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War By Remote Control, With Military Robots Set To Self Destruct
New submitter RougeFive writes "A new wave of Kamikaze unmanned military aircraft, ground robots and water vessels are being built to deliberately destroy themselves as they hit their targets. Since it now makes more economic sense to have them crash into enemy targets rather than engage them, and since direct impact needs only manned or automated navigation rather than the highly-trained skills of multiple operators, these UAVs could well become the de-facto method of engagement of the future."
I believe they're called 'missiles'
You mean something like a version of wired-guided missile but over WIFI and more expensive?
Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
V1 from WWII is probably closer.
The so called Flying Bomb had wings and a jet engine and it exploded on impact.
Sounds like they're simply missiles/bombs with non-traditional methods of locomotion.
In the scheme of things it's an easy sell, because they'll say "hey, we either send in the smart bomb and use lower yields and more accurate target detection, or we level the place".
Like any weapon the trick will be using them to only injure those that you specifically want to injure. Getting lazy, sloppy or inhuman with these things will be the same as with any other type of weapon.
My biggest fear with these UAV's is that we take the human factor out. I'm not talking about a human's ability to not kill innocent people--we know that is subjective--I'm talking about the military's decisions to carry out certain types of strikes when we literally have no "skin" in the game. It's already an issue with super accurate missiles and current generation of UAV's, these roomba-bombs may only make it worse.
I do believe that you're right. 'Guided Missiles' specifically.
I guess the difference here is that the UAV can do more than just head to a target for destruction, and CAN be recovered intact for reuse if the operator doesn't chose to detonate it. A cruise missile was launched at a specific target. This you could launch for recon then use destructively if a target of opportunity pops up.
A Missile+, perhaps.
I don't read AC A human right
Granted I assume these are more sophisticated than traditional missiles and now it seems they'll be land based as well but still these are missiles that phone home.
They rely on a very developed infrastructure. This is true of all drones, of course, but I think it's a problem being widely overlooked. It's okay so long as you're fighting insurgents in Pakistan and Afghanistan; once you're fighting someone with the ability to disrupt your communications infrastructure then half your weapons become useless. And once you're fighting someone with a weapon that can target radio emissions they become downright dangerous...
It seems to me that the main development that has enabled these is battery technology. The idea of drones is not new. The idea of Kamikaze aircraft is not new. What is new is a small, quiet kamikaze drone that doesn't have a significant heat signature because suddenly batteries are good enough to keep one flying long enough to be useful.
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Robot Suicide Bombers
Sorry, but gray text on gray background is making my eyes bleed.
for aggression and state terrorism, the Nazis or the WWII Japanese ? This business has a very bad feeling to it ... like when Nixon was offering military weapons for domestic police. No knock raids could take on a whole new dimension for wrong addresses. Fooom.
V1 from WWII is probably closer.
Not exactly. The V1 wasn't designed as a recoverable vehicle. The UAV was. The difference is that the guys who built the V1 didn't want to push it as a disposable vehicle to make millions and millions more for themselves (e.g. contractor buddies) as the V1 was already a disposable vehicle.
One of the key differences here is the electrical propulsion. It means the thing's heat signature is quite hard to differentiate from the background. A V1 or a modern missile has a big, hot jet (or rocket) exhaust at the back, which is easy to detect. If someone launches a stinger (or similar) at you, the usual way of detecting it is from its heat signature. These things, on the other hand...
It's hard to imagine a current missile counter-measure that would be effective against one of these things. Since it's pumping out RF at a fairly high rate for its data comms, it's not that hard to imagine how to develop one, but for now they're pretty hard to counter.
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Such expendable weapons suggests expendable people, far worse than the landmine problem.
I remember reading a comic book years ago (not a comic book fanatic, so I didn't memorize it. Might have some details wrong), where there was a talking, intelligent bomb. A guy comes up to it, figures out that it's a bomb and it strikes up a conversation with him. It then proceeds to tell the man that it doesn't want to explode and that he can defuse it if he does exactly what the bomb says. Of course the bomb gets the last word: "SUCKER!"
"Well, good luck finding a judge that doesn't run a bestiality site."
Pulse jet, a prop job could intercept and knock it down. Problem is, it was already on it's way down somewhere, all they ended up doing was knocking ot down somewhere else, where it still exploded.
This sounds oddly like a re-branded Cruise Missile. Don't we already have those?
Nice to hear we now have a obscenely expensive version of the WW2 V-1 "Buzz Bomb"... or Rocket Bomb for the 1984 nerds out there... I'm amazed we even bother to deploy soldiers these days.
They're working on a phone app to remote control these devices from the field. Android only, of course, the Apple store won't allow the app on their phones. Something about the gov not willing to spend $1000 per download
jsut athnoer menagiensls ltitle psrhae for you to dcoede. Why do we wtsae our tmie dnoig tihs?
With multiple propulsion systems, such as turbo jets, ram jets, solid fuel rockets, and liquid fuel rockets. Since modern torpedoes are pretty much underwater missiles, add in various methods (including electric) to drive propellers and pump jets.
Nothing new.
Heck, if you want something which looks something more like a plane check out the Kettering Bug, a WWI-era US Army cruise missile: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kettering_Bug
Slightly closer would be "cruise missiles".
Also "torpedos" fit for waterborne weapons of this type.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
what scientology have weaponised him now?
Well, at least you capitalized your bigoted slur.
"What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)
I believe they're called 'missiles'
Or people could have merged wireless toys with tractors.
They'd be a bit much for crowd-control (Soylent-Green style) but might be helpful in scraping up nuclear messes?
There's nothing like a vehicle that can make its own parking space.
Now now, American foreign policy doesn't work if you look at it from others' point of view.
This is the picture of our robot facilitated science fiction future: little unmanned "planes" flying into things because we're too lazy to fly them back. No more NASA. Cut back science spending. People out of work because corporations with lots of money are sitting on their piles of cash like Scrooge McDuck and getting overly picky about who they hire: surely we can't have them trained... not even by a robot. Nope we use our robots for industrial purposes to run manufacturing more efficiently. Let 5 guys do what 50 did. Its the trickle down affect. Money flows to those at the top and barely trickles down. Thanks robots. Way to make our lives better. Maybe science fiction writers from all these recent decades should have been more pessimistic.
"but money is the God of Algiers & Mahomet their prophet." - Rich. O'Bryen June 8th 1786
At $10M, you put a big bomb on it, give it great range, and only use it on the most valuable of heavily defended targets.
At $1M, you fire it at ships
At $100k, it's shot at planes, tanks and such
$10k - concentrations of enemy soldiers
$1k - individuals even.
I don't read AC A human right
Paging Bomb 20. Bomb 20, please pick up on frequency 4.
I've got an idea! how about we try to NOT kill people for a little while? maybe it wont be so bad. I know, it sounds crazy. Obviously using our technological superiority to revert back to desperate tactics from WWII is a great idea, but I suggest we try my option. How about we switch the military budget with the education budget for a single year? Much better than spending billions on killing brown people in the sand by crashing drones into them..
What happens to a robot that "martyrs" itself for the cause? Does it go somewhere where it is greeted warmly by 72 robots still in their original packaging? For other causes would their be posthumous medals awarded and parades and all? If not, then who gets the "credit"? Oh, so that's the point!
Very often, people confuse simple with simplistic. The nuance is lost on most. - Clement Mok
That'll fix 'em right up. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Star_(film)
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I'd imagine they are MUCH cheaper than current-generation cruise missiles to manufacture.
Cruise missiles carry a jet engine. A Tomahawk costs $600,000 for one round. While these have much lower speed and performance, you could pay for whole wings of them for that kind of money. Because they are aircraft, and not just missiles, you can have them loiter near the target, exploiting their much smaller radar cross section and thermal emissions for an almost immediate strike. You could have a whole range of yields and payloads lofted simultaneously. And you can return them to base for refuelling, so you only pay for the fuel and the drones you actually put into "terminal mode". And at the same time they can gather intel.
There was a guy in New Zealand who estimated that you could make a cruise missile for around $5,000 ; now there are entire online communities devoted to manufacturing UAVs and an industry to support them. The planting of anti-air missiles on the rooftops of London to "protect" the Olympic games was almost a laughing stock here in the office ; these missiles could do nothing about a "flying cluster bomb" composed of small-payload semi-autonomous UAVs.
Every self guided missile, drone, cruise missile, self guided torpedo, self guided air-air missile etc. has operated this way since the beginning. The only difference now is that the tech is in reach of less financially well off entities.
Been there, done that...
As long as you're the General in command, War is always 'remote-control".
If you read the article, most of it is actually about underwater drones that go out hunting for mines - hardly something missiles are good for.
Using chicks doesn't work. You have to wait until they're fully grown.
Sometimes I doubt your commitment to Sparkle Motion.
Herr Hitler! Herr Docktor Von Braun has a BRILLIANT machine, to extend and preserve your thousand-year reich!
Really, tho.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
The difference is that the guys who built the V1 didn't want to push it as a disposable vehicle to make millions and millions more for themselves (e.g. contractor buddies) as the V1 was already a disposable vehicle.
That sentence doesn't make much logical sense. "The guy that built it didn't want to make it disposable because it was already disposable". Er, the guy that built it presumably was pretty free to design whatever he wanted prior to having built it, because after all he was the guy that was building it. Perhaps a more accurate perspective includes the fact that digital computers did not exist in that time period - apart from ENIAC; but ENIAC was a little too big to fit inside any aircraft. Gyros and analog computers were good enough to get close to a target, but nowhere near accurate enough to bring a vehicle back after a "bomb run". For that you needed a different analog computer, called a "pilot". But if you're making a manned craft that can dispense ordinance and return, one already exists, it's called a "bomber".
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Indeed, it always bothers me greatly to hear Americans saying things like, "We're not at all like them! They're bad people! They kill innocents in the pursuit of their objectives!"
As if the US hasn't likewise declared objectives and knows damned well that they're going to be killing innocent people in the pursuit of their objectives, and has ruled them to be "acceptable losses" to achieve their objectives.
I mean, *Really*? You don't see the glaring moral hole there?
Sometimes I doubt your commitment to Sparkle Motion.
I thought it was called The Redeemer :-P
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
$100 - their pets
$10 - their bicycles
$1 - their mailboxes
$0.10 - their shopping lists
$0.01 - their acne medication, toothpaste, etc.
Sometimes I doubt your commitment to Sparkle Motion.
It's hard to imagine a current missile counter-measure that would be effective against one of these things.
How about a large net extended to cover a potential target. Missile hits net. Missile gets tangled in net. Missile never hits target.
Cost of missile: several $million. Cost of net: a few bucks
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
I suspect the conversation went something like this:
General: Team, we need to find a way to double the range of these drones, but I don't have any additional design money for this project.
Senior Engineer: There's no room in the flight profile to double the energy storage - it would require a complete redesign.
Manager: It can't be done; we can't do this for free.
.
.
.
Junior Engineer: What if it didn't need to return?
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
If you assume your missile will spend it's life between the launch site and target it should be pretty easy to hide it's comm chatter with a rear-facing directional antennae - wouldn't even need the complexity of tight-beam and associated aiming complexity, just so long as nobody in front of it can hear it. The control site's transmission could still be heard, but that doesn't help you locate the incoming bogey.
Moreover if it's designed to be autonomous then during the attack it could maintain complete radio silence and just listen for the last-minute abort code (I would hope). Give it a radar (and even visual) profile of a large gliding bird (or fish in the case of the submersible drones being discussed) and it'd be devastating. Chaff, EMP, or even concussive countermeasures could quite likely take them out without trouble, but first you have to know they're coming.
The article however talks about using them to destroy mines, which seems like a pretty stupid use of $100k autonomous mini-subs. How much does it cost for a radio(sonar?)-controlled sub and some plastique? It's not like your target is likely to be taking a lot of evasive action or deploying advanced countermeasures. Save the sensor-packed autonomous vehicles to act as a diffuse network of "mine-sniffing dogs" that can navigate the interdicted zone in relative safety locating and "painting" targets for simple, low-yield homing torpedos.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
but for now they're pretty hard to counter.
At a pricetag of $100+ million each for some of the nicer ones, you don't have to bring down too many though before they stop being used against you.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
The Germans had wire guided Glide Bomb as early as 1914. and operational one in 1941.
They want their cruise missiles back.
"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." - Mark Twain
Am I the only one who has the impression that the moral high ground is turning into the Mariana trench?
This is not a signature.
When designing the communication system, be sure to arrange it so that it can send back high framerate full motion HD video even when it is far beyond the range at which it can receive control commands (eg the kill switch).
Nullius in verba
Should we call them something obtuse like second variety or something cool like screamers?
Let's say we are moving drone warfare towards cheaper, stupider, throwaway bots. We develop a series of dumb but statistically effective behaviors for these bots. We work on extending one-way range. Then we want to build them by the millions, in the name of achieving a different sort of "shock and awe".
Where would we go to build millions of these cheap, nasty things? Where are the factories and fabs capable of the job? Our trading partners across the pacific, where all our electronics come from...
Plucky Cog of the Military Industrial Complex: "Now here me out. We have guided missiles right? They are guided to a particular spot and then detonate right? What if, just if, we attached, say other missiles to the guided missile which could also fire, and then the parent missile could also be detonated?
General Huge Wiskers: "Genius! promote that man!"
Plucky Cog of the Military Industrial Complex: "Now just imagine, you mount Guided Missiles, on your guided missile, and then mount missiles on those missiles!"
General Huge Wiskers: "Someone give that man a whisky!"
Plucky Cog of the Military Industrial Complex: "Extrapolate upon that, and you have an infinite amount of missiles on a guided missile, enabling the production and continuation forever of our great Military Industrial Complex!"
General Huge Wiskers: "Son, you are going places!"
Now it makes sense :)
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
EMP
I think that the definition of terrorist is changing...
Or torpedo if in the water.
Isn't the definition of terrorist always "those people we don't like"?
Don't get me wrong, lots of "terrorists" are definitely bad people and all that. But there's only so often you can hear Taliban fighters (nasty lot, undoubtedly) fighting in their own country against foreign invaders called "terrorists" in the media before you decide the term no longer has any objective meaning.
I think the point is that eventually these are going to be made from waxed cardboard and styrafoam, for less than $100 each. At that point, you can use it for reconnaissance, then pilot it towards a high value target and have it self destruct, rather than give away your own position by flying it back to "base". i.e. if the sniper f--s up the shot, you can still attempt the kill by kamakazieing the RC plane in to the target when he tries to flee to his car, or blow it up against a door to force the target to use your prefered exit. A $100 flying grenade with 1080p video has a lot of potential uses, even if it's flight time is less than 90 minutes.
moox. for a new generation.
Using chicks doesn't work. You have to wait until they're fully grown.
Now that's what I call a homing pigeon.
Ezekiel 23:20