posted
Did anybody else start a thread on this? I couldn't find one. The Army is field testing Robot Snipers in Iraq, starting in March or April. They are not autonomous machines, but allow soldiers to remote-control fire from distant locations--quite a force multiplier if they are deployed in sufficient numbers.
As the article says, "the SWORDS, short for Special Weapons Observation Reconnaissance Detection Systems, will be the first armed robotic vehicles to see combat." Land based, anyway. Hellfire missles were put on RPVs in recent years.
I am a little surprised by this, I hadn't expected real combat robots so soon. Although the RPVs have been quite succesful in Iraq and Afghanistan. I chopped up the article some in my quotes.
quote: The rain is turning to snow on a blustery January morning, and all the men gathered in a parking lot here surely would prefer to be inside. But the weather couldn't matter less to the robotic sharpshooter they are here to watch as it splashes through puddles, the barrel of its machine gun pointing the way like Pinocchio's nose. The Army is preparing to send 18 of these remote-controlled robotic warriors to fight in Iraq beginning in March or April.
Military officials like to compare the roughly three-foot-high robots favorably to human soldiers: They don't need to be trained, fed or clothed. They can be boxed up and warehoused between wars. They never complain. And there are no letters to write home if they meet their demise in battle.
But officials are quick to point out that these are not the autonomous killer robots of science fiction. A SWORDS robot shoots only when its human operator presses a button after identifying a target on video shot by the robot's cameras.
As one Marine fresh out of boot camp told Quinn upon seeing the robot: "This is my invisibility cloak."
"For the foreseeable future, there always will be a person in the loop who makes the decision on friend or foe. That's a hard problem to determine autonomously," said Lowrie.
These are very tough robots:
quote:Quinn said it was a "bootstrap development process" to convert a Talon robot, which has been in military service since 2000, from its main mission - defusing roadside bombs in Iraq- into the gunslinging SWORDS. The Talon had already proven itself to be pretty rugged. One was blown off the roof of a Humvee and into a nearby river by a roadside bomb in Iraq. Soldiers simply opened its shrapnel-pocked control unit and drove the robot out of the river.
It has devasting firepower:
quote:The $200,000, armed version will carry standard-issue Squad Automatic Weapons, either the M249, which fires 5.56-millimeter rounds at a rate of 750 per minute, or the M240, which can fire about 700 to 1,000 7.62-millimeter rounds per minute. The SWORDS can fire about 300 rounds using the M240 and about 350 rounds using the M249 before needing to reload. Chances are good the SWORDS will get even more deadly in the future. It has been tested with the larger .50 caliber machine guns as well as rocket and grenade launchers - even an experimental weapon made by the Australian company Metal Storm LLC that packs multiple rocket rounds into a single barrel, allowing for much more rapid firing.
And it's very accurate:
quote: A typical soldier who could hit a target the size of a basketball from 300 meters away could hit a target the size of a nickel with the SWORDS, according Quinn.
The better accuracy stems largely from the fact that its gun is mounted on a stable platform and fired electronically, rather than by a soldier's hands, according to Staff Sgt. Santiago Tordillos of the EOD Technology Directorate at Picatinny. Gone are such issues as trigger recoil, anticipation problems, and pausing the breathing cycle while aiming a weapon. "It eliminates the majority of shooting errors you would have," said Tordillos.
"We've fired 70 shots at Picatinny and we were 70 for 70 hitting the bull's-eye," said Sebasto, boasting of the arsenal's success with a Vietnam-era rocket launcher mounted on a SWORDS.
On the horizon: MULES (Multifunction Utility/Logistics Equipment Vehicles) and Robotic Infantry Support System: (RISS):www.globalsecurity.org.
So the 21st century will have robot warriors of one kind or another. Scary but inevitable I guess. Posts: 6316 | Registered: Jun 2003
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That's probably the best way to sum it up. We live in a society that really doesn't accept human death as a part of war.
Posts: 1660 | Registered: Jan 2000
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posted
Heh, for some reason, when I read the title I thought, "Oh cool. They put mechanical arms on robots".
Posts: 3003 | Registered: Oct 2004
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posted
So now putting robots instead of humans, while maintaing human discretion, in harms way is a bad thing?
I'm lost now I really am. You don't want people to get killed, but you'd rather have people die rather than robots get blown up? Is this a liberal thing or some crazy people thing?
Posts: 3446 | Registered: Jul 2002
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posted
They are going to weld a few Claymores (the non-sword variety) on to this thing with a big red button on the control panel for when someone hostile tries to take the gun or ammo from a disabled robot, yes?
posted
Oh well, when you talked about people prefering other people dying instead of robots blowing up and asked wether it was a Liberal thing I just assumed...
Posts: 3564 | Registered: Sep 2001
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posted
Stormy, that's one of my favorite movies. Too bad Cameron has gone downhill since then.
Getting lost is what happens when you jump to conclusions, Nfl.
quote: but you'd rather have people die rather than robots get blown up?
Did I or anyone else say or imply they'd rather have people die than robots? That's absurd. This robot seems like a plus for the US military, assuming it works well. I don't see this particular application as bad or scary, but it's only the first step on the road to autonomous robot armies, which has many nightmare scenarios. Science fiction is replete with them.
posted
No guys, I don't those people really read the article. Its not a liberal thing. They were thinking the robots were autonomous.
So lets just make it clear:
These are remote controlled robots, NOT AI!! There is a human with a computer screen behind the controls.
And frankly that rocks. And I'm about as liberal as it gets. Then again, I'm also a counter strike nerd I want one
Edit: At the end of the article they said that there will always be a human behind the controls for the forseeable future making the friend or foe decision, becuase its impossible to develope software to make that decision really.
Generally people are scared of things they don't like. I hardly think I'm jumping to conclusions given these statements.
Posts: 3446 | Registered: Jul 2002
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posted
Rapid technological change is often scary, even when it doesn't involve robots armed with rocket launchers.
I posted the article, of course I know the robots are not autonomous . The future implications are still daunting, for most people who think about them.
posted
In the end how are these robots different from TOW missiles or any other remotely controlled weapons? How are they even different than an F-16? Why do we care that in one case a pilot is in the aircraft and in another case the pilot could be sitting anywhere from his living room to a remote military base in Siberia? What exactly is the significant difference that can be construed as "scary?"
Posts: 3446 | Registered: Jul 2002
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posted
You're right: robot snipers are actually warm and cuddly. I predict it will be the toy to get come Xmas.
Posts: 6316 | Registered: Jun 2003
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posted
Hmmm, good comeback, nfl. There are killer robot toys. But plenty of parents won't let there kids play with them.
Government use of deadly robots has frightening implications. If you don't get that I cannot explain it to you.
Posts: 6316 | Registered: Jun 2003
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posted
Will you answer the question instead of making false unrelated claims? First, like fighting robots parents often won't let their children buy GI Joes either. Its violence that concerns parents, not the fact that they're robots. Second, you still haven't answered how the government use of remotely controlled robots however deadly they are is any more dangerous than the use of an F-16 or an M-1 tank. Implying that I'd be stupid and shortsighted not to grasp your fictional implications is just a poor way to avoid answering the question.
Posts: 3446 | Registered: Jul 2002
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posted
I don't see anything particularly scary about robot soldiers. The only danger is that we might become too quick to enter wars if the cost in human life on our side becomes very low. But people have always been pretty aggressive at starting wars anyway. Probably better to lessen the harm of warfare insofar as we can.
Posts: 4600 | Registered: Mar 2000
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posted
As was said, these are TELEOPERATED machines, not real "robots." They are not programmed to respond to their environment.
But they are programmed to respond to a well-formatted data stream--the input control channel for the remote teleoperator.
Unplug that cable, and plug in the cable for the SkyNet computer, and there you go!
But how is this different from a "smart bomb", or the strap-on smart-bomb conversion units the Air Force now has? Not that much.
The UAVs (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles) are polited via radio-control from great distances, I imagine that we no longer need line-of-sight, and that you can bounce commands (so to speak) off of the military communications satellites to control these things from wherever the propagation-delays don't screw up your control schemes. Plus, we've added weapons to them.
Boeing and Lockheed are in competition for UAV bombers, with UAV fighters coming shortly after that. One of the programming goals for ALL these vehicles is some level of autonomy, so that temporary interruptions do not cause you to lose your asset, and so that higher and higher levels of mission requirements can be handled by the on-board computers (in part, with regard to that time-lag issue). Again--what do you think a smart bomb or a cruise missile is?
Posts: 1862 | Registered: Mar 2000
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quote: But how is this different from a "smart bomb", or the strap-on smart-bomb conversion units the Air Force now has? Not that much.
ssywak
And nfl asked similar questions:
quote:In the end how are these robots different from TOW missiles or any other remotely controlled weapons? How are they even different than an F-16? Why do we care that in one case a pilot is in the aircraft and in another case the pilot could be sitting anywhere from his living room to a remote military base in Siberia? What exactly is the significant difference that can be construed as "scary?"
The difference is a F-16 or TOW missle can't kick down your door and kill you. Or rob, kidnap or commit other crimes. Armed robots have the potential to do that, whether autonomous or teleoperated. They bring automated violence down to the retail or street level.
Also, while they may be a boon to US forces now and in the near future, further down the road armed robots can proliferate, eventually being used by smaller governments, or even individuals, corporations, organized crime or terrorist groups.
Just like nuclear weapons gave us an irresistable weapon to end WWII, but now years later we are struggling to keep rouge nations and terrorists from acquiring them.
quote: The difference is a F-16 or TOW missle can't kick down your door and kill you. Or rob, kidnap or commit other crimes. Armed robots have the potential to do that, whether autonomous or teleoperated. They bring automated violence down to the retail or street level.
Why does it matter if the kidnapper is a human or a machine controlled by a human? The only difference is that the military isn't putting soldiers in harms way. Its not as if gangs getting hold of this technology are going to be more likely to commit crimes, they'll commit crimes either way. The only difference I see is that a robot is being put in harms way instead of a human.
Posts: 3446 | Registered: Jul 2002
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posted
Using a robot to commit a crime would make solving and prosecuting that crime that much harder, if not impossible.
Posts: 6316 | Registered: Jun 2003
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quote: The only difference I see is that a robot is being put in harms way instead of a human.
Which is exactly why unethical people would love to get their hands on robots capable of violence--because the robots could act as effective proxies.
Posts: 6316 | Registered: Jun 2003
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posted
Anyone who could afford one of these robots wouldn't be putting themselves in harm's way either, they'd put some lackey there. I'm sure at the point that sort of regular people can get their hands on robots we'll also be able to track where the robots come from, they can't just pop out of holes in the ground. Regardless I don't even think its realistic that robots will be out of the hands of the military before we'll have gone through much more important societal changes making your points moot.
Posts: 3446 | Registered: Jul 2002
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posted
I forgot that you refuse to acknowledge that robots aren't any less dangerous soldiers with M-16s.
Have military weapons fallen into the wrong hands? Yes. But M-1 Tanks and F-22s don't disappear too often and when similar weapons do they're usually at the hands of powerful intelligence agencies whose governments are likely to develop the same technology anyways. The key is to stay ahead of your enemies, not to stand stagnant while they improve their technology.
Posts: 3446 | Registered: Jul 2002
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posted
Like I said back in the 15Nov04 thread Terminator Iraq : The Rise of the Machines. So all you armchair warriors can get ready for a new variation on Internet hunting. Yep, coming soon to a PC near you, a real war paying for itself via subscribers ala Everquest.
posted
Just so everyone knows, we already load up those remote-control flying spy drones with missiles. We've actually had that ability for about 2-3 years now. The only major change here is that we haven't been using robots in the field with the Army yet. SWAT teams and Police forces in some cities in the US have had robots armed with a shotgun for years now. It's actually quite logical for us to start using these things in combat. Frankly, I'm incredibly confused about why we HAVEN'T been doing it since the start of this thing.
Posts: 3003 | Registered: Oct 2004
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quote: Military weapons have often gone missing and fallen into the wrong hands.
Wow. Great question. I think it would be wiser, however, to realize that these things were probably designed with that scenario in mind. Most of our higher technology equipment is designed with methods to keep people from getting ahold of it.
Posts: 3003 | Registered: Oct 2004
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quote: Using a robot to commit a crime would make solving and prosecuting that crime that much harder, if not impossible.
Wrong. The law would consider a robot a deadly weapon in this type of case. Plus, tracing a direct remote connection like the one required to control these particular robots is not a difficult thing with the right equipment. Furthermore, the absolute COST of using something like this in a crime makes it unlikely to happen. To all those scared of the Science fiction stories, think about it. How many science fiction stories can you come up with (Aside from Jules Vern and many other extremely early Science Fiction writers) that have actually happened? If anything, the bad things that happen in Science Fiction stories do more to PREVENT what happens in them than anything else.
Posts: 3003 | Registered: Oct 2004
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posted
I agree that the use of robots in combat is a logical step. However, I tend to think that it isnt a step in the right direction.
I think it is another step in the direction of dehumanizing killing. A soldier who is sitting in a tank or command center, watching his enemy on a screen, and deciding when and who to shoot from a distance, can be completely seperate from the lives he is about to take. How is that a good thing? Just because it minimizes the loss of OUR soldiers, doesnt mean it will minimize the loss of life. I hate to say it, but it's like telling soldiers that war is a video game. Those people you are looking at through a screen dont really exist to you, because you cant feel them. I dont know. I cant really explain it, but I really think that this is a pretty stupid thing for us to accept.
Posts: 499 | Registered: Mar 2004
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posted
Foundling, what you're describing isn't a step that was taken by these new robots because its already been noted how a fighter pilot feels less about killing than a sniper who has to look his target in the eye. The goal of warfare should not be to make things easier on enemy combatants, whether you're worried that we will engage in unjust war is a seperate question.
Posts: 3446 | Registered: Jul 2002
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posted
Let's think about this, foundling, this concern you've just raised is actually another BENEFIT of having these robots. Have you ever heard of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder? Dehumanizing the enemy and making a kill seem like it's not really happening is actually a good thing for our soldiers. The only argument that you're making is that we shouldn't have wars. Well, you're right, we shouldn't. But war happens whether we like it or not. People are going to die because of it.
Of course, what you mention is a bad thing if a controler suddenly starts thinking it is just a game and starts taking out civilians who pose no threat to anyone. That's the only real issue you can have with a remote controled robot, and it's something that would require careful training and protocols to prevent, and since these robots can be made to be fairly difficult to destroy, I'd imagine a "fire only when fired upon" protocol would be used in all situations.
We're fighting people who want to kill us so badly they're willing to kill themselves to do it. That isn't defense of anything. That's pure hatred. Why should our fighting men have to face that kind of hatred when it's possible for someone sitting at a computer monitor 10 miles away to clear out a room of terrorists who are just waiting to kill an American?
So if war is unpreventable, and if people are going to die, I'd rather not have MY side of the war lose as many men to bullets, and I would MUCH rather lose less to the psychological strain that results in seeing countless deaths. So does having a robot do your killing for you dehumanize the act of killing? Probably. But I think it's better for the ACT to be dehumanized than those who must act.
Posts: 3003 | Registered: Oct 2004
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quote: We're fighting people who want to kill us so badly they're willing to kill themselves to do it. That isn't defense of anything. That's pure hatred.
Hm. Oddly, throughout history, this has in fact been considered a truly heroic form of defense. From the Japanese Kamakaze to the famous defense of Sparta, I'd hardly make the argument that the only reason to kill yourself in order to kill someone else is "pure hatred."
posted
Tom, the Kamikazes aren't considered heroic, they're considered to stupid and crazy. At least in our culture, its considered a mark of fanaticism to throw your life away for a cause and make yourself a martyr.
Posts: 3446 | Registered: Jul 2002
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posted
"Foundling, what you're describing isn't a step that was taken by these new robots because its already been noted how a fighter pilot feels less about killing than a sniper who has to look his target in the eye"
I didnt say it was the first step, nfl, I said it was another step. Many have already been taken. I dont agree with most of them.
"The goal of warfare should not be to make things easier on enemy combatants," Thats true. But, the goal of war also shouldnt be to make killing easier on our soldiers. It should be HARD to take a life. It should be squeamish, and dirty, and it should feel wrong every time you do it. You might still do it because you know you have to, but it should personally affect you every time. It shouldnt be sterile, easy, or comfortable.
"whether you're worried that we will engage in unjust war is a seperate question."
Worrying about us engaging in unjust war is a bit like worrying about the barn door being open after the horses already got out. We have engaged in unjust war in the past, we do so now, and I'm sure we will continue to do so into the future. I'm much more worried about how we make it so easy to accept that war is a neccessity. I'm worried about how we distance ourselves from the loss of life our soldiers are experiencing and incuring by allowing our media to feed us milk pap stories, with only pretty pictures, none of the icky ones. I'm worried that we allow technology to outdistance our sense of morality, of right and wrong, because we are told it's neccessary for the good of the nation. I'm worried that we can so easily dismiss the pain of other nations, other people, because they arent in our face, screaming in agony. I worry about alot of things.
But I cant really say I worry about unjust war.
Posts: 499 | Registered: Mar 2004
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posted
You seem to have a real desire to make life as difficult as possible for the people who keep us safe. Before you raise your voice in furious indignation, I do believe you have altruistic reasons. However, those reasons are seriously misguided.
Posts: 3446 | Registered: Jul 2002
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posted
"Tom, the Kamikazes aren't considered heroic, they're considered to stupid and crazy. At least in our culture, its considered a mark of fanaticism to throw your life away for a cause and make yourself a martyr."
Good dear sweet lord. This is funny. So, soldiers arent heros, but fanatics. Is that what you think, nfl? And Tom isnt just talking about OUR culture, nfl. Contrary to popular opinion, OUR culture is not the be all end all of history. Countless war-like cultures throughout the ages considered dieing for your country to be the ultimate sacrifice.
edit: You know, in light of my post below, this comes across as pretty damn snotty. I'm not going to change it, but I'll acknowledge its inherent snottiness.
posted
You know, nfl, I have never agreed with anything you have said. Except for that one memorable occasion when you said "the". I agreed with that. But otherwise, I find your comments to be the exact polar opposite of everything I believe in.
So, I shouldnt be surprised when you think of my reasoning as misguided, cause I think your reasoning is seriously warped. I guess I should just accept that fact, and ignore your condescending, ignorant comments. I'll try. But I cant promise anything.
Posts: 499 | Registered: Mar 2004
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quote:The difference is a F-16 or TOW missle can't kick down your door and kill you. Or rob, kidnap or commit other crimes
Morbo, do you know the level of robotics we're at these days?
"Rob, kidnap, or commit other crimes"
Since the android project I was on over 15 years ago really hasn't progressed much beyond the prototype stage, you can wait another decade or two before you really have to worry.
quote: So, I shouldnt be surprised when you think of my reasoning as misguided, cause I think your reasoning is seriously warped. I guess I should just accept that fact, and ignore your condescending, ignorant comments. I'll try. But I cant promise anything.
Not only is it snotty, it's hypocritical. Mostly because this comment is, in itself, condescending and ignorant. But hey, to each his/her own.
Posts: 3003 | Registered: Oct 2004
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posted
Now, I'll give you snotty, but I really cant see the hypocritical. I mean, it's not like I said none of my posts were going to be condescending, did I? No. So, while it was a tad snarky, it was nothing but truth. NFL is more than welcome to just try and ignore anything he finds offensive about my posts. So are you, for that matter. And, if you'll notice, he did start the snottyness. Implying that I was about to go off on an emotional tangent indeed. So Boris, while defending your buddy is an admirable quality, I would stop trying to save him from snarkyness he so richly deserves. It'll only make it harder for him in the long run.
Posts: 499 | Registered: Mar 2004
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