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Boeing's Autonomous Fighter Jet Could Arrive Next Year (engadget.com)
Slashdot reader technology_dude writes in response to an Engadget report about Boeing's plans to develop an autonomous fighter jet: In Season 1, Episode 23 of Star Trek, the Enterprise visits two worlds that are at continuous war. The war is ran via computers, and people that are victims in a "hit" report to a facility to be terminated. Kirk tells the world's leaders that there can be no peace if there is no cost to the war. We avoid war because of its cost and ugliness. Remove that and you remove the reason to stop. It looks like we may need the Captain to intervene here on planet earth. We seem hellbent on automating our militaries. The report says Boeing's recently unveiled autonomous fighter jet, called the Boeing Airpower Teaming System, is expected to arrive as soon as 2020. "The aircraft is designed to fly alongside crewed jets during combat, performing early warning tests, intelligence gathering, surveillance and reconnaissance," reports Engadget. The company says the jets will cost a "fraction" of a manned fighter.
So SkyNet's air force arrives before SkyNet proper....
Call them what they are KILLER ROBOTS!
Please explain how "performing early warning tests, intelligence gathering, surveillance and reconnaissance" qualifies them as KILLER ROBOTS.
There was a cost to the war. The people were killed. It was kind of a naff plot.
What we need to worry about is a future where the rich and powerful don't need us. Where virtually everything is done by a small number of machines and a tiny engineering class who serve the ruling class, much like the merchant class served the aristocracy of old in the Dark Ages.
Right now the rich need us to buy their stuff and they need to balance military and civilian life. Once they've got automated kill bots, custom life extension treatments and robots to make their baubles we're all pretty much worthless to them. History has not been kind to people who aren't needed for anything in particular...
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Project much? Just because you are a cheater, a thief, or a liar doesn't mean everyone else is a cheater, etc.
Don't be an idiot if you can avoid it. I'm not talking about me. I'm talking about life. Life will find a way, and not in a Jurassic Pork sense. Only robots would be satisfied with such a stupid stalemate.
Mark my words, nukes will be used in war this century if CO2 hits 500+ppm due to environmental damage (aka famine) initiated refugee crises.
Religious wingnuttery is a way more likely cause.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
It's clear that the future of traditional war will be air power. Bombers taking off from Missouri, the heartland of the US, were used in the Iraq war. Their is no distance they can't cover with assisted fueling.
Why didn't the ships in Star Wars auto-fly and auto-target/kill?
Spielberg didn't see the future. James Cameron sort of got it with Terminator, except the machines weren't very good shots.
Automated war is terrifying.
From the ground, motion detection and enemy identification from a mile is not out of our reach (I'm sure some our working on this, it's not complicated).
It's this sort of tech that will result in a nuclear exchange (EMP = stop that shit). In my opinion.
How easy is this stuff? Here's an auto-aiming Nerf sentry turrent:
https://newatlas.com/nerf-vulc...
What's my point? I don't actually know. But automating war creates more enemies. Not waging war, not so much.
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Or it could be that your numbers from the Iraq war are off by more an order of magnitude. The Iran-Iraq war had far higher casualty counts and was under two million. For reference, the Mongols kills more people in the region of Iraq than was killed in the entire Iran-Iraq war and the Moguls killed far, far, far more when they conquered most of India. When there were fewer people ways were still found to kill more without advanced weapon technology, but do continue with your narrative, I enjoy fiction as much as history.
The given example was poor: there was a huge cost in lives sacrificed willingly.
In the real world there is also a huge cost. Money and lives. Of course, when we have the autonomous weapons, it's foreign lives so they aren't really a loss to us. But what about the money?
When our military costs, combined with the cost of subverting other governments and also the surveillance of our own citizens total more than the military cost of all other countries combined, then we can count that as a significant cost.
If instead, a similar amount of money were invested in helping countries instead of threatening them, we would be loved and wouldn't need a military. If some of that money was invested in helping our own citizens instead of threatening them with Big Brother, we could empty our jails and many hospital emergency rooms. If we put some money into parental guidance and education and a proactive health care system, we could have a model society.
But then Boeing's profits would drop considerably, and their donations to congresspeople would follow.
...omphaloskepsis often...
The human body is the failure point in modern fighters. G forces must be limited for a human to survive. The human can not be on that plane. Further human life support systems take up a lot of space. With robotic warriors no cock pit is required. That space can be used for fuel and weapons. Then there is another cost factor. Ruined or dead airmen and their survivors cost a fortune. No more mangled men and bodies to deal with at all. No human operated aircraft will be able to compete in combat. And it gets better. Ships also are better without sailors. Imagine a mother ship launching a smaller ship for the last 300 miles into a combat zone. The zombie ship needs no humans etc.. Once that zombie is on site it can wage all kinds of war more effectively than a human occupied vessel. In essence the conventional warship becomes a tow boat and fuel and weapons hauler that stands outside the battle arena. These days a small unmanned zombie warship could easily have more fire power than weapons of all types, used by all sides during WW2. And we don't even have to worry about radiation in the combat zone. So far air and water are the easy places for automatons. Land has far more challenges but we will soon see the Army soldiers become a historic oddity. These things are already taking place.
The stealth fighter doesnt even have afterburners. They should call the F-117A a light bomber, really.
The F-117 isn't a fighter. It was just given that designation to confuse the russians.
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