The British Army is Carrying Out a Massive Test of Military Robots and Drones (technologyreview.com)

The British Army is testing out over 70 new technologies, including unmanned vehicles and surveillance drones, in a four-week experiment on one of its biggest training grounds. From a report: What sort of stuff? The department isn't giving out specifics but said the focus will be on "surveillance, long-range, and precision targeting, enhanced mobility and the re-supply of forces, urban warfare and enhanced situational awareness." The development is part of a $1030 million "innovation fund" launched in 2016. The aim? Primarily it's about reducing the danger to troops during combat, according to the UK's Ministry of Defense (MoD). One of the main areas it'll test is "last mile" supply of fuel, food, and ammunition. The exercise will culminate in a simulated battle involving over 200 soldiers to test out the ideas and products.

Comments

I keep saying this

[rsilvergun]

killer robots are coming whether you and I like it or not. If you want to do something about it now's the time.

I don't think "less government" is the answer either. That just leaves a power vacuum. We need more democracy. We also need to take care of our workers. Make a decent living into a right, not a privilege. Stop getting played against one another. The notion that some people are born to suffer is antiquated and needs to die.

Re:$1030 million?

[alvinrod]

The U.S. has pretty much always used billion, but in England 1,000 million historically was called a milliard. A billion was a million millions (or 1,000 milliards) so I think there's still some hesitance to use the term as it is leaves everyone a bit nonplussed.

Re:$1030 million?

[Kjella]

To be fair, that is only true in English. In every other language I know of, the equivalent word means 10^12 and 10^9 is called something resembling the word milliard. It remains confusing except perhaps to those whose mother tongue is English.

Actually it's much more confusing than that, like Eastern Europe and Russia, Brazil, Middle East etc. all use the short form but don't speak English while most of Western Europe use the long form. Like here in Norway there's absolutely no confusion about these terms:

10^6: Million
10^9: Milliard
10^12: Billion
10^15: Billiard

Fortunately we rarely need the word billion in Norwegian as that would be a trillion in English and because it could be ambiguous on the rare occasions we could use it we tend to simply avoid it like a thousand milliards, So practically it's like "billion" is the English translation of Norwegian "milliard", forget everything past 10^9 and the etymology as you'll only confuse yourself.