Weaponized Robots Could Take Point In Future Military Ops

Lucas123 writes "This past week at Ft. Benning, weaponized robot prototypes from four robotics companies — Northrop Grumman, HDT Robotics, iRobot Corp. and QinetiQ — demonstrated their abilities to traverse rugged terrain, fire machine guns and take out pop-up targets from a distance of 150 meters. 'They're not just tools, but members of the squad. That's the goal,' said Lt. Col. Willie Smith, chief of Unmanned Ground Vehicles at Fort Benning. For example, the Northrup Grumman's CaMEL (Carry-all Mechanized Equipment Landrover) can run for 24 hours on three-and-a-half gallons of fuel, and can be equipped with a grenade launcher, an automatic weapon and anti-tank missiles. The CaMEL also can identify targets from three-and-a-half kilometers away, using a daylight telescope or thermal imaging. The robots have also demonstrated their ability to be air dropped behind enemy lines or into remote terrain."

Comments

Resentment

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sure that using robots against opponents will in now way build resentment and hatred for the United States, who is more than willing to sacrifice others in their wars, but has no taste for putting their own lives on the line for their beliefs.

This may win the US battles, but it's going to lose the war on building any sustainable relationships with other cultures.

Re:Resentment

[prefec2]

Instead of alienating everybody you could start to be cooperative. Listen to other cultures, be trustworthy, compromise, don't try to be the bully in the schoolyard. Use your military only to defend you home country and eventually the territory of allies.

In summary: Don't be the imperialist you have been in the decades since 1945. Your president Eisenhower already saw that coming. Now you have a world (6 billion people) who find you untrustworthy, bully and a pain in the ass. The robots will not solve this issue.

Re: Great for the ones running it

[Anonymous Coward]

The necessity to convince to people to go and fight has been a limiting factor in history.

It's the future

[onyxruby]

It's the future and whining about it is no different than whining about the advent of the rifle or the machine gun or the bow. Your taking the fight away from the human being through a layer of abstraction to keep your soldier alive. The layer of abstraction in this case happens to be a robot, once upon a time it was a gun or a bow.

The people complaining about this are really no different than the Luddites that think warfare should be conduced hand to hand with swords and maces. They wont be satisfied unless their own soldiers are getting killed on the battlefield too. Technology advances whether you want it to or not. Change and human nature are the only things that stay the same.

Re:It's the future

[aaaaaaargh!]

As semi-automatic weapons where the gun is controlled by a human, yes, robots are probably the future of US warfare. The US military and public have always been obsessed with rating the lifes of American soldiers and citizens ten to hundred times higher than that of any other fellow human being on earth, including innocent civilian bystanders.

As a fully autonomous weapon, I very much doubt these robots will be usable any time in the foreseeable future, though. Reliable friend/foe recognition is a problem that will not be solved anytime soon. I'm not claiming that friendly fire is not a problem among humans, but we allow humans to make more errors than machines. When soldiers are getting shot at by their own automatized war machines, they will accept that less than if one of their fellow humans makes a mistake.

Re:It's the future

[onyxruby]

I said WWI, not WW2.

For an example of something where the two sides had something close you need only look at WWI.

The death toll of WWI was around 37,000,000 - which sounds a lot like 'tens of millions'. The death toll of the Spanish flu was about 50 million (with high estimates of 100 million), which also sounds a lot like 'tens of millions'.

Foreign aid of the USA per capita is more or less the same as other civilized nations and far behind scandinavian nations.

There are lies, damn lies and statistics, and what you did right there is a perfect example. My statement is factual and you are trying to manipulate statistics in such a way to take credit away from where it is due. Your statement is disingenuous when the US gives tens of Billions of dollars more in Foreign aid per year, every single year.

The US army was crippled in Vietnam by a policy of not bombing near civilian centers which is why the North built as much of their military strength their as they could. They knew the US wouldn't touch anything near the cities and fully exploited the policy. The inability to target anything near a city was directly inspirational for the development of GPS guided munitions that are in use today.

Next time you might want to pause and read what I actually wrote and take a moment to look for some citations before responding. Just like with the other guy, remove the hyberbole and it's much easier to take you seriously. For the meanwhile I'd like to suggest you spend a little time in the history section of your local library before trying to argue history next time.

Re:Why are we so obsessed with fighting?

[Nidi62]

We are "obsessed" with fighting because at its core the human being is an animal. Animals fight for food, for territory, for reproduction. Strip down every conflict in recorded human history and you will find at least one of those elements at it's core. Or, put in other words, resources are and always will be finite. Someone will always have more than someone else, and survival dictates that the only way to get what you need that another has is by coercive force.

Re:What could go wrong?

[paiute]

Since robots don't have emotions, they would not have committed those massacres.

You mean since they don't have emotions, they won't object to committing massacres.

Re: One great benefit of Weaponized robots

[Anonymous Coward]

Then you only sell one. Wont someone think of the military industrial complex!

Re: Great for the ones running it

[RazorSharp]

The necessity to convince to people to go and fight has been a limiting factor in history.

This is very true. One pattern that can been seen is that to convince people to fight suicidally in war (i.e., without retreating despite how grim things look -- something that's necessary unless the opponent it completely outmatched) they need to believe it's the right thing to do. This isn't so difficult when fighting defensively against an opponent whose goal is to rape, pillage, and murder. Fighting suicidally against the Vikings, for example, was the only option available.

It gets a little more difficult when the conquerors only wish to oppress. Then ideals need to be fought for -- "They can take your lives, but they'll never take your freedom!"

It gets real difficult when you want to take the offensive. That requires some more abstract ideology -- nationalism, religion, or better yet a combination of the two. A good example of this is the power of the Roman army when it consisted of proud Romans who believed they were civilizing the world (they actually kind of were), and the fall of Rome when the armies largely consisted of mercenaries gathered from conquered territories that were far from the capitol. Nationalism at work. The Crusades are another clear example of this -- fight to keep the holy land holy. Religion at work.

Joan of Arc did both. The Japanese did both in WWII, which was epitomized by their kamikaze attacks. They didn't just fight suicidally -- they fought with suicide.

Basically, a robot allows one to cut the bullshit and just send it out to kill. We're already doing this with drone attacks. Perhaps these things will help illustrate to people how horribly unethical this is.