The US Army Wants Distributed Bot Swarms And An 'Internet of Battlefield Things' (defenseone.com)

turkeydance shares a new report about the U.S. Army Research Lab: In the coming months, the Lab will fund new programs related to highly (but not fully) autonomous drones and robots that can withstand adversary electronic warfare operations... A second program called the Internet of Battlefield Things seeks to put to military use "the research that's going on in the commercial space" on distributed sensors and Internet-connected devices... One thrust will be equipping drones and other autonomous systems with bigger brains and better networking so that they can function even when an enemy jams their ability to radio back to a human controller for direction... "When you don't have bandwidth, when you're under cyber attack, when you're being jammed. That's the problem we're trying to address."
The lab's director also says they want "as much processing as possible on the node" so it can continue functioning in "contested environments."

Comments

When there's enough of them

[SCVonSteroids]

and someone (a body of people, an organization, what have you) figures out how to seize complete control of them is when the world takes a sharp turn into something nobody really wants. I don't even think this is doomsday-talk either, we're naturally progressing in this direction, have been for some time now. Our paranoia is going to drive us into oblivion if we don't shift our collective mentality soon... ...as if THAT'S going to happen! :)