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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."
"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."
..are doomed to repeat it.
On the other hand, if you are trying to get funding for basic research approved, attaching weapons to your grant proposal can be very helpful indeed...
Since actually getting a robot to kill somebody(in a manner more sophisticated than a land mine) requires all sorts of other capabilities to be worked out first, you can just write "Killer Robots OMG National Security" on your application and then spend a decade doing the basic research you actually wanted to do anyway.
Robots killing people is fairly easy, simple motion activated systems combined with range finding and ballistics algorithms will do the trick. Add facial/body type/gait recognition to keep it from going after so many shadows.
Getting them to do that while also not killing the right people is the hard part.
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'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.