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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."
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
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.
"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.
..are doomed to repeat it.
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.
Just sayin'..
We have the same problem in the U.S....
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.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Almost true. It's about resources. Machines get to fight for their own oil, for example. Too bad there are probably humans in the way.
Nae king! Nae laird! Nae yurrupiean pressedent! We willna be fooled again!
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.
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.
rewriting history since 2109
I disagree. IMHO war has generally been about egos, and resources are frequently the excuse. Assuming we managed to come up with efficient and logical machines, they would most likely come up with some more efficient way to get their resources than war.
However if they were to decide that war was the most efficient way, watch out!
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
Keep in mind that according to its actions, the US aspires to the same status - except substitute "won't" for "can't", at least in the short-medium term. In the long term those policies will make it "can't", too.,
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?
hey maybe India could use this tech to deploy toilets... http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-17377895
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.
Democrats?
I kid, I kid
Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
...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?
You didn't mention the open sewers in the streets, and that more toilets are needed.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
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
And instead plunged billions into the toilet marked "robots on the front line". Because, to a great extent, it's the process that's the problem, not necessarily the product.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Forward-thinking is one thing, capability is another. I doubt that India is capable of achieving the "dream" they are having. They can't even feed and/or solve their own population poverty, how could they be able to afford a huge budget on something that may (yes may) do good for their country.
What I can see is only a corruption rather than a real plan for their country. Why? Because the disappearing fund could be included in failing missions and there will likely be plenty of failures in their attempts with their current knowledge and resources. I see a similar situation from my country that has this similar luxurious thinking regardless the voice of people against the idea. As a result, the goal has never been delivered but disappearing of funds. All the losses were from taxes that people have paid into.
Forward thinking in general is good, but it could turn bad when it is unrealistic (from whatever factors) and/or very exploitable. If there is no way to reach the goal or takes too many resources to be worthwhile, it should not be called a forward thinking.
I mean, can you imagine an 8 armed robot? :-0
War. War never changes.
The Romans waged war to gather slaves and wealth. Spain built an empire from its lust for gold and territory. Hitler shaped a battered Germany into an economic superpower.
But war never changes.
In the 21st century, war was still waged over the resources that could be acquired. Only this time, the spoils of war were also its weapons: Petroleum and Uranium. For these resources, China would invade Alaska, the US would annex Canada, and the European Commonwealth would dissolve into quarreling, bickering nation-states, bent on controlling the last remaining resources on Earth.
count me in.
War is an *expensive* way to acquire resources, but often people don't care because they can arrange for *other* people to sacrifice their wealth and/or their lives.
"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.
nuf sed :-)
Table-ized A.I.
Canada? Polar bear Mounties terrify me.
I couldn't fail to disagree with you any less.
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
https://www.change.org/en-GB/petitions/prime-minister-of-india-each-state-in-india-should-have-different-currency
Casteism
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