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Robot Snatches Rifle From Barricaded Suspect, Ends Standoff (latimes.com)
Slashdot reader schwit1 quotes the L.A. Times:
An hours-long standoff in the darkness of the high desert came to a novel end when Los Angeles County sheriff's deputies used a robot to stealthily snatch a rifle from an attempted murder suspect, authorities said Thursday.
Officials said the use of the robot to disarm a violent suspect was unprecedented for the Sheriff's Department, and comes as law enforcement agencies increasingly rely on military-grade technology to reduce the risk of injury during confrontations with civilians.
"The robot was a game changer here," said Capt. Jack Ewell, a tactical expert with the Sheriff's Department -- the largest sheriff's department in the nation. "We didn't have to risk a deputy's life to disarm a very violent man."
It was only later when the robot came back to also pull down a wire barricade that the 51-year-old suspect realized his gun was gone.
"The robot was a game changer here," said Capt. Jack Ewell, a tactical expert with the Sheriff's Department -- the largest sheriff's department in the nation. "We didn't have to risk a deputy's life to disarm a very violent man."
It was only later when the robot came back to also pull down a wire barricade that the 51-year-old suspect realized his gun was gone.
What happened to sending in the robot with a bomb to kill the suspect?
-=This sig has nothing to do with my comment. Move along now=-
No, it's really not obligatory. It's old and tired.
The robots have begun to steal weapons. It's only a matter of time before the uprising starts.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
The boring short version: So they noticed the idiot left his gun at his feet while laying flat on his belly in a small dune with a wire fence. The operator extended the arm through the wire fence and yanked it out. With the police up front and a helicopter above, he didn't notice.
I guess ExtendaReach to the rescue? I feel sorry for the operators who don't get any credit. I wonder if those firefighter axes got similar treatment. "Firefighter Ax clears way out of burning building for trapped firefighter and baby."
Next logical step: Violent offenders using Robots to stage remote assaults.
When the foot seeks the place of the head, the line is crossed. Know your place. Keep your place. Be a shoe.
It seems every time someone discovers how to do old thing on a new medium and it makes news. Put missiles on a drone, bully someone online, use a new technology to commit a heinous crime? All of these things received widespread news coverage, when they are really nothing more than pencils with erasers:
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09...
In reality these are human nature stories, not technology stories. There is nothing new here, just the combination of things that have already been invented. I want to hear about innovation and invention, not pencil erasers. This is a technology site and should be better than this.
It also took his clothes, his boots and his motorcycle.
U-233 bombs are theoretical and the handful of times it has been tried were failures. The "failures" didn't mean they didn't explode since the conventional explosives used to initiate the nuclear reaction is sufficient to cause considerable damage and turn the core into a dirty bomb. Those that did achieve fission with U-233 did so only with a mix with another fuel, U-235 or Pu-239, and with a yield lower than expected. The value of U-233 to "boost" the yield of a weapon is debatable because of the results of these tests. Other materials and methods, like common natural uranium as a second or third stage, are much more feasible. This still leaves the value of U-233 as a primary fission source as theoretical.
Another problem with using U-233 as a weapon core is dealing with U-232 contamination. U-232 has a bad habit of decaying with it's (relatively) short half life and sometimes doing so with spontaneous fission. The radiation from the weapon core might be dealt with by using heavy shielding or by not caring if the laborers get potentially lethal doses of radiation. Another way to deal with it is to allow the U-232 to decay away but that requires lengthy planning. By "lengthy" I mean waiting out the ~70 year half life long enough that the unwanted isotopes decay away. If one is dealing with U-232 by simply not caring about the radiation load then there is still the problem of the spontaneous fission. I'm not sure what those effects would be but I assume it means a short shelf life for the weapon, a potential "fizzile" (extremely low yield), and possibly premature detonation. None of those effects can be good.
Use of U-233 as a weapon core is so far from practical that it may as well be considered impossible. Obtaining useful quantities of sufficiently pure U-235 and/or Pu-239 is so much easier that weaponizing U-233 will likely never be attempted again. If it is attempted then it will be by some people that are very desperate or people with enough experience in making nuclear weapons that the U-233 bomb would be more of a theoretical exercise than anything considered as viable weapon research.
People spreading the FUD of U-233 as possible weapon grade material do so out of ignorance or by knowing that such weapons are effectively impossible but don't like nuclear power for one reason or another. The reasons to oppose nuclear power in all it's forms may again be based on ignorance but I'm starting to believe that there are political reasons to oppose it even though it is worthless to produce weapons.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.