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A Peek At South Korea's Autonomous Robot Gun Turrets
cylonlover writes "If there's one place you don't want to be caught wandering around right now, it's the demilitarized zone that separates North and South Korea. Especially since South Korean military hardware manufacturer DoDAMM used the recent Korea Robot World 2010 expo to display its new Super aEgis 2, an automated gun turret that can detect and lock onto human targets from kilometers away, day or night and in any weather conditions, and deliver some heavy firepower."
can it detect cloaked spies carrying sappers?
The AACS key is NOT 0xF606EEFD628B1CA427BEA93A9CA9773F
The Juche spirit is indomitable. The capitalist lap dogs of the South cannot hope to win because their people are weak and unwilling to die for their country.
I tend not to get too excited by weapons since they are designed to kill people. Still, these are primarily defensive.
What is really great about them though is that they can be used s an alternative to landmines. There has been a strong demand for a landmine ban from a lot of the world for some time, but they have been unable to get US backing. Now, the US is pretty responsible with its landmines, but the failure of such a major nation to agree to treaties bannning mines has resulted in many less responsible nations refusing to do so either.
These autonomous sentries are a lot easier to spot and deactivate, and considerably less likely to be forgotten about. They're not exactly pleasant but far better than the alternative.
At some point, they have enough conventional weapons that they can guarantee each other's destruction even without the need of nukes.
I'd hate to be the maintenance guy: "You sure this thing's been swithced off?" "Sure thing, go right ahead...." "Okay, it's a four kilometer hike, and don't turn it back on until I've checked it, and walked back...."
What's really great about these turrets is that besides being able to fire missiles long range, they can also detect cloaked units up to 7 spaces away. This is especially useful for detecting ghosts and wraiths.
just send in cardboard cutouts on Segways until the turret runs out of ammo. I wonder if they would shoot at someone walking on their hands, or maybe you can program them to only shoot people with bad fashion/hair...hmmmm
Waiting for the other shoe to...
If you read the "story" you will see that the entire DMZ angle is entirely speculation. The writer doesn't know if this weapon is used there or not, but that doesn't stop him waffling on about it, before admitting its all speculation at the end.
Do they have limited ammo with a cool retro yellow-black interface, which ticks down to zero with appropriate warnings, is fooled by throwing an empty bucket in front of it, and which exhausts its entire ammo supply in under 30 seconds?
Either way, the Aliens:Special Edition guys probably would like to have a look at them.
.... they're a sitting duck for a missile or shelling to take them out.
....one hell of a Top Gear episode
We'll start off here, in Busan, South Korea
and race up the east coast into the demilitarised zone between N & S Korea
Avoiding the barrage of automatic gun fire, we'll hurtle into North Korea
Now, as many western maps have no details on the layout of North Korea, we'll all become James May for the day, and probably get lost
But by mid-afternoon we must have traversed west through North Korea, and begin our journey back south down the western coast
Again, avoiding the barrage of automatic gun fire as we pass into South Korea, we'll finish the race in a town called Gwangju for a traditional Korean evening meal (which Hammond won't eat)
So they recently phased in autoturrets because of a 1976 incident ? Talk about swift action.
What a depressingly stupid machine.
have extremely cute voices?
After years of not using a signature, I am going to make one to say the following: Fuck Beta
I tend not to get too excited by weapons since they are designed to kill people. Still, these are primarily defensive.
There are no such things as defensive or "primarily defensive" weapons. Or pehaps it would be more accurate to admit that there are such but the distinction is completely irrelevant.
Let's imagine that during the cold war one of the sides would have came up with a technology that would have given them 100% protection from the opponent's missiles. This would have been primarily defensive technology (and one that protects the civilian population!) but it obviously would have meant that the side gets a massive offensive advantage (as the other side can't retaliate). Or let's imagine that a nation occupies another nation and then uses primarily defensive weapons to hold those areas under control (to prevent the attacks of the resistance movement and such). Is that offensive or defensive? In nearly any imaginable conflict, the attacker also needs to defend itself and as such it doesn't really matter whether a weapon is defensive or not.
You could make a point that the defensive weapons help keep the current situation stable (Let's deploy those to every border of every nation and if they're efficient enough... Whoo! No war!) but that doesn't really matter unless we know that the current situation is and will be the preferred one. There are (and will be) plenty of dictatorships that will use the newest defensive technologies to prevent revolutions. I know that I'm somewhat stretching the literal meaning of the word but I'd still like to say that sometimes keeping the situation stable is equivalent to an offensive action (That a cruel dictator is equivalent to an occupying force)... Now, some entities always can defeat the newest technologies, others can't. This essentially means that every time a new (defensive) weapon is created, more power is concentrated to the entities that are already the most rich and powerful. That's the only stability that those create.
As for those being alternative to land mines... Interesting point. I bet that those are (and will be, for the foreseaable future) so much more expensive than landmines, though, that it won't be "either-or". It will probably be "landmines" or "both".
I have worked in South Korea and believe me they take security seriously. I didn't see any Security Theatre at all while I was there. There were lots of guns and fences though.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
Here's a video on Youtube showing the prototype during testing, I'm sure it's only a glitch.
> Weapons aren't evil when used to defend oneself.
Weapons are not evil. To be evil requires the capacity for good, Some "evil" people are not evil because they lack this trait; they are insane.
Even the ICJ has admitted that nuclear weapons might be legitimately used in some circumstances, for example.
And enough rifles will kill as many people as died at Hiroshima, or Dresden. Or under Stalin.
A weapon is a tool, to be used or abused or destroyed or thrown away. Your point--"when used to defend oneself"--shows that It is what we do with the weapon that establishes moral worth.
-- IANAL, this isn't legal advice, and definitely isn't legal advice for you. Also, Squee!
...what ever happened to the Three Laws of Robotics?
Defeat the ability of the 'autofocus Infra-Red sensor' and the weapon is rendered useless.
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
... remote controlled. This turrets still require a human being for firing from a remote secure location. They can be connected by wire (ethernet) or wireless. Yes, i not only did RTFA, but also read the promotional poster of the weapon itself.
No. In fact the US/ROK military has had a problem (at least into the 1980s) with their human-detecting radar alerting on Manchurian cranes in the DMZ. Any moving creature big enough to register at all, registers as "target".
Censorship is telling a man he can't have a steak just because a baby can't chew it. --Mark Twain
I can see a large call for midgets in the army coming soon.
I just sent wave after wave of men until the killbots simply reached their kill limit of 999,999 then swept them off the floor.
The original url looks about the same size as the tinyurl: http://lmgtfy.com/?q=Kongsberg+RWS. Oh wait, am I reducing your ability to track people who click your link? I'm sorry.
Or are you just trying to hide the fact that the final landing is http://www.google.com/search?q=Kongsberg+RWS (again, not long enough to warrant a shortener)?
Actually the idea is that you can always claim that a soldier disobeyed orders. You can always claim that one person was aggressive and trigger happy. It is a lot less credible claim to say that a robot that record everything did the same.
Also the fact that every year South Korean soldiers are injured in the DMZ probably plays a role in the decision, too.
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.