Ah, remember the days when it was hand to hand combat with steel swords and axes and shields, blood spurting everywhere, making a man who survived feel like a man? Good times, good times…
When the US invaded Iraq in 2003, they had no robots as part of their force. By the end of 2005, they had 2,400. Today, they have 12,000, carrying out 33,000 missions a year. A report by the US Joint Forces Command says autonomous robots will be the norm on the battlefield within 20 years.
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Every time you hear about a “drone attack” against Afghanistan or Pakistan, that’s an unmanned robot dropping bombs on human beings. Push a button and it flies away, kills, and comes home. Its robot-cousin on the battlefields below is called SWORDS: a human-sized robot that can see 360 degrees around it and fire its machine-guns at any target it “chooses”. Fox News proudly calls it “the GI of the 21st century.” And billions are being spent on the next generation of warbots, which will leave these models looking like the bulky box on which you used to play Pong.
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This is “one of the most fundamental changes in the history of human warfare,” according to PW Singer, a former analyst for the Pentagon and the CIA, in his must-read book, Wired For War: The Robotics Revolution and Defence in the Twenty-First Century. […] The earlier technologies made it possible for humans to decide to kill in more “sophisticated” ways – but once you programme and unleash an autonomous robot, the war isn’t fought by you any more: it’s fought by the machine. The subject of warfare shifts.
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While “we” will lose fewer people at first by fighting with warbots, this way of fighting may well catalyse greater attacks on us in the long run. US army staff sergeant Scott Smith boasts warbots create “an almost helpless feeling…. It’s total shock and awe.” But while terror makes some people shut up, it makes many more furious and determined to strike back.Imagine if the beaches at Dover and the skies over Westminster were filled with robots controlled from Torah Borah, or Beijing, and could shoot us at any time. Some would scuttle away – and many would be determined to kill “their” people in revenge.
And what about the day captured robots start being reprogrammed to attack the attacker?
Which is worse? Getting mercenaries to fight for us i.e. Blackwater/XE, or robots to run and kill?
Either way we’ve now disconnected ourselves from the battlefield.
This is disgusting.
Soon we will have drone fighting drone kinda takes the fun out of war.
Let’s hope they use encryption this time.
It was predicted. This is the future, unfortunately. Take the “pain” out of warfare and the threshold for projecting force on the opponent is much lower. Expect more wars and more bloodshed in the future. Until we totally debase our currency, of course.
What happened to the old days, when an empire made it’s vassal states wage war for them? If we’d just bone up on how effective empires really run, we’d be much better off.
Or we could just become the “shining example on the hill.” I’d prefer that option.
Yep. Robots and mercenaries for combat and uniformed military to blow up suspicious oil trucks and police crowd control.
Wait a minute. 12,000 robots = 33,000 missions a year. What are these robots? Union workers?
way to get out money’s worth!
From a strategic standpoint, perhaps the first wave of robots in an invasion should be a battalion or two of sex robots like Roxxxy…
If appropriate, I’m sure she could be fitted with an easily-removed burqa so she doesn’t look too slutty to a Muslim man. And of course, that’s just an offhand example, because jumping to any conclusion that we would want to invade a Muslim country is pure silliness 😉
Robots? yeah right. These are nothing but Remote Controlled vehicles with ZERO capacity to do anything without someone driving them remotely. They are used to slowly crawl up to an undefended position and blast an IED with a shotgun, or poke something to see if it blows up. These things are very easily disabled, have no capacity to fight back because they are so skill limited.
Basically overgrown versions of the RC cars that kids get for Christmas, but with a gun.
Hello! Has no one in the military decision command chain seen the movie “The Terminator”!
Hacking war bots is not a far off possibility, it already happened with the predator drones being hacked a few months ago.
#10 Yeah, let’s hope we’re not fighting the Chinese.
#10
Not really hacked. Here is a good article on what happened.
Schneier on Security
Intercepting Predator Video
http://tinyurl.com/ybjzu4n
I like the idea that a war ends when one side’s precision robots beat the other side’s precision robots.
RBG
No matter how many drone’s you have, or bombs you drop, or robots you can send. At the end of the day it will require some grunt on the ground with a rifle (no matter how high tech) getting dirty and bloody killing the enemy. War is still a matter of killing the enemy and breaking their ability to fight until they quit, people on both sides will die in painful obscene ways. That’s the hell of it.
How do you reload it? It’s stupid.
#4
It is not true that pain and suffering has been the primary factor limiting the use of military means. Since the 1500’s, economics of men and materials, far more than death and destruction, has been the true limiting factor in engaging in warfare. So, while it is true that you win a war by breaking your opponent’s will to fight, it is equally true that you do that by destroying their ability to conduct war.
Wait till the freaking TERMINATORS show up at your front door!
They won’t be cuddly ones like our governator also!
#15. Some guy reloads.
These things need to be more like small tanks with a nice big box you can reload either in the field or back at the base. I think they can do sentry duty. Anything that moves or gives off heat inside their predetermined petrol zone gets shot or reported. This off course causes the people at the base to notice they have problems.
These things may be better than sticking minefields that will need to be cleared all over the place.
If they get out of control we can always use EMP weapons.
I for one, would like to welcome our future machine overlords.
Too bad everybody ignores Asimov.
1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2. A robot must obey any orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.
Oh yeah, nothing like having a safe distance between you and your victim.
I’m for just about anything that advances research into robotics, but the idea of an all robotic infantry, now that’s even stupider than the atomic bomb.
#23
Oh yeah, nothing like having a safe distance between you and your victim.
You mean you and your opponent who is trying to kill you.
I’m for just about anything that advances research into robotics, but the idea of an all robotic infantry, now that’s even stupider than the atomic bomb.
Check. Tell that to the soldiers that were stationed on Okinawa in preparation for the invasion of Japan. Tell that to the men that fought at Iwo Jima which was thought to be small potatoes compared to main island of Japan. I doubt they thought A-bomb was a stupid idea. Further, I doubt the soldiers in the field taking fire would complain about sending in a robot in their stead.
How come no completely remote-control tanks?