and Pak). Given the terrorist attacks of 26-11, on Mumbai, and the diplomatic as well as military sabre -rattling taking place, it will be very interesting to see how the US handles these operations on Pak soil.
Anthropomorphization is for human consumption:
It sickens me (but sadly, only slightly) the ease with which the handlers can (and will) bond with these machines, in the process externalizing the death and destruction that they bring upon other humans.
What?! Is 10-bedtime some kind of anti-robot racist?
No, but some local maxima are less local and less maximal than I'd like to see. As human society matures, its potential for acting, you know, humane seems ever further away. The age of remote-controlled assisination robots are a local maxima in that such killings could actually be considered humane -- the handlers have almost no risk of personal injury.
[end rambling despair...]
Their suicide bombers = "Filthy Hun weasels fighting their dirty underhand war" Our suicide bombers = "Splendid fellows, brave heroes, risking life and limb for Blighty" Seriously, anyone who uses 'warrior' with its connotations of bravery in a context of destroying civilians by remote control makes Gen Melchett look like a model of sanity and morality.
US is very much like the bad guys in lots of hollywood movies.
e.g. Terminator, Star wars, Independence day
All feature large superior force with evil weapons attacked by human freedom fighters (also known as terrorists lately).
These movies can all be used to incite freedom fighters to fight the evil impersonal overlords that attack without putting their own lives in jeopardy.
There are going to be some confused kids when they see which side is flying the obligatory US flags in some of these movies.
To fight the Nazis, we allied with the Soviets. To fight the Soviets, we funded the Islamic fundamentalists. To fight the Islamic fundamentalists, we created a robot army. To fight the robots, ...
poeple will go to war even if there isn't one penny involved. motivation is not always economic. it could be ideological, theological, psychological, etc.
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Controlled by a human = !Robot.
AFAIK none of these are truly robots, they're remote controlled drones. A land mine would be closer to a robot than something like predator. AFAIK all of these systems that have weapons still require a 'man in the loop' to pull the trigger. A robot would not, it would have to IFF on it's own and fire.
Battlebots weren't robots, they were remote controlled cars with weapons. Mecha are not robots either, they're piloted vehicles. The PACRATs from GI Joe were robots.
Utilizing the synergization of benchmark e-solutions to pre-workaround action items!
the security council makes sure nothing ever actually useful gets done
if the security council were expanded to include more powers, like japan and brazil and india, AND action only required a MAJORITY of a vote, not unanimous, then we might actually be talking about a UN that actually matters in the world
but as it is, the un is just an expensive exercise in writing careful calibrated statements, watered down to offend no one, including often the criminals or sponsors of the criminals in geopolitical games
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
it basically comes down to: "don't care about anything, and you won't suffer"
oh, great fucking advice. as soon as i turn into a robot i'll be sure to become a buddhist
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
i always decry the intellectual dishonesty of those who decry military action... against essentially military strongmen
plenty of them actually do care about the principles they say they speak for. their passion is real. but they are morons. because they haven't thought through the full implications of what they say they stand for. they actually wind up standing for positions which only serve to further the interests of forces in this world... which defile their principles
if you say you are against violence, you need to stand up to violent people. which of course paradoxically entails some sort of violence. but that really is not the same thing as the violence you are fight. violence taken in reaction to violence is not the same as violence taken in aggressive initiative
if a pacifist stand idly by while one man stabs another repeatedly, he is not really a pacifist. by his inaction and indifference, he furthers the cause of violence
to be a true pacifist, you need to take violent action against those who initiate violence on the innocent
a "pacifist" who takes no stand against any violence in this world is merely preserving the status quo of a violent world. a human conscience demands you take action against injust violent aggression. to not act against aggressors is some sort of weakness or cowardice which furthers aggression in this world, and is not true pacifism
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I know, I know!
Just imagine all the benefits! Technology is good!
But I can't shake the feeling that this is just like eugenics and human cloning: Amazing and powerful technology that is in the wrong hands being developed for the wrong reasons and there's nothing we can do to stop them from destroying us all.
But it's super cool, right?
but you cherry pick the reasons that support your tired cynicism
you have a prejudice, and you pick the reasons that support your prejudice, and you don't bother to examine alternate reasons, equally valid, and possibly arrive at alternate conclusions about what truly motivates nations and people in a dominant fashion
you are a propaganda victim. propaganda never lies. it merely traffics in half-truths: small bits and pieces of the overall puzzle, examined in isolation, to arrive at conclusions that are out of whack, but supported by "the truth"
you need to develop a wider perspective, consider deeper avenues of the context of situations you depend upon to support your mentality and opinions, and grow in intellectual honesty
but right now you are just a tired crackpot hack
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
because it also means you cannot love
passion is all that really matters in this world. and when i say matters, i mean that literally: not that passion matters in terms of what is important to you or me, but that passion matters in terms of what ultimately decides the fate of us all
you don't win the game by choosing not to play it. you merely become irrelevant
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
why the figure 687 and the hint that the figure could be real or imaginary?
786 is holy number for many Muslims in Asia.
what sort of prank is this?
I have noted many articles with suspicious names for authors or names of authors that have a couple of things in common with the headline or a theme central to the story. I feel that it is too much of a coincidence that the name of the author in several such cases has conceptual proximity or is synonymous with something unique in the article - not John [Something] in John Doe vs the RIAA, but David Stone in an article about David Petraeus.
There's something fishy about 687. Messages are passed around the internet with codes and pre-decided text, but news outlets, headlines and fictitious statistics and author names?
Should we be allowed to use FOIA to get to meet the author online in a video chat so that newspapers do not get away with pranks? Especially on sensitive topics like this one? Is this to trap young Muslims into "online traps"?
Or are these just harmless pranks on a slow news day?
Going into Iraq at all (nevermind "under-armored") was provably and specifically the fault of the politicos,* not the military. With Mogadishu, the army re-learned they are sacrificial pawns for their big business king. And the military is all too familiar with doing without a lot of things, including armor and a good reason to be killing people.
*politicos = politicians who will soon return to their real jobs in oil companies, Halliburton, and on the boards of various international corporations
When a country's citizens are invaded by a far superior military, a guerrilla response (independent armed resistance) is a defense, not a PR move. The US military has in deed beat down and killed many men, women, children, soldiers, and a few extremists, including shooting and bombing hospitals, hotels, homes, and schools (see Baghdad video and Fallujah descriptions for examples). The problem with war is a moral one, you have to be willing to kill a lot of innocent people; a problem with a guerrilla reaction in this case is that it kills the invaders (the US), whom happen to be family and friends to a lot of oblivious Americans. Make no mistake though, question whether the US should be there in the first place, then tackle the response issues.
I get so freakishly angry when I read these articles. What/why makes people so intent of killing other human beings? I know it goes on, yes. but I can't for the life of me understand why? Please cannot someone instead invent the unlimited energy machine just to make this shit go away. "Wow I just invented a faster way of killing people, remotely!!" FU! I say, you should be ashamed of yourself. Invent something useful instead. Many of us are still in the animal stage and have to maintain the integrity of our territory. Wake the fuck up! It isn't about your land or your views of god or whatever. There are atleast 6 billion! people on this earth that do not share your entire life vision. Learn to coexist. Protection is one thing of course, but when you see you are winning by 6000 points in some game, can't you have the dignity to at least give the opposing team some pointers(money, whatever, instead of a war budget huge as Mount Everest) in how to play the game? "They"(oooooh) aren't always out to kill you, "they" want a decent life and(often) some improvement for their offspring, that's all. Of course there are some charismatic numbnuts trying to influence people to do stupid things, this is where information comes in(IT). Give them information, give them means to communicate. But FFS, stop bombing the shit out of everyone, it isn't useful,successful nor human.