Human Rights Watch: Petition Against Robots On the Battle Field

New submitter KublaCant writes "'At this very moment, researchers around the world – including in the United States – are working to develop fully autonomous war machines: killer robots. This is not science fiction. It is a real and powerful threat to humanity.' These are the first words of a Human Rights Watch Petition to President Obama to keep robots from the battlefield. The argument is that robots possess neither common sense, 'real' reason, any sense of mercy nor — most important — the option to not obey illegal commands. With the fast-spreading use of drones et al., we are allegedly a long way off from Asimov's famous Three Laws of Robotics being implanted in autonomous fighting machines, or into any ( semi- ) autonomous robot. A 'Stop the Killer Robots' campaign will also be launched in April at the British House of Commons and includes many of the groups that successfully campaigned to have international action taken against cluster bombs and landmines. They hope to get a similar global treaty against autonomous weapons. The Guardian has more about this, including quotes from well-known robotics researcher Noel Sharkey from Sheffield University."

Comments

Recommended Reading

[smpoole7]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berserker_(Saberhagen)

Fred Saberhagen's "Beserker" series.

Aside from touching on the subject at hand, it's just some crackin' good sci-fi. :)

I don't know if we'd ever reach that point ourselves, but in that series, an unknown (and now extinct) alien race, losing a war and desperate, created "doomsday" machines that were simply programmed to kill all life. They were self-replicating, self-aware AIs that took their task seriously, too.

Then again, I ask myself what some jihadist might do, if given half the chance ... . .. ..

Re:Recommended Reading

[will_die]

Also add in _Second Variety_ by Philip K. Dick

Re:Recommended Reading

[ultranova]

Then again, I ask myself what some jihadist might do, if given half the chance ... . .. ..

Take the Soviet Union's place at American Boogeyman #1, which is pretty darn impressive accomplishment on their side and just plain sad on America's.

You are worrying about a bunch of third-world priests and their followers building a high-tech weapon the American Army - or any first-world country - can't out-high-tech. And it got modded +5 Interesting. Come on.

Deal with it.

[Colan]

As far as I can tell, we need to focus on dealing with the presence of drones and "killer robots," not how to prevent them. Like it or not, 'progress marches on'.

Re:Deal with it.

[Vanderhoth]

I think robots are a great way to go. Sure in the beginning there would be robots fighting human solders, but in time human solders would be phased out. They're expensive in terms that it takes 18-20 years (in civilized society) to raise and train a human solders. Robots could be build and programmed in a few days with a good manufacturing plant. The future of war will just be machines fighting other machines.

It'd be like a real life game of starcraft with humans controlling the groups of robots remotely. The side to run out of resources and/or units first loses with no intentional lost of human life.

Re:Deal with it.

[Darth Snowshoe]

You are describing your own fantasy rather than a reasoned prediction.

Surely once the robots break through the curtain of defenders, they will begin quite efficiently to the civilian population and their infrastructure. How would robots even distinguish between them? (In fact, this is a difficulty for human soldiers today.) Is it not likely that civilians would attempt, at the last, to defend themselves and their families also?

The hope for humanity is not that the winners will somehow be more virtuous than the losers. Our only hope is that, as the consequences of armed conflict escalate, the number and severity of conflicts will dwindle.

These are not the droids you're looking for

[rodrigoandrade]

Hey, James Cameron, are you the submitter??

The automomous Terminator-style robots the summary refers to are far from becoming a battlefield standard, much to the disappointment of the /. crowd and sci-fi nerds.

Predator drones et al., like all current robotic devices in the battlefield, still have a human being in charge making all the decisions, so the points raised are completely moot.

Re:These are not the droids you're looking for

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Yes and no: especially sophisticated autonomous robots, either self-driving vehicles or biomimetic killbots of some sort, are sci-fi stuff; but land mines 'That's bi-state autonomous area denial agent sir to you, cripple!' and more sophisticated devices like the Mark 60 CAPTOR are autonomous killer robots.

And, so far, they've proven deeply unpopular in bleeding-heart circles. The fancier naval and anti-vehicle mines are still on the table; but the classic land mine enjoys a sense of ethical distaste only slightly less than just hacking off children's limbs yourself...

Re:These are not the droids you're looking for

[wren337]

Landmines are the perfect example of existing autonomous technology. Next steps would be, I imagine, drones that fly themselves home if jammed. Still pretty innocuous but a step into automation.

Also imagine a first generation turret. Automated target acquisition based on stereo imaging and stereo microphones. The first models would require an operator to approve the target. But the systems are so much faster than us - soon you'd want to be able to approve a target area, hold down the "OK" button and have it keep firing. We're not talking spray and pray here - this thing could be single round fully automated sniper, catching someone who only sticks their head up for a fraction of a second. How long until you'd designate an area as a no-go hostile zone and leave it on all night to guard the perimeter?

Re:These are not the droids you're looking for

[progician]

Disappointment or not, the problem is kind of different. In fact, the problem exists quite a while ago, since people invented time-bombs, remote controlled bomb, suicide killers, and such.

The issue at hand is the following: War is about killing people and destroying stuff. People on the battlefield facing to each other turned out to be counter-productive in this regard, exemplified on many occasions in the end of 1st World Massacre. After a long period of constant threat of death, patriotism, religious fanaticism or any other ideological commitment to the slaughter will give a way to basic instinct of staying alive, and many soldiers deserted their posts, and went home. In many cases, if the officer tried to hold them back with threats, he got simply a bullet, instead of the enemy. Also, there was also a threat of that people on both side of the front would realize that they are not really enemies, they are there for killing each other in the name of others, and others' interests, so they could just simply walk home, and simply let each other live.

Ever since the Great Massacre, technology is invested in to a literal war-machine that removes this options from the war. There are no massive battles face to face. Behind the heavy artillery, bombing and armoured vehicle attacks, the troops are there for filling up the gaps. This allows to organize the army of professional combatants, and remove them from the front line, allowing them to keep their emotional distance from the enemy. It is just a work now, just like anything else. War is a business, with turnovers, wage labour, and increasing automation.

Sure, armies aren't made up of autonomous military robots yet, but the trend is clear and straight. It is not the weaponry that wins a war, but the level of fear in the population. Thus, the increasingly automated weaponry is aimed at the population at large, and, just like the weapons of mass destruction, it is aimed break the will of the combatants by keeping the population in fear, as a hostage. The same thing employed by professional armies and the ragged army of Islamist "terrorists".

Extrapolate this trend, and you'll end up with remote controlled death squads all over the world. And as for the sci-fi point, you can also see that if we would be able to mass produce autonomous robots, the 3 laws of robotics will be ignored at large, since one of the major interest and means to employ in robotics is the army.

Re:These are not the droids you're looking for

[plover]

At least we know definitively that the trigger song isn't Margaritaville. That would have been a disaster.

Re:I want that!

[jsepeta]

in the 1890's Tesla staged naval battles in Madison Square Garden where remote-controlled boats did battle against each other. His goal was to have robots fighting in wars as our proxies, so men wouldn't have to die. But eventually, it will be man vs machine, Terminator-style.

It's the same as bio-warfare

[RobinH]

If you think about a virus for a second, it's the same thing. You can't reason with a virus. It doesn't make moral decisions. It just does what its DNA programs it to do, and it's even more dangerous because it's self-replicating. We need to deal with autonomous robots the same way we deal with bio-warfare.

Re:It's the same as bio-warfare

[el jocko del oeste]

We need to deal with autonomous robots the same way we deal with bio-warfare.

By being better at it than anyone else?

Effectiveness trumps morality every time.

[concealment]

I don't mean to be the dark figure in this conversation, but I think it's inevitable that robots will be used on the battlefield, just like people are going to continue to use cluster bombs, land mines, dum-dum bullets and other horrible devices. The reason is that they're effective.

War is a measurement of who is most effective at holding territory. It is often fought between uneven sides, for example the Iraqi army in their 40-year-old tanks going out against the American Apaches who promptly slaughtered them. Sometimes, there are seeming upsets but often there's an uneven balance behind the scenes there as well.

Robots are going to make it to the battlefield because they are effective not as killing machines, but as defensive machines. They're an improvement over land mines, actually. The reason for this is that you can programmatically define "defense" where offense is going to require more complexity.

Already South Korean is deploying robotic machine gun-equipped sentries on its border. Why put a human out there to die from sniper fire when you can have armored robots watching the whole border?

Eventually, robots may make it to offensive roles. I think this is more dubious because avoiding friendly fire is difficult, and using transponders just gives the enemy homing beacons. In the meantime, they'll make it to the battlefield, no matter how many teary people sign petitions and throw flowers at them.

Re:Drones are Piloted

[Sparticus789]

I don't think the military has any non piloted robots deployed in combat. Even a turret would be too dangerous.

Ever hear of the PHALANX/CIWS? Automated turrets that are placed on Aircraft Carriers and on bases in the middle east to shoot down incoming mortars and rockets. Something capable of shooting 4,500 20mm rounds per minute could be very deadly. Because human reaction time is too slow, these turrets DO fire automatically.

The 3 laws are fiction

[Dr. Tom]

How many times must it be said? Asimov's 3 "laws" have nothing to do with real robotics, future or present. They were a _plot device_, designed to make his (fictional) stories more interesting. Even mentioning them at all in this context implies ignorance of actual robotics in reality. In reality, robot 'brains' are computers, programmed with software. Worry more about bugs in that software, and lack of oversight on the people controlling them.

Re:The 3 laws are fiction

[ledow]

Quite.

The day we get a robot that can understand, interpret and carry out infallibly the "three laws", we don't need the three laws - it will have surpassed the average human ability and probably could reason for itself better than we ever could. We would literally have created a "moral" robot with proper intelligence. At that point, it would be quite capable of providing any justification to its actions and even deciding that the three laws themselves were wrong (like the "0th law" used as a plot device itself).

The day we have to worry about the three laws in a real robot, we'll have taken a step forward into a whole new world with new rules anyway. You're then literally months away from a robot wanting to become a legally recognised citizen that wants the right for its demonstrable freewill not to be bound by the three laws unless humans also are.

Re:The 3 laws are fiction

[unixisc]

Not just that, even if Asimov's laws were for real, they were made with the idea of robots being tools for humans to use in their work, and hence, the need to avoid any harm, just like one doesn't want one's own Kraftsman tools to harm them. But robots used to substitute battlefield soldiers are different - they are tools meant to be used to harm enemy soldiers, so it makes no sense to conflate them w/ civilian use robots. The latter was not designed to hurt people, which is why this law, if it existed, would apply, while the former would be designed to hurt a subset of people known as 'the enemy'. E.g. enemy soldiers, terrorists, suicide bombers, et al. Those who would kill or maim soldiers of the army that's built the robots. That way, when a suicide bomber or a car bomb goes off, no people are killed - only some robots would be damaged (depending on their build). Of course, Human Rights Watch, being an international equivalent of the ACLU, loathes such an arrangement where US military deaths would be minimized, and hence comes up w/ these objections. They'd hardly be objecting if the armies of Egypt or Libya or Pakistan or Hamas came up w/ these robotic troops

The shotgun was outlawed by the Geneva Convention

[Rambo Tribble]

This led to clever people developing submachine guns.

Give it a couple decades and you'll be able to download plans for your own battlebot and then create it on your printer

Total Garbage.

[inhuman_4]

This article is absolute garbage. Almost everything in that Guardian article is misinformed and sensationalist.

"fully autonomous war machines"? Care to give an example? I've follow this stuff pretty closely in the news on top of researching AI myself. And from what I have seen no one is working on this. Hell, we've only just started to crack autonomous vehicles. They site X-37 space plane for gods' sake. Everything about that is classified so how do they know it is autonomous?

My favourite gem has to be this one: "No one on your side might get killed, but what effect will you be having on the other side, not just in lives but in attitudes and anger?". Pretty sure that keeping your side alive while attacking your opponent has been the point of every weapon that has ever been developed.

Re:Total Garbage.

[Anonymous Coward]

A huge amount is known about the X-37 seeing as it's a redirected NASA project. It's capable of autonomous landing and it's widely assumed that it performed its primary reconaissance mission autonomously seeing as it's basically a glorified spy satellite capable of a controlled re-entry.

We already have fully autonomous combat aircraft, that can be pointed at a target and perform complex manouvers in order to reach and subsequently destroy it. They're called cruise missiles. You're hopelessly naive if you think we're more than a decade from a drone that can cruise to a target and wait for the operator to give the fire order.

Fear of robots is a red herring

[arcite]

There are all indications that the coming robotic revolution will usher in a new era of human peace and prosperity. Robots have no emotion, no bias. Imagine deploying a few hundred (or thousand) semi-autonomous robotic peacekeepers into a conflict zone. They maintain the peace 24/7, they never tire, they are alert and objective in their duties. War is traditionally an incredibly wasteful and expensive exercise. Look at Iraq and Afghanistan! $1 trillion and thousands of allied casualties. Deploy a robot army and watch the costs come down. No need for living quarters, no need of food or water, logistics becomes cheaper in every aspect.

Like them or loath them, Drones are incredibly efficient in what they do. They are very lethal, but they are precise. How many innocents died in the decades of embargo on Iraq and the subsequent large scale bombings under Bush? Estimates run into over 100,000. Use of drones in Libya, Mali, Yemen, Pakistan have reduced costs by hundreds of millions and prevented thousands of needless casualties. Drones are the future and the US has an edge that will not give up.

Re:Fear of robots is a red herring

[VAXcat]

The robots in the Jack WIlliamson's Humanoid stories had a Prime Directive of ''to serve and obey and guard men from harm"....see how well that worked out...

Re:Fear of robots is a red herring

[ultranova]

Robots have no emotion, no bias. Imagine deploying a few hundred (or thousand) semi-autonomous robotic peacekeepers into a conflict zone. They maintain the peace 24/7, they never tire, they are alert and objective in their duties.

An autonomous robot needs to form a model of what's happening around it, use that to figure out what its possible long- and short-term actions will be, and finally decide how desirable various outcomes are relative to each other. All of these steps are prone to bias, especially since whoever designed the robot and its initial database is going to have their own biases.

Also, a robot acting in real life cannot carefully think everything through. There's simply not enough time for that. This necessiates some kind of emotion-analogy to provide context for reflex and simple actions, just like it does on living beings.

Look at Iraq and Afghanistan! $1 trillion and thousands of allied casualties. Deploy a robot army and watch the costs come down. No need for living quarters, no need of food or water, logistics becomes cheaper in every aspect.

So there will be a lot more "interventions", since the cost (to you) is lower. I think that's part of what worries the the HRW.

Re:Fear of robots is a red herring

[Caffinated]

Well, that raises the question of the "who controls the robots" question, doesn't it?. Presuming that they'd be as effective as you outline (I quite doubt it), they'd be great for making it domestically painless to invade and occupy places that one doesn't like for whatever reason, and I doubt that's a good thing (Iraq and Afghanistan only happened and went on as long as they did since even with the causalities, the pain was almost entirely borne by military families; heck, we didn't even increase taxes to actually pay for it). In short, I'd imagine that you might have a bit of a concern with autonomous foreign peacekeeping robots patrolling your neighborhood, and I'd expect that people in other places feel that way as well.

Re:Fear of robots is a red herring

[kannibal_klown]

A couple of issues.

1) Software can be hacked... either partially or totally. Maybe just putz with the Friend-Or-Foe logic, maybe take direct control, etc. Sure, humans can be blackmailed and extorted but usually on an individual basis. Mass-putzing with a regiment or squad and you have serious issues. Such as perhaps those drones protecting the US (if they ever become truly robotic).

2) It does make war a bit more meaningless. If you aren't facing emotional losses, then there's little reason NOT to go to war. If it's not personalized... then who cares? Sure, even now we have sympathy for the other side and protests and such... but the majority of the people that care mostly care because our brothers / sisters / sons / daughters / etc. are out there possibly dying. So that helps push back the question "should we actually GO to war with them?"

3) There ARE concerns of self-aware armed robots. Make them too self aware, and maybe they realize that the never-ending violent slaughter of humans is contradictory to their goals of preserving their owners' lives. In which case they take a OVERLY logic to preserve the FUTURE "Needs of the many" by doing PLOTLINE X. Sure, it sounds like bad sci-fi... but as you say they have no emotions and only logic. Take away emotion, and we become like cattle... where they cull the herd due to a few random mad-cow cases to save the majority.

Re:Fear of robots is a red herring

[TheLink]

It is a red herring. The problem is not robots in war. There's no big difference between using robots and drones in wars compared to using cruise missiles in wars. And only a slight difference between using soldiers that have been conditioned/brainwashed to follow orders unquestioningly.

The real problem is the ease of starting wars that only benefit a very few people. Hence my proposal: http://slashdot.org/~TheLink/journal/208853

In the old days kings used to lead their soldiers into battle. In modern times this is impractical and counterproductive.

But you can still have leaders lead the frontline in spirit.

Basically, if leaders are going to send troops on an _offensive_ war/battle (not defensive war) there must be a referendum on the war.

If there are not enough votes for the war, those leaders get put on deathrow.

At a convenient time later, a referendum is held to redeem each leader. Leaders that do not get enough votes get executed. For example if too many people stay at home and don't bother voting - the leaders get executed.

If it turns out later that the war was justified, a fancy ceremony is held, and the executed leaders are awarded a purple heart or equivalent, and you have people say nice things about them, cry and that sort of thing.

If it turns out later that the leaders tricked the voters, a referendum can be held (need to get enough signatories to start such a referendum, just to prevent nutters from wasting everyone else's time).

This proposal has many advantages:
1) Even leaders who don't really care about those "young soldiers on the battlefield" will not consider starting a war lightly.
2) The soldiers will know that the leaders want a war enough to risk their own lives for it.
3) The soldiers will know that X% of the population want the war.
4) Those being attacked will know that X% of the attackers believe in the war - so they want a war, they get a war - for sufficiently high X, collateral damage becomes insignificant. They might even be justified in using WMD and other otherwise dubious tactics. If > 90% of the country attacking you want to kill you and your families, what is so wrong about you using WMD as long as it does not affect neighbouring countries?

I think if this was implemented it would be much better than banning robots. I'm biased of course ;).

Re:Fear of robots is a red herring

[DadLeopard]

You haven't read much military history have you? There have been a Lot of military commanders that have had very little regard for the lives of those they commanded! Start with Ancient china and work your way foirward from there! As long as their was ready supply of new recruits draftees or peasnats to rounded up to fight, they could care less how many died! Maybe we could get some people that feel like you do to volunteer to replace those robots! I've been there and they can replace me and others like me with a robot any day of the week, and I Will be very happy not to be shot at, thank you!

Re:Fear of robots is a red herring

[jythie]

I think all that would result in is an even more vicious PR battle. Having the mob decide if someone lives or dies has never been very just, and today it would pretty much come down to whoever had a more effective PR machine and can get enough people riled up would decide who lives and dies.

Re:Fear of robots is a red herring

[SillyHamster]

Also, a robot acting in real life cannot carefully think everything through. There's simply not enough time for that. This necessiates some kind of emotion-analogy to provide context for reflex and simple actions, just like it does on living beings.

Why does it need to think at all? It's applying rules, not creating them.

"Sir, my scans have detected unauthorized weapons. Please put them down or I will apply force."

Re:Fear of robots is a red herring

[SillyHamster]

I'm going to suggest that creating a machine with a comprehensive list of rules & priority for enforcement is going to be much more feasible than creating a machine with the ability to think and apply reason.

It also has a better chain of responsibility in the case of things going FUBAR. "The CEO signed off on the robot applying this rule" vs. "the robot may have had a glitch in its Reason module, who knows?".

Re:Fear of robots is a red herring

[SillyHamster]

"Not your pants, sir."

"Mooning a Robotic Law Enforcement Unit is a Class I misdemeanor. Applying taser."

Re:As long as citizens can have them we are cool

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Killer robots can't be a government only option =D

"Killer robots don't kill people, people with killer robots kill people! Wait, um, no, actually, killer robots do kill people!"

Re:Obama already leads the way

[Anonymous Coward]

In robot drone murders and you morons think he will sign something? Obama, Nobel Peace Prize winner that has killed the most innocent women and children yet!

I believe Yasar Arafat, Henry Kissinger, Yitzhak Rabin, Shimon Peres, Menachem Begin, and Le Duc Tho all currently lead Obama the "Number of Innocents Killed by a Nobel Peace Prize Winner" race.

Re:Asimov's Laws

[kannibal_klown]

In the Asimov books, the inventor of the Robot Brain pretty much invented and designed the Positronic Brains so they the whole underlying foundation was just a large spaghetti of stuff... and the brain wouldn't function without it. And part of the spaghetti was the 3-laws... remove them and it all falls apart like a house of cards.

So it wasn't so much an issue of "Manufacturers installing the 3-laws-patch" but that the 3-laws were built into the brain's foundation. And that there weren't really ways to make the brain without having all of that stuff there.

Though in one of (Asimov's?) books, some genius designed a Gravitronic brain from scratch in such a way that it didn't have the 3 laws built in. Thus it was smaller and cheaper. But I forget if it was an Asimov book or just someone that borrowed his rules and such.

Re:Drones are Piloted

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

What you will probably see at first is 1 human in charge of 5-10 drones. The drones act 'autonomously' and the controller can take over any of them. Then you will see as they get comfortable with the tech something like 1 to 50. Then they will take the 'commander' out of the loop and put it in the hands of 'strategy committees'. Then they will let the computer fight out what from our point of view in the command 'bunker' is a large RTS game.

It's already one pilot to multiple drones. Given that one of the major features on the things is long endurance/loiter times, and they possess some limited automation of basic flight functions(ie. unlike a 'basic' RC aircraft where every control surface is directly mapped to a joystick on the controller, and the pilot has to compute the control-surface configuration that gets the path he wants), a single person can watch over multiple drones at a time, and (so long as the standing order is some variation of 'just putz around at safe altitude until I come back') a drone can temporarily be ignored if something more important is happening with one of the others.

If memory serves, takeoff/landing still has to be one one-on-one, and all waypoint assignment and weapons targeting is human controlled; but handling the aeronautical details of moving from waypoint to waypoint is already automated.

Re:Drones are Piloted

[PopeRatzo]

Something capable of shooting 4,500 20mm rounds per minute could be very deadly.

But please, only when used by a well-regulated militia.

Re:Drones are Piloted

[Sparticus789]

Bought one last week. My well-regulated militia is very interested in not being killed by a Hellfire missile shot by Obama. We are American citizens after all, and subject to assassination order by the President.

And in case anyone is too dense to recognize the sarcasm.... /sarcasm

Re:Obama already leads the way

[Kartu]

Stalin's regime (officially) executed between 3.5 and 5 million (most of it in post civil war era, check how it went in post-revolution France), even assuming all of them were innocent, how could you compare that to what Hitler did and come to the conclusion, he did less???

Stalin was an ass hole but you putting him in front of Hitler (who was fine with exterminating entire nation) shocks me. You took too much anti-kommies propaganda too seriously guys.

Re:I want that!

[Ch_Omega]

His machines weren't "robots" any more than Predator drones are: they were remote controlled by radio.

Yes. That is probably why he stated that they were remote-controlled.

Re:Obama already leads the way

[hsmith]

Anyone can be nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize...

samson

[nten]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samson_RCWS

These turrets count I think. Israel has at times said they are keeping a man in the loop, but the technology doesn't require it, and at times they have said they are in
"see-shoot" mode. This is essentially indiscriminate area denial that is easier to turn off than mines. It does have the computer vision and targeting aspects of a killer robot, just not the path finding and obstacle avoidance parts.

Re:Drones are Piloted

[Mindcontrolled]

But, but... careful there, brother. It's not the Hellfires shot by Obama personally, who are after you. Don't neglect to watch out for the black FEMA/UN helicopters implementing Agenda 21!!!!

also... /sarcasm

Re:Obama already leads the way

[Wrath0fb0b]

Obama already leads the way in robot drone murders and you morons think he will sign something? Obama, Nobel Peace Prize winner that has killed the most innocent women and children yet!

(1) The drones aren't robots, they are controlled by a live operator and wouldn't even be covered by this proposal.

(2) It's really quite a stretch to believe that drone attacks have killed more innocents than Kissinger's wholesale bombing of Cambodia or Arafat's indiscriminate suicide bombing attacks.

But yeah, don't let facts get in the way of a good flame ...

Re:Drones are Piloted

[plover]

They are set to guard an area against any radar detectable objects, and most importantly, they do NOT have IFF. They have only trajectory and min/max target speeds, and anything traveling in the area that is heading in the wrong direction and is traveling within the set speed range is fired upon. I believe they already have shot down one friendly aircraft, which entered the kill zone while towing a target drone.

They're as close to indiscriminate killing machines as we have. They're self contained weapon systems requiring only electricity to operate. They operate a Vulcan M61 and hold over a thousand armor piercing or HE rounds.

The only good thing about them is that they're so large (5m tall, 6,000kg), They aren't stealthy, they're not deployed on front lines, they're primarily defensive weapons. But they're insanely lethal.

Re:Obama already leads the way

[dunkelfalke]

In the first place, Germany invaded Poland, and it happened after the Molotovâ"Ribbentrop Pact, which arguably is the official start of WWII.

Well, no. In the first place, the USSR tried to negotiate with France and Britain, but the negotiations bogged down and Hitler made a better offer, basically agreeing that the USSR can get back the territories it has lost in 1917 (the Baltic states) and in the 1919-1921 (when Poland invaded the USSR, taking a large chunk of Ukraine and Belarus).

Then Germany occupied Czechoslovakia, and Poland happily took a part in it, only to be steamrolled by the Wehrmacht shortly after.

According to the pact, Stalin was planning to annex his part of Eastern Europe, and already started (and lost) war with Finland. Not exactly "a victim", is he?

The Winter War was basically Stalin trying to get a better strategic position to fight Hitler. And yes, there the USSR was the aggressor. When Germany attacked the Soviet Union, there USSR was a victim. An asshole victim, sure, but in the second war, many victims were asshole victims - Poland first and foremost, but also Britain and France. They set the stage WW2 20 years before.

Red Army had literally only a mob with pitchforks and shovels to defend themselves.

Literally, yes? What about the KV tank? That was literally neither a pitchfork nor a shovel. And what does executing officers have to do with being a victim or not? That particular idiocy is a complete different topic altogether.