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Military Robots Expected To Outnumber Troops By 2023
Lucas123 writes "Autonomous robots programmed to scan city streets with thermal imaging and robotic equipment carriers created to aid in transporting ammunition and other supplies will likely outnumber U.S. troops in 10 years, according to robotic researchers and U.S. military officials. 5D Robotics, Northrop Grumman Corp., QinetiQ, HDT Robotics and other companies demonstrated a wide array of autonomous robots during a display at Ft. Benning in Georgia last month. The companies are already gaining traction in the military. For example, British military forces, use QinetiQ's 10-pound Dragon Runner robot, which can be carried in a backpack and then tossed into a building or a cave to capture and relay surveillance video. 'Robots allow [soldiers] to be more lethal and engaged in their surroundings,' said Lt. Col. Willie Smith, chief of Unmanned Ground Vehicles at Fort Benning, Ga. 'I think there's more work to be done but I'm expecting we'll get there.'"
This is not to say that it'll be hard to stop the proliferation of military robots, but - is this really a good idea?
Sure, us Westerners, we can say how good a thing this may be - on the other hand, Gaddafi had some problems after a while with his troops seeing the misery they were spreading. To some extent, the same is true for Assad's Syria..
Can you picture what would happen, if rulers like those got their hands on military robots that will just unquestioningly mow down their own people, if the people don't like their "esteemed" ruler any more?
Or - picture them in the hands of North Korea...
Once they get deployed in one nation, no matter how well "behaved" that one nation will be, they will appear in other places - under less enlightened "leadership".
http://www.strangehorizons.com/2008/20081110/crispin-a.shtml
They aren't ready for prime time, but the day is coming.
Or have you never heard of a Predator Drone firing a Hellfire missile?
Wait, there's more:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uOuH_X3lFMU
And
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uOuH_X3lFMU
Yea, they look silly today, but then so did the first tanks and airplanes in 1914.
It won't happen in 5 years, but it will happen within 50 years. Give or take...
So far, we're pretty much using them as cameras. It's a bit of a jump to say they will start replacing soldiers.
catcha: Replacer they must plan these things
How sophisticated does a guidance system have to be before it qualifies as a (rather suicidal) robotic soldier?
While there seems to be a bit of a taboo about handing a robot a gun and telling it 'yeah, just frag anything that looks particularly infrared in that direction', heat-seeking missiles, with no human terminal guidance, have been available for years.
We don't have anything that makes broader strategic decisions; but if you count robots attached to their munitions, we've been letting robots make kill decisions, within a confined search space, autonomously for some time. They just don't get to come back afterward.
Today: a general might want to engage in some madcap but risky adventure but will be restrained because he knows that his ass will get it if too many of his own soliders die. This reluctance preserves life on both sides of the war.
Tomorrow: that general will do it since he knows that his bosses won't weep much over the loss of a few robots and not at all over the many deaths on the other side -- be they soldiers or civilians. The result will be a loosening of moral constraints to kill, not a good thing by my way of thinking.
We saw that a century ago when it did not matter to the generals how many of their own side died, remember the huge numbers who died in the Battle of the Somme and the deaths from drone attaks in Pakistan that few in the West worry about.
It only took 50 years to go from Eniac to mult-core processor with gigabytes of memory accessing data from around the entire planet on every desktop.
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin