Pentagon To Send Robot Soldiers to Iraq 765
conJunk points out this AP story carried by Salon (also covered by various sources linked from Google News) "about the Pentagon's plan to send robot soldiers to Iraq in March or April. The program, Special Weapons Observation Reconnaissance Detection Systems, uses Foster-Miller TALON robots, and is said to be "years ahead of the larger Future Combat System vehicles currently under development by big defense contractors such as Lockheed Martin and General Dynamics Corp." If it's successful, maybe our men and women in uniform will have to team up with the United Auto Workers to fight the robo-threat to their jobs." Note that (whatever other considerations you might have about such deployment), the Rules of Robotics that some readers have linked to don't really apply to remote-controlled drones, which is what these are.
Ummmm.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Uh, more like note that the "Rules of Robotics" don't apply in real life.
Democracy. (Score:3, Insightful)
Whether or not thats a good thing, I don't know.
Re:A Bummer about the Job, though... (Score:2, Insightful)
Robots replacing humans may not be as cost-ineffective as you think.
Re:The Iraqis, for one.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Oh, hang on. You mean the terrorist so-called "insurgents?" Funny. That's not the first thing that comes to mind when I think "Iraqis." That you associate all "Iraqis" with a minority of violent jerks who want to destroy any chance the country has of developing democracy says something rather disturbing about you.
Re:Already Robots, Just Not Meat Robots (Score:1, Insightful)
If anything the list of excuses will grow.
Look behind you Batman (Score:3, Insightful)
Robots have no loyalty, they obey the RC.
How soon till we have robowarrior-takedowns.
EXAMPLE:
Some dude walks up behind this bot and using Cloak, drill, and Tinfoil! covers up the bots recieving antenna and cameras. Takes the 200K POS apart and sells the gun(whats the going rate on the armament of these things, anyone?)
Brainwash complete!
I think people are the best weapon, and the cheapest.
Anybody remember the Viet Cong? (Score:2, Insightful)
High tech works only if the enemy is stupid enough to stand in one place and fight you face to face. A million of these robots won't win the war in Iraq. Sorry Uncle Sam but if you want peace on your terms, you're going to have to kill everyone else on the face of the planet. If you are willing to commit genocide then these robots will be a great help. Otherwise; well, good luck.
Re:Democracy. (Score:5, Insightful)
They will never replace REAL american soldiers (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:The Iraqis, for one.... (Score:4, Insightful)
As for the Iraqis not liking this, well it is probably true, even if the police were hunting a band of criminals with robots in my home town, well robots covering me with automatic weapons would not be the most pleasant situation. That doesn't mean I woduld want them to stop, but it would be bloody freaky.
As for the tactics effectiveness, if it is used with restraint (i.e. mostly on those who are hostile, and not just all the time) then it could work really well, they would hate it, and that is a good thing. Sometimes you have to scare people, and riskless killing from heartless robots would probably break morale very quickly.
The risk would of course if they were used as the face that most iraqis saw of the Coalition, hard to trust somebody who is aiming a weapon at you from a block away. Would you try to help someone who always apears as a robot? Would you risk your life to support them?
There are also fairly serious abuse concerns, I mean if a bunch of guys shoot up someone, eyewitnesses might be able to finger them, but an anonymous robot? It is the perfect tool to frag a comander that you don't like. Or to settle scores. Though that is more novel stuff, give it time, and someone will probably try it.
These are not robot soldiers (Score:5, Insightful)
But they are not soldiers. There's a lot more to being a soldier than combat.
Re:The other side already has robotic killers (Score:2, Insightful)
Have you ever fucking considered what despair might take to put yourself into the situation of a suicide bomber?
Re:Definitely not a good thing (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Democracy. (Score:3, Insightful)
What the hell? (Score:5, Insightful)
And all societies with different government structures don't???
It's not like wanting your offsprings to live is a basic human trait, or a basic animal instinct common to most critters on earth or anything, no no no, that's specific to democracies!
Re:Already Robots, Just Not Meat Robots (Score:3, Insightful)
I realize this may become flamebait, but I just gotta answer.
First, I agree with the relevant sentence: "..lower the bar for ethics and morality.." There is a danger that the ability to kill with impunity (in this instance, no danger to yourself) will lead to gross abuses of power. Sadly enough, it happens all the time.
Terminator sci-fi scenarios aside, however, I believe that the end result will be a more complicated battlefield with just another offensive/defensive capability. It's happened before, and it'll happen again.
Etc, etc. Technology (digital, material, nuclear, whatever) increases our killing power, but eventually everyone (relatively speaking) either gets to an approximate base of technology or it's abandoned altogether.
In the end, however, wars have always come down to a soldier/marine/Zulu standing on a piece of ground and saying, "This is mine." Technology simply expands the size of that piece of ground.
To back it up, I spent 16 years of my life in the Marine Corps and Navy, and we studied it, argued it, and practiced it. A lot of work and sweat goes into war (preventing or fighting one), but the basic principles always remain the same.
Magic 8-ball prediction: Lots of hype, overblown claims of success/failure/abuse, then a real application of the concept over the next 10-20 years.
(BTW, you can probably guess my thoughts on the first part of the above post.)
Re:sniperbots (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:When no one will be killed in a war (Score:1, Insightful)
Roy Batty: Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
More War Profiteering? (Score:3, Insightful)
Having recently watched Fahrenheit 911 I find it interesting that the Carlyle Group is mixed up in this. Are George Bush Sr and Jr still part of the Carlyle Group or are they now only friends and former business associates with its investors?
Re:obligatory. (Score:1, Insightful)
Is it common sense to run huge deficits? Is it common sense to yell "I want OBL dead or alive" then conveniently forget it when you so bungle the operation you dont know where he is? Is it common sense to say you want to bring freedom to every country in the world while you limit the freedoms of your own citizens?
Wow, if those are examples of common sense then I think we need a big dose of uncommon sense.
Lastly, I wonder at how you define selfish. The prototypical liberal wants taxes to be used to help the poor or the unfortunate. The prototypical conservative says "fsck them, it's their own damn fault" and just wants to lower his own tax burden. Which do you think is selfish?
Re:obligatory. (Score:2, Insightful)
Jobs? (Score:3, Insightful)
If the national defense could be effected without risking any lives on the front line, that would be great from the perspective of reducing loss of life.
That being said, I would only support it if the wars we fought were just. Since the US is mostly involved in wars based on lies and deception to further one agenda or another, I see the loss of life of soldiers as a necessary part of sustaining anti-war sentiment. Wars with no loss of life on the aggressor's part simply serve to increase the likelihood of further aggression with little regard for the consequences.
Serving your country "for the money" is not serving your country. Military service should be about serving your country for the sake of service. I have no sympathy for those who complain about the bad effects of military service simply because they wanted a paycheck and a free ride through college, for those who never expected to see combat.
SWORDS (Score:3, Insightful)
Special Weapons Observation Reconnaissance Detection Systems.
Fun!
Re:The Iraqis, for one.... (Score:2, Insightful)
You mean like the democracies that were forced, at gunpoint, on Germany, Italy and Japan? Perhaps you think that those "sovereign nations" deserved a live and let live attitude from the US?
Bull.
Re:I seriously welcome it (not funny) (Score:5, Insightful)
A robot could commit war crimes, and it could easily be blamed on a 'technical fault', the manufacturers, or anyone other than the military.
You also forget that a robot would follow every order given to it, without question. Think about that for a moment.
Flamebait (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:obligatory. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:The Iraqis, for one.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Halle-fucking-lujah!!
Someone who finally understands the definition of terrorism!
Terrorism is not bombing convoys or suicide bombs against mess halls. These are military targets. Even the crashing of a plane into the Pentagon was not a terrorist act, since the point was to attack a military target. The victims families might not like it applied to their family members, but those civilians killed on the plane were what is termed "collateral damage" in what was a military attack by definition.
Taking civilian hostages and killing them if your demands aren't met is terrorism, but much(or most, hard to tell from the watered-down news in the USA) of what the insurgents in Iraq do is not terrorism.
Re:A Bummer about the Job, though... (Score:3, Insightful)
I'll admit I was being a bit flippant, but if you think about it, there are already machines out there where it's already considered cost-effective to lose a few humans than to lose the machine.
If there were something on a battlefield like an Ogre (large autonomous tank from the Steve Jackson game by the same name), it might be of such strategic importance that a human would be required to sacrifice her or his life for the robot - and the other humans, and the battle.
Let's face it, war forces one to make ugly choices. Of course, when a company decides it's cheaper to pay the liability claims for the deaths and injury than to correct the product, the same decisions are made - and there's no war.
Re:obligatory. (Score:2, Insightful)
Now, now. Bush is not a redneck buffoon. He is a blue-blood Yaley frat-boy buffoon pretending to be a redneck buffoon. Get it right man! :-p
Re:Definitely not a good thing (Score:5, Insightful)
certainly, they will only be used to secure democracy, free enslaved peoples around the world, and protect against WMD's.
Really, I live in the US, I was out at happy hour at Mackies in DC when Bush made the announcement that we were going to invade Iraq.... everyone cheered. They bought rounds of shots for eachother. It was disgusting- you don't celebrate the start of a war, you celebrate it's end. We are already as sanitized to the violence, pain, and suffering of others. Just so long as it doesn't happin "on our soil".
Re:I seriously welcome it (not funny) (Score:2, Insightful)
Sheesh...what a redneck...
The Iraqis, for one....See no evil, Hear no evil. (Score:1, Insightful)
Uh yeah. Hard to tell especially when they release video of what they're doing, and brag about it on their web site.
Re:More War Profiteering? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:The Iraqis, for one.... (Score:4, Insightful)
Even if we use your defination of terrorism, wouldn't the fact that the plane was a civilian plane make crashing it terrorism? Civilian hostages were taken.
Re:Definitely not a good thing (Score:3, Insightful)
Why? In the type of war we're fighting in Iraq, marines are just one more target for a terror-bomb. By contrast, how fired up do you think some suicide-bomber candidate is going to get when told to "eradicate the infidel's Aibos! No robots will withstand our wrath!" Much harder sell, seems to me.
Another aspect is that, unlike on-the-spot humans, the guy controlling this sucker is off in a bunker somewhere. So when bullets start flying, less adrenaline comes into play. Perhaps this will make for more measured responses than firing at anything that moves, which would be a pretty natural response when coming under fire.
I hear what you're saying about the video-game aspect. It does seem like shooting someone should require more interaction with your victim. But I don't think it's all negatives.
Re:The Iraqis, for one.... (Score:3, Insightful)
The attack on the Pentagon was meant to intimidate our society. It was also for ideologicl reasons
You perhaps forgot the most important one - a crude but effective psychological warfare tactic. A smaller force cannot hope to defeat a larger one (in most cases), so other methods are used. Demoralizing the enemy has always been an effective exploit.
Re:obligatory. (Score:1, Insightful)
Congratulations to the left for calling Bush a redneck. It helps to understand the meaning of your slurs before you use them.
Re:Democracy. (Score:5, Insightful)
So by that logic we should throw out all the body armor, armored vehicles, medics, and anything else that makes our troops safer.
Hell lets throw out all that modern technology and go back to the "good old days" like during the Civil War, where over 50,000 died in one three day battle (thats around twice the total number of deaths in the entire Iraq war). I mean because of the horrors of war back then, people were so peaceful and never engaged in violence to settle a dispute.
Hey, while we are at it, lets stop all those researchers making drugs to help AIDs patients. The more horrible the disease is, the fewer people will engage in reckless sex and drugs.
Re:What the hell? (Score:1, Insightful)
Call me odd but I tend to discount the level to which a society values human life when it's cranking out suicide bombers and their families are hauling in fat paychecks for their actions. I of course know that not everyone in said society feels this way.
That probably won't go over too well either but it's only slashdot karma so who cares.
Re:More War Profiteering? (Score:2, Insightful)
The New Age (Score:1, Insightful)
Personally, I think that either we must stop creating war mechanisms to decrease the amount of killing, or we must continue to increase our technologies to such a propertion that a substantial part of the population would die and finally people would realize what is going on
O wait... that's already happened!
Gross oversimplification (Score:3, Insightful)
The reality of military discipline is that you have to do what you're told, because you can't manage complex military operations on the basis of nuanced discussions. But that doesn't mean that the people in the US military are considered expendible.
The truth is that in wars people die. As a soldier you know you might loose your life, but American doctrine has never relied on sheer numbers. For better and sometimes for worse, Americans apply technology to minimize casualties. We go in after downed airmen. We mount rescue operations for captured soldiers. Americans tend to fight well because they know that their commanders will not send them in to die like fodder.
Does war dehumanize its participants? Yes, to varying degrees in varying conflicts. But particularly in an all-volunteer army, to say that soldiers are simply fodder is not an accurate representation. Ask American soldiers if they think their commanders are doing the best they can to safeguard their troops, and the results would be strongly positive.
One of the interesting things about the 1990s is that it made us all so used to near zero-casulalty wars that we grew used to the notion of sanitary combat. We kill thousands of the enemy and loose none of our own. But that's not how it works most of the time, and the current situation in Iraq is proof that you can't alwyas win with technology alone. A pity President Bush didn't figure that one out before he invaded Iraq.
Re:obligatory. (Score:1, Insightful)
On the other hand, who packs themselves like sardines into what you'd like to think of as refuges of the high minded to only know of nature from PBS or the occasional vacation.
I LIVE it. I get to see the Moon as a globe and watch it as it revolves around us - changing phases in its relation to the Earth and the Sun. I can Actually SEE the Milky Way as a blaze of billions of stars across the sky. Nightly, every time I step out of my door. I can see what our ancestors saw. My vision is not blinded by the lights of the "intelligentsia."
You poor souls can only imagine it in your light polluted cities. You think you are out to SAVE THE PLANET with your Global Warming this and your Global Dimming that. You don't even know what it is you're trying to save!
The Earth has little to fear from a Johnny-come-lately life form. It has suffered eons of "abuse" from forces far greater than your feeble machinations.
Are you so full of your own gall that you think you can make a difference that will last longer than an eye-blink?
Bahh.. Go get a real life.
Re:The Iraqis, for one.... (Score:3, Insightful)
I would contend that had the group chartered, leased, or purchased their own planes, and then flown them into strictly military targets (I would count the Pentagon as strictly military, despite the civilian workers), then this would not constitute a terrorist attack, but a guerilla attack.
I'll admit that #3 is not clear cut in all cases, but let me try to address your two points.
After the attack, but before the US invaded Afghanistan, we demanded that the Taliban turn over Bin Laden and the Al Kaida. The Taliban was not accused of funding Al Kaida, but of harboring them. We (the public) have since learned that almost all of Al Kaida's funding comes from Saudi Arabia, including from the House of Saud itself (with appropriate cut outs and plausible deniability, of course). So, if Al Kaida was sponsored by anyone, they were sponsored by the Saudis, though not officially, of course. And I am not suggesting that the Saudi Government masterminded the 911 attacks.
My main objection to such groups claiming that they are striving towards an inclusive nation of Islam is that they really have shown no interest in merging the various Middle Eastern countries. I don't believe that unification is their real aim or their motive. Their only real aim seems to be to eject the US and to abolish Israel. Their motive. . . well, here it gets very complicated, but to oversimplify, they are very angry with a situation created by their own fundamentalism. However, because any attempts to really deal with the source of the problem(s) threatens that fundamentalism, they must project their anger outwards, to an external enemy. If they didn't have the Great Satan and the Little Satan, they'd have to make them up. Probably India would be the Satan, or Turkey, because of it's close ties to the West. Who knows?
Anyway, this projection of evil is a common enough human phenomena. I know I do it myself. And it should be screamingly clear that the US is engaged in the same form of self-deception, else why the need to mislabel combatants as terrorists? Indeed, the longer this goes on, the more I am seeing it as a clash between two fundamental-ISMs, and show the great lengths people will go to avoid examining their basic assumptions.
Re:What the hell? (Score:1, Insightful)
I realy don't think they do it for the money. Generally the profile for a suicide bomber is a relatively well educated person who feels frustrated by his/her surroundings and wants to take control of their lives for just one moment.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_bomber#Pro
"Most bombers are educated, many with college or university experience, and come from middle class homes. Many do show signs of psychological imbalance, and often had trouble relating socially as children. They often find solace in the ritualistic communion found in extremist circles, which are often headed by charismatic individuals looking for new recruits. Social insecurities notwithstanding, many are concerned for their families."
http://ksghome.harvard.edu/~aabadie/povterr.pdf
Re:obligatory. (Score:2, Insightful)
> in nature, grows the food you eat and mines the
> resources for your daily living
The sweet strains of banjo picking fill the air as the country gentlemen come across a pair of city slickers holidaying in the woods.
"Now lets just see you drop them pants. Yeah,
take them *right* off.
Now, SQUEAL, piggy, SQUEAL..."
> My vision is not blinded by the lights of
> the "intelligentsia."
Yeah, I've seen your sort on the Jerry Springer show and I can definitely testify to *that* fact.
Re:obligatory. (Score:5, Insightful)
You do know that food production [thehindubusinessline.com] and mining [thirdworldtraveler.com] in the US are inherently and inescapably unprofitable when in direct competition with other regions in the world and survive only by the subsidies given to you [typepad.com] by those "city slickers", don't you? A little gratitude to them for preserving your way of life would be in order I think.
Re:Bush is no redneck. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:More War Profiteering? (Score:1, Insightful)
How can you possibly believe that the people saying "please stop killing each other" are MORE responsible for the ensuing deaths than the people who are actually going around killing each other???
How come you don't blame the Nepalese govt?
How come you don't blame the rebels?
You instead blame the peace activists for the results of war. That is ludicrous.
Comment removed (Score:2, Insightful)
What is terrorism? Re:The Iraqis, for one.... (Score:3, Insightful)
While it is true that Terrorism is asymetrical warfare it is not true that they are waging a lawful or legal law -- and I use the terms lawful and legal very loosely.
The West, as most modern societies do, self-impose basic rules of engagement and behavior. These rules of engagement are based largely on our values system.
This is why the news of captured terrorists being abused in the form of light interogation (light mental and physical discomfort, with no real threat of permanent physical harm) is bigger news and overshadows the video taped beheadings of their captures. This is why we have a different threshold for our behavior vs. their behavior.
When the French were engaged in very similar situation in Algiers, De Gaul was prescience in his conclusion that the French could not win a war against the Islamunist insurgence in Algiers -- not because they didnt' have the firepower and manpower but because the brutality that would have been needed would not have been acceptable by Western standards. So France withdrew and the Islamunists went on to massacre 100's of thousands of unarmed non combatants comprised of 2nd and 3rd generation French colonists, not being contrained by the Wests self-imposed values.
Somewhere in there lies the definition of terrorism, not your simplistic view that it is dependent upon whether they are attacking military targets or civilian targets.
I agree with most of that ... (Score:3, Insightful)
But Fundamentalism isn't a very popular (large segment of society) hobby.
In order for Fundamentalism to infect a large portion of society, you need a large portion of society to be (or believe it is being) affected by the evil threat.
Fundamentalism is catching in the mid-east because more and more of the people there ARE affected by "The Great Satan". Either directly or through someone they know.
That is the problem with our continued military response to the insurgency. When we accidently drop a 500# bomb on a house and kill a family, then we've given all the friends of that family a reason to hate / fear "The Great Satan".Pretty much. The problem is that they're over there and we're over here. They can "win" this simply by outlasting us. Just like Vietnam.
But that will breed even more Fundamentalism over there. They will have driven out The Great Satan and they will have proof that there is a "war" against them.
The only way to stop this is to show the masses that we aren't really as bad as our recent and past actions have indicated.
But that takes time and focus and money. None of which our populace seems willing to invest when we are promised quick, cheap "victories" over the "bad men".
Rather than "spreading democracy" in the mid-east, Bush's wars will end up spreading Fundamentalism, anarchy, political assassinations and world wide terrorism.
And no amount of remote controlled gun-bots will be able to change that.
Re:obligatory. (Score:3, Insightful)
Not on Slashdot there isn't.
Definition of Democracy (Score:5, Insightful)
But if that is the definition of democracy, then Communist China, and even Iraq are democracys because the population consents to the rule. (Before y'all fling yourselves at you keyboards, I don't believe they are democracies. I am merely questioning what I believe is a flawed definition.)
In Canada, the definition of a democracy is responsible government. They who govern us must answer to us. And it isn't just the election every few years that holds them in check. We also have the fact that the Prime Minister has to answer to his caucus and his cabinet. They can depose him by several political means. He has to answer to the House of Commons every day that it sits and then some.
And who in the countries cited above in the first paragraph could say "Nay" to the leader. That's what made them non-democratic.
What? (Score:3, Insightful)
If it is your contention that city dwellers should subsidize land consuming industrial farms that burn fuel and generate waste in order to buy more subsidies, it truly is time for NYC to declare independence. We've got ports - I'll happily rely on imported food to be done with the rest of this nation. We've got the largest intelligence and civillian police force in the nation. We've got all the capital generation we need. The money we'd stop exporting to fools like you would be more than enough to cover the rest.
Long thrive the Godless Heathen's Republic of NYC!
Want to bomb us? That already happened, and is being used as an excuse for the last few years of insanity, funded with our money.