The holy grail is to get to a capability something like this: Two unmanned aircraft are searching for a target over an area of, say, several square miles or so. One plane notices movement, but the enemy is operating in a dense street situation, difficult for a high-altitude device to analyze, much less attack.
So the flying craft signals the relevant position via GPS coordinates to a cooperating APD on the ground. The unmanned car snakes around streets and buildings in pursuit of the goal. Meanwhile, the two planes keep trading information about the location of the target and sending it to the APD, which returns more detailed data about operations as they come in.
“This system demonstrates not only the collaborative interoperability possible among dissimilar vehicles, but also the numerous sensing technologies that can be included onboard as interchangeable payloads,” explained Lora Weiss of the Military Sensing and Analysis Center (SENSIAC) in a blog post.
I thought the holy grail was to have chips implanted in our brains all connected to the IRS? When you don’t pay your taxes, a switch is thrown by an algorithm tied to Wallstreets need for liquidity to pay bonuses and an increasing level of pain is experienced until more taxes are paid.
I’m pretty sure that is it. Money–not security is the holy grail.
Whoever makes the first greater-than-human intelligence, be it synthetic or augmented humans they will change the world forever (in whatever way the goal system of such a entity wishes). Unless we destroy ourselves before that, which is at least very credibly likely.
That’s spooky. And I thought personal bar coding or RFI implanting was spooky.
I will need some method of cloaking to block
info on my whereabouts.
Sharing of data between dissimilar vehicles is becoming commonplace in the military. The F-22 can fly over enemy territory, acquire targets, launch missiles at said targets, and destroy them… all without turning on the on-board radar. They fly “silent” thereby masking their position and, hopefully, even their presence.
This is done through satellite links allowing data sharing between other fighters, AWACS, satellites, ground stations, ships, etc.
The military has gone uber-high-tech with the F-22. The next phase is making it virtually automatic on UAV’s with only limited operator input. Of course, the operator may be hundreds, if not thousands, of miles away at the time.
Now, if the military gets a hold of IBM’s Watson, watch out. Remember the WOPR from “War Games”? Scary scenario.
Something about the sterility of android warfare bothers me. Yes, I’m happy that “our guys” (i.e. the ‘good’ guys) are safe. On the other hand, should bloodshed be sterile and at a distance?
Also, it’s a little scary. The USA may be the leaders in this technology right now but how long before China rips off the tech and starts selling it to Al Qaida or Bermuda? Next thing you know, you’ve got Predator clones zipping down the streets of Mayberry picking off Opie and his friends.
Science fiction tends to (more often than not) come true sooner or later. “1984” is one example. “Soylent Green” may be another. “Honey I Shrunk the Kids,” ok . . . maybe not that one.
Killing a terrorist with a rifle after making positive ID is the way to accurately hit a target only.
Killing a terrorist with a bomb, fired from an airborne drone circling thousands of feet away, piloted from an office thousands of miles away, is the way to scramble an order of magnitude or two people plus a possible target.
And the pilots don’t even have to see the victims die. This way is much easier on the pilot’s sleeping pattern.
4, Mark T.,
Until we can get AI in the realm of actually knowing instead of making probabilistic guesses, then I don’t think it will happening anytime soon.
It’s because Watson can still make calculated errors that are CLEARLY wrong to a human that will make “virtually automatic” operation on a UAV a long time coming.
An alternative to IBM’s Watson: http://tinyurl.com/4v2ufr3
You didn’t think DARPA was spending all that money and time on simply automating resupply vehicles, did you?
http://darpa.mil/grandchallenge/index.asp
Does anyone find it interesting that Google, which has deep ties to the U.S. Govt, has self-driving cars? I bet that whole project was a funded by a military research grant. The military has been funding DARPA unmanned ground vehicles for a while now.
Makes you wonder if Google’s “Do no evil” mantra has been bent to the breaking point.