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India To Develop Military Robots For Warfare
WoodenKnight writes "Indian DRDO chief Avinash Chander has told reporters that development of robotic soldiers would be one of his 'priority thrust areas', saying that 'unmanned warfare in land and air is the future of warfare.' He foresees robotic soldiers assisting human soldiers initially but, he hinted at forward-position deployment of such robots. He gave a timeline of at least a decade for the project to see any practical use but said a number of labs in India are now working on this."
Well I for one....
If you have well-developed robotics expertise already, you're in a much better position to develop more specialized robots, like robot soldiers. India doesn't really: both its robotics industry and its research are relatively small sectors at the moment, far behind the state of the art in countries like Japan, China, Germany, South Korea, or the USA. They're going to have to fix that before robot soldiers are going to emerge out of it.
Of course, this might just be a way of selling robotics funding, so maybe that's the goal.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Welcome our new robo........
Will the robots be able to handle their own tech support should they have an issue?
--- If the bible proves the existence of God, then Superman comics prove the existence of Superman.
Before the Machines kill us all
"Hello, this is Fred who-is-definitely-not-from-Hyderabad, thank you for calling killbot technical support, how can I help you today?"
"Hi Fred, I'm afraid my killbot has been refusing all targeting instructions and attempting to kill me."
"Ah, let me check with my supervisor, one moment please."
"Thank you for your patience. Please try turning it off and never turning it on again."
So when do we get to pilot giant robots in space?
I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer.
Very surprised. Though no country wants to risk the lives of their soldiers, only in the USA soldiers in body bags have such a heavy political price. India being a Democracy it too would pay a higher political price than, may be Pakistan and China. But still it is a highly populated country without draft. In fact, even in the USA, after the draft has been removed and it became an all volunteer armed forces, the political cost of returning body bags have dropped a lot. So why robots in the forward firing lines? May be it is posturing, goading Pakistan into spending its money on robots instead of supplying terrorists with cheap AK-47s.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
KHAAAAAAAAAAAAAN!!!!! Oh, fine, I know we're talking robots, not genetically augmented humans, but I had to scream it.
Every day thousands of young men are given weapons and trained to kill.
The government calls it the "army," but a more alarmist name would be... THE KILLBOT FACTORY.
..are doomed to repeat it.
"War has changed. It's no longer about nations, ideologies or ethnicity. It's an endless series of proxy battles, fought by mercenaries and machines." -- Snake
When wars ultimately get to robots fighting each other, the most common sense approach to countering that type of engagement is to attack the people controlling them.
India is heavily dependent on wireless communications as their land-line infrastructure is very poor. So it would make sense to decentralize their command centers and instead rely on ad-hoc wireless networks to distribute instructions. Then people will be targeting enemy combatants that are literally sitting in their living rooms in the midst of civilians. You can't target communications networks as it's wireless with no central point of attack. I think that will lead to a change in warfare where the term civilian is a moot point. It will be basically changed into a if it moves, kill it mentality.
I'm sure people will argue we're already there, but we still have statistics that represent non-enemy combatant deaths. I'm thinking that no one will bat an eye or even raise the question when those statistics are no longer gathered, as you can't even start to figure out what they mean.
Then we'll have our autonomous robot death machines when we don't have enough people to control the first generation robots :)
Ok so this will likely lead to robot vs robot warfare with no real human casualties... So, I say we put that shit on TV and enjoy :) /joke /sarcasm
Nah, I don't see any way for this to escalate badly
--
I wish I didn't have to put tags for people who don't get humour.
Hmm, the humour and sarcasm seem to have been be lost on you.
We need to get an International treaty in place against these kinds of weapons before everyone has their own.
"We mustn't be caught by surprise by our own advancing technology" -- Aldous Huxley
They will be $35 each, and there will be one in every household, unless they fail to meet their milestone of supplying 100,000 units by March 31. They expect to get a jump on this by procuring unused parts from the failed Aakash project.
Military analysts have a term for what you're describing: fourth generation warfare.
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
Ghandi must be rolling in his grave...
Just sayin'..
We have the same problem in the U.S....
This from a country that can't provide the majority of its inhabitants even with basic sanitation. By all means, develop your ridiculous robots.
All these comments and nobody has yet commented on "Miltary" robots? Slashdot, I'm ashamed of you!
Everything is better with chainsaws.
The India population is 1.241 billion according to google. It would be hard press to find a cheaper alternative other than human soldier.
It seems India's govt officials have finally learnt a trick or two from their American counterparts - how to announce grandiose defence research with a huge budget!
Jeez slashdot, three Simpsons references so far and no one's mentioned:
The wars of the future will not be fought on the battlefield or at sea. They will be fought in space, or possibly on top of a very tall mountain. In either case, most of the actual fighting will be done by small robots. And as you go forth today remember always your duty is clear: To build and maintain those robots. Thank you.
I am not a crackpot.
I've always thought that a lot of people don't realize that having lives in harms way on -either- side of a is a deterrent in itself to using weapons that would be horribly beyond all conscience (that in itself, well, depends on who's pushing the buttons). India and Pakistan say, have nuclear weapons. If Pakistan had a few infantry and tank divisions, along with a couple border villages wiped out by robotic troops, I'd think that the bar would be lowered as to them responding with a tactical nuclear strike to eliminate the robot threat. Then things would snowball from there. The situation wouldn't go from escalating from conventional to chemical in between at all. War is about killing people. When one side has troops that are machines, the other side does not have to restrain themselves to the moral restraints that have kept whatever tenuous leash on us throughout our history. Just a thought.
The robot "Chitti" in the 2010 Indian blockbuster movie Enthiran was originally intended for army service.
As much as I love robotics I just can't see how the leaders in India could exist with the guilt of spending the sums involved in building a modern military. Too much poverty, suffering and need to go down this road. Maybe building useful robots for export in order to raise funds to help the suffering would be a better goal. What would Ghandi have done?
Let me save you folks some typing effort by saying what you wish to say:
India is a poor country that can't feed its people. It has not right to work on these technologies. Leave science and tech to the advanced nations. Put bread before your people first.
Now, the formalities having been completed, let's discuss the technological aspects of the program.
The fact that the US is one of the few countries to start foreign wars in the past decade,
The only one foreign war that the USA has started since the Cold War is the 2nd Gulf War. Every other war has been legitimate (the war in Afghanistan), the invasion of Panama (which even the majority of Panamanians welcomed it), UN sanctioned to prevent genocide (as in the Balkans) or ill-prepared, ill-advise attempts to provide support to desperately needed UN-sanctioned peacekeeping/humanitarian work (the Somali War and the "Black Hawk Down" incident.).
and that the president responsible got re-elected makes me doubt that.
Junior (that's how I call Bush Jr.) got re-elected once due to not having a viable non-flip-flopping opposition candidate. Kerry at the time was not such a candidate. Opposing without providing clear alternatives is not a viable opposition alternative at all.
We were still recoiling fresh from 9/11 with a fresh 2nd conflict in Iraq. We needed a viable alternative to Junior, and Kerry only opposed, but didn't provide a clear, workable alternative either (and no, an immediate withdrawal at that time was not practical.)
Many people, myself included wanted someone other than Junior. There was none. Ergo, you know the rest of this tragedy. Obviously, hindsight is always 20/20, and there were certainly some jingoistic elements in the US who rooted for Junior. But to pretend that him getting re-elected is solely the result of the population not giving a shit about body bags, that's overly simplistic.
Such a theory makes for excellent rhetoric, I grant you that.
Hell, even in a bunch countries just supporting the US in Iraq and Afghanistan the political fallout was bigger.
Is that surprising? Why should it have not been a greater fallout in the other countries? For those governments, the 2nd Gulf War was not their war, so of course the fallout would be greater. I'm not sure what is so surprising about it, or how one can derive logical or moral conclusions from the fallouts or lack thereof in US politics.
Not sure about India though.
India has a lot of reasons (not necessarily valid or practical in the absolute sense of the word, however.) They have a continuous border dispute with Pakistan, a lot of it with unique hardships and challenges posed of high-altitude, mountain warfare. There might or will be eventual border disputes with China (also under mountain warfare conditions.) The is an asymetric terror warfare going on in India.
Robotics, drones and the like, I can see why India would push this. Whether they have the technical wherewithal to do so now, that's a different question. True that India has a lot of problems in terms of quality control, but so did the Japanese. And while here in the US people used to dismiss the Japanese as "makers of cheap cameras", they rose up to the challenge and almost ate our lunch.
All those quality control and process problems, those are implementation details that countries like India will eventually work out. There is nothing other than time from preventing that from happening.
... welcome our new, colossal robot juggernaut overlords.
The wars of the future will not be fought on the battlefield or at sea.
They will be fought in space, or possibly on top of a very tall mountain.
In either case, most of the actual fighting will be done by small robots.
And as you go forth today remember always your duty is clear: To build and maintain those robots.
...honestly, not even worth reporting.
1) India has trouble building tanks, airplanes, ships, and subs...far more 'pedestrian' tools of warfare. Their programs are bloated and rife with corruption, delays, technical failures, overpromises, etc. such that they are only capable of producing inferior equipment at ridiculous costs.
2) India is the second most populous country in the world. If there's anything they DON'T need it's to replace the dirt-cheap organic, self-replicating, minimally-functional dubious cannon fodder they currently have with hideously expensive, fragile, dubious cannon fodder made out of plastic and metal that they don't have and likely will never be able to build for the foreseeable future.
-Styopa
Johnny 5 is ALIVE!!!
I wonder if they'll take bribes and how much one can be bought for?
Indian weapons are a joke. I am more worried about one of our missiles targeted for Karachi landing in Karnataka. 'No one knows anything' is applicable to Indian films and Indian weapons.
The robot soldier idea is a non-starter vanity project, like the $10 tablet, auto-mobiles powered by water and air and so on. No need to worry. But like Russel Peter's would say, playing with these robots 'someone is going to get hurt real bad'.
Tat Tvam Asi
I agree!
As much as this sounds racist, people need to get their heads out of their asses. This is reality. Since India and China are so overpopulated, it's causing global damage. There aren't enough resources on this Earth for so many billions of people. We number only in the hundreds of millions (in the USA) but it would be even much less than that if it weren't for Indian/Chinese/Latino immigration... they're so populated that they're spilling into our country and others.
I see overpopulation as a "cancer of the Earth". I'm not picking on any particular race. It's just the cold hard facts. It cannot continue like this. This is bad.
Again, not racism. I don't say this about Germans, the English, the French, etc, because their populations are several MAGNITUDES less! The Earth *can* withstand nations with populations like those countries.
I mean, can you imagine an 8 armed robot? :-0
How about universal toilet access first? Or a reliable electricity supply?
The phrase "priority thrust area" is now lodged in my vocabulary. I will use it well.
Indian minds are every bit as sharp as everyone else's. The country's infrastructure and political systems and physical resources may not be in very good shape, but their schools work, and their university students don't major in football, and they value engineers more than they do lawyers. Who are we to criticize them, given our own troubles in this area.
Capitalizing on their software engineering potential in a global information economy makes a lot of sense, and it is comparatively low-hanging fruit compared to solving India's hard problems of environment and society.
Of course, military robots themselves would not solve any existing problem, but the side effects of developing an ambitious robotics industry would be of very high value to the country. Anything can be funded on the back of fear, and this programme could harness blinkered military belligerence for social good even if the direct goal is plain ridiculous. Outside of the military brass, they probably know full well it's ridiculous.
Those damn dirty Indians and their casinos. They'll no doubt be marching upon us with their robotic soldiers from those VERY casinos in another few years, funded entirely by our own greed! :-)
This sounds not unlike the first book in the Warbots series by G. Harry Stine.
Nothing novel about this.
Sci-fi has mentioned it for at least a century.
"You have 10 seconds to comply"
I am the unwilling control for my Origin.
Pakistan has said that they plan to clone Jar Jar Binks.
Need i say more?
nuf sed :-)
Table-ized A.I.
Introducing CyberNihang® Battle Robots!
However, there have been some bugs that came up in testing:
Sikh error reading drive G: [A]bort? [R]etry? [I]gnore? [F]uddu-bhenchod?
Segmentation fault, Kaur dumped..
One would hope that we have learned enough to figure out how to make the "future of warfare" "Peace". Hows about a bit more research into that?
... because they share a border with their bigest enemy
How stupid India wants to be?
India and China has another thing in common --- The two places nurtured human civilizations for thousands of years.
For thousands of those years, the Indians never invaded China and the Chinese didn't invade India, either
Only when the British came they started to make China their enemy, and when India got its so-called "independence", India inherited that "enemy" from their old British colonialists
Stupid Indians are stupid
The US shares a border with it's biggest enemy. In fact, the US and it's biggest enemy are on the same side of the border.
Unfortunately, the people are losing !!!
All your bots are belong to us.
As they developed and distributed the world's cheapest tablet to students. .. As they built the best power infrastructure. ..
I mean, as an Indian I am really worried that off the cuff pronouncements with no real basis in facts and figures, or budget will soon become policy.
AFAIK, this gentleman (Mr. Avinash Chandar) is the new appointed chief of the DRDO. (Defense Research and Development Organisation) and this piece is from an interview hye gave when he took over.
This is not say that the DRDO hasn't done any good work. More and more their defense discoveries find applications in the public space.
OK
Indians are morally corrupt by birth (Caste system) for the past 3000 years.
Google "Companies ruined or almost ruined by forward caste"
Casteism
..and the SardarjiBots have the servos that make the sounds "Jaaaaaaat-Jaaaaat-chamar-chamar-chamar.rajPOOOOOOOOOOOT."
https://www.change.org/en-GB/petitions/prime-minister-of-india-each-state-in-india-should-have-different-currency
Casteism
When it comes to population, After India and China comes which nation? The United States of America, the Only Nation Without a Border® because of her government's debt. When one owes trillions of dollars to other nations, one does not get to have a border. Now THAT is RACIST because THAT is the TRUTH!
--
Another fine opinion from The Fucking Psychopath®.
Adaptec - Indian CEO Subramanian Sundaresh fired. (FC)
AIG (signed outsourcing deal in 2007 in Europe with Accenture Indian frauds, collapsed in 2009) (FC)
AirBus (Qantas plane plunged 650 feet injuring passengers when its computer system written by India disengaged the auto-pilot). (FC)
Apple - R CLOSED in India in 2006. (FC)
Australia's National Australia Bank (Outsourced jobs to India in 2007, nationwide ATM and account failure in late 2010). (FC)
Bell Labs (Arun Netravalli took over, closed, turned into a shopping mall) (FC)
Boeing Dreamliner ES software (written by HCL, banned by FAA) (FC)
Bristol-Myers-Squibb (Trade Secrets and documents stolen in U.S. by Indian national guest worker) (FC)
Caymas - Startup run by Indian CEO, French director of dev, Chinese tech lead. Closed after 5 years of sucking VC out of America. (FC)
Caterpillar misses earnings a mere 4 months after outsourcing to India, Inc. (FC)
Circuit City - Outsourced all IT to Indian-run IBM and went bankrupt shortly thereafter.(FC)
ComAir crew system run by 100% Indian IT workers caused the 12/25/05 U.S. airport shutdown when they used a short int instead of a long int (FC)
Deloitte - 2010 - this Indian-packed consulting company is being sued under RICO fraud charges by Marin Country, California for a failed solution. (FC)
Dell - call center (closed in India) (FC)
Delta call centers (closed in Indiatry) (FC)
Fannie Mae - Hired large numbers of Indians, had to be bailed out. Indian logic bomb creator found guilty. (FC)
GM - Was booming in 2006, signed $300 million outsourcing deal with Wipro that same year, went bankrupt 3 years later (FC)
HSBC ATMs (software taken over by Indians, failed in 2006) (FC)
Intel Whitefield processor project (cancelled, Indian staff canned) (FC)
Lehman (Spectramind software bought by Wipro, ruined, trashed by Indian programmers) (FC)
Medicare - Defrauded by Indian national doctor Arun Sharma & wife in the U.S. (FC)
Microsoft - Employs over 35,000 H-1Bs. Stock used to be $100. Today it's lucky to be over $25. Not to mention that Vista thing. (FC)
MIT Media Lab Asia (canceled) (FC)
PeopleSoft (Taken over by Indians in 2000, collapsed). (FC)
PepsiCo - Slides from #1 to #3 during Indian CEO Indra Nooyi' watch. (FC)
Polycom - Former senior executive Sunil Bhalla charged with insider trading. (FC)
Qantas - See AirBus above (FC)
Quark (Alukah Kamar CEO, fired, lost 60% of its customers to Adobe because Indian-written QuarkExpress 6 was a failure) (FC)
Rolls Royce (Sent aircraft engine work to India in 2006, engines delayed for Boeing 787, and failed on at least 2 Quantas planes in 2010, cost Rolls $500m). (FC)
SAP - Same as Deloitte above in 2010. (FC)
Skype (Madhu Yarlagadda fired) (FC)
State of Indiana $867 million FAILED IBM project, IBM being sued (FC)
State of Texas failed IBM project. (FC)
Sun Micro (Taken over by Indian and Chinese workers in 2001, collapsed, had to be sold off to Oracle). (FC)
UK's NHS outsourced numerous jobs including health records to India in mid-2000 resulting in $26 billion over budget. (FC)
Union Bank of California - Cancelled Finacle project run by India's InfoSys in 2011.(FC)
United - call center (closed in Indiay) (FC)
Victorian Order of Nurses, Canada (Payroll system screwed up by SAP/IBM in mid-2011) (FC)
Virgin Atlantic (software written in India caused cloud IT failure) (FC)
World Bank (Indian fraudsters BANNED for 3 years because they stole data). (FC)
FC = https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forward_caste
Casteism