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.'"

Comments

Is this really a _good_ idea?

[beh]

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".

Re:Is this really a _good_ idea?

[FlyHelicopters]

This is not to say that it'll be hard to stop the proliferation of military robots, but - is this really a good idea?

No, it isn't... You aren't thinking big enough. What happens when the robots decide they don't want to fight?

Yea, all silly sci-fi crap, right? That could never happen, right?

67 years separated the Wright Brother's first airplane flight that lasted 12 seconds and went 120 feet from Neil Armstrong landing on the moon.

If you had run around in 1904 (the year after the first flight) yelling that man would walk on the moon within a lifetime, you would have been locked up as a crazy person.

Well lock me up then, because giving guns to robots is about the stupidest thing we could *ever* do.

Re:Is this really a _good_ idea?

[RsG]

It actually wouldn't be that difficult to avoid what you describe as "silly sci-fi crap" scenarios. The key concept is autonomy.

Meatbag infantry aren't that autonomous to begin with. They need their supply lines; an army marches on its stomach. And they need orders. For every squad of grunts shooting/getting shot at there's a legion of grunts keeping them in ammo, food, water and fuel, bare minimum, and and whole line of dummies (excuse me, officers) telling them where to go and what to do. Interrupt either and they stop being effective in a hurry.

Despite these limits infantry are still the MOST autonomous branch of the military. Tanks need entire shops for of full time specialists, aircraft spend more time getting fixed than getting flown, and ships go through fuel by the tanker.

A super advanced drone with onboard guidance still needs fuel, and if it wants to kill anyone, ammo. And it'll probably need a direct order, possibly with an access code, to unlock its weapons, seeing as ROE are already that restrictive for human soldiers.

And the kinds of traits your talking about in an advanced computer - self-determination, intellectual autonomy, freedom - are the polar OPPOSITE of what the military wants in a drone. If Cyberdyne made a pitch to the Pentagon that started with "Our new T800 Killbots are able to learn, think and adapt", they wouldn't make it halfway through the first PowerPoint slide before getting politely asked to leave. Top brass don't even want regular grunts doing any of those things.

Re:Is this really a _good_ idea?

[ColdWetDog]

Ah, you just touched on the Achilles's heel - the power source. No nucs, no majic fuel cell sipping hydrogen from the air.

It's gonna be batteries all the way down.... to zero.

Re:We don't have one robot soldier yet.

[FlyHelicopters]

No, no it really isn't...

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...

Re:We don't have one robot soldier yet.

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

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.

Reduction of reluctance to war

[Alain Williams]

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.

Re:Skynet

[amiga3D]

It's very easy to avoid war. Simplicity itself. Don't fight. When someone comes and says we want to take everything you have and enslave you then just say "okay." No problem. It doesn't get any easier than that. Personally I believe there are a lot of things worse than war. Worse even than dying.

Re:We don't have one robot soldier yet.

[cusco]

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.