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."

Comments

But...

[rbarreira]

can it detect cloaked spies carrying sappers?

It does not have the Juche spirit

[BadAnalogyGuy]

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.

Re:It does not have the Juche spirit

[DNS-and-BIND]

Amateur.

The American reactionaries and their South Korean lapdogs are becoming so brazen-faced as to distort and justify the crimes perpetrated by American imperialists against humanity in the past, kicking up a whirlwind of militarism throughout their societies. It is a legal and moral obligation and a historical task of the United States to redeem its past crimes. No matter how much water may flow under the bridge, the Korean people will never forget the American imperialists' history of criminal aggression of Korea. It has become as clear as noonday that the U.S. seeks to turn the Korean Peninsula into a sea of fire. America will pay for it without fail, today or tomorrow, the only question is when. There exists no "human rights issue" in the DPRK as all its people form a big family and live in harmony helping and leading one another forward under the man-centred socialist system. It is quite ludicrous for the U.S. to talk about human rights as it has wantonly violated the sovereignty of Afghanistan by openly mounting a military attack on it, state-sponsored terrorism, defying the un and international law and ruthlessly trampled underfoot the human rights of innocent people there. The Obama administration is massacring civilians in an organized way by use of most destructive high-tech weapons.They cannot stop the juche socialism as practiced by the DPRK. A heyday unprecedented in the history of the nation lies ahead of the brave fraternal Korean people, who are courageously rushing towards the world by tapping the inexhaustible potentials of Songun era. Socialism in the DPRK is winning a victory after victory. The Workers' Party of Korea has covered the road of victory and glory under the wise leadership of President Kim Il Sung.The recent Conference of the WPK demonstrated the iron will of the Korean people to remain faithful to the leadership of Kim Jong Il, holding him at the top post of the WPK. The might of the army and people of the DPRK united close around the great WPK serves as a source of invincibility of Korean-style socialism. World-startling events are taking place one after another in socialist Korea. This has convinced the world progressive political parties of a victory of socialism. Bright future is in store for the WPK and people holding Kim Jong Il in high esteem. Kim Jong Il is leading the campaign for the building of a great, prosperous and powerful nation to a brilliant victory as he steers the efforts to effect a great revolutionary upsurge on the strength of single-minded unity.

There's a really useful aspect to these.

[91degrees]

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.

Re:There's a really useful aspect to these.

[ShakaUVM]

>>I guess you're right, it's the lesser evil. Still, I find it scaring and can't understand what makes a human being work day after day to design and manufacture such an evil device. Clumsy and random, as Obi-Wan would put it.

Maybe it was designed by a bunch of guys who didn't want to see their friends killed and wives raped.

Weapons aren't evil when used to defend oneself.

Re:There's a really useful aspect to these.

[Chibi Merrow]

Sarcasm aside, what troubles me is that those defensive weapons are not about defense, it's about eliminating any (by any I mean literally 100%) risk for defender.

Why should a defender expose himself to risk when by definition he is likely not the one at fault here? How can such a defensive solution be "applied" except by an attacker first attacking?

It's not like they're going to turret crawl to Pyonyang... Wait...

The national passtime of South Korea is StarCraft... Siege Tank crawl... My God, it suddenly makes sense! Oh hell! WE'RE FUCKED!

Re:There's a really useful aspect to these.

[theheadlessrabbit]

The national passtime of South Korea is StarCraft... Siege Tank crawl... My God, it suddenly makes sense! Oh hell! WE'RE FUCKED!

North Korea has a lot of very cheap units, while the South has a lot of very powerful, but expensive units.
It's pretty much a Zerg vs Protoss battle.
All the South has to do is survive the initial rush. After that, their eventual victory is pretty much assured.

Re:There's a really useful aspect to these.

[nedlohs]

And I'm sure some even consider working to keep their family and friends and countrymen a little safer from being overrun and losing all their freedoms a noble and worthwhile cause.

Maintenance

[Nineteen-Delta]

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...."

Great detectors too

[BadAnalogyGuy]

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.

Total Speculation

[gsslay]

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.

That'd make....

[Ynot_82]

....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)

Re:They phased them in relatively recently

[vegiVamp]

So they recently phased in autoturrets because of a 1976 incident ? Talk about swift action.

But do they

[FunPika]

have extremely cute voices?

There are no defensive weapons

[Anonymous Coward]

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".

Re:I'm just glad

[MichaelSmith]

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.

What about the beta testers

[hannson]

Here's a video on Youtube showing the prototype during testing, I'm sure it's only a glitch.

Devices are not evil.

[Oxford_Comma_Lover]

> 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.