First Armed Robots on Patrol in Iraq 661
An anonymous reader writes "Robots have been roaming Iraq, since shortly after the war began. Now, for the first time — the first time in any war zone — the 'bots are carrying guns. The SWORDS robots, armed with M249 machine guns, "haven't fired their weapons yet," an Army official says. "But that'll be happening soon." The machines have actually been ready for a while, but safety concerns kept them off the battlefield. Now, the robots have kill switches, so "now we can kill the unit if it goes crazy," according to the Army. I feel safer already."
This is Nothing New, the Russians did it before. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:America Fuck Yeah! (Score:1, Informative)
First off, please feel free to call a Marine dumb to his/her face. Someone of such high calibre as yourself should be more than willing to do so. It's the honourable path, after all, and from your post I can see you know a thing or two about honour.
Your ambiguous post raises the question- do you realize that the Brits have Royal Marines? Serving in Iraq? How about the multinational coalition? Oh, ok.
Regardless, the forces aren't necessarily an 'invading force' (typically requires the goals of conquest or occupation; if you mentioned invading as a synonym for 'entering,' it's acceptable) and the forces aren't an 'oil-keeping force.' Rather, they are liberators who operated under the intelligence that Saddam a)supported terrorists(9-11 link later proved faulty...but as a result of faulty intelligence- is that hard to comprehend?), and he b) disobeyed numerous UN mandates after the first Gulf War (making him a terrorist to, at the very least, the Kurds).
Yes. I would expect anyone to be upset when civilians are deliberately targeted. If the hijackers could virtually rape the American airspace for so long with four separate airplanes over New York and the nation's capital, surely they could have done some damage to a military base. With all the protection the White House and its airspace have, I'm sure some small military base would have been a plausible target. Don't use civilized policy of attacking terrorists and insurgents as an excuse for their tactics of hiding among innocent civilians to create more of an excuse for their behavior. Besides..the suicide bombers are blowing their own people up as well.
Sunni v Shi'ite != recent problem (or one caused by American policy.)
Suicide bombings aren't brand new occurrences..
For a good read, check this [apologeticsindex.org] for some good starters for topics to research.
Re:This is Nothing New, the Russians did it before (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Erratic behaviour (Score:2, Informative)
And some GI Joe got hold of it and said: whoa.. how do I stop it if it goes crazy? Engineer responds: it won't. GI: Well I ain't touching it unless it has a kill switch!
Hence, it now has a (probably completely technically unnecessary) "kill switch".
Screamers anyone? (Score:2, Informative)
They got it right down to the name of the robots! You don't think SWORDS was original, did ya?
Autonomous Mobile Swords?
All they need is a high frequency speaker, and the MPAA would sue the hell outta the government for infringement!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Screamers_(film) [wikipedia.org]
Manpower for US military (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Asimov must be spinning in hgis grave... (Score:2, Informative)
rj
I, Robot the book is a collection of short stories, not a novel.
Re:Asimov must be spinning in hgis grave... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Great Ideas don't work in the military (Score:5, Informative)
No? Let me relate to you a fun story of mine.
About two and a half years ago, I was a squad leader in Iraq, just outside of Ar Ramadi. We had a pair of outposts on one of the major highways in the Anbar province, one on each side of the highway. Next to our outpost, there was a barracks for Iraqi National Guardsmen. We built it up for them, gave them beds, toilets, showers, water, food, weapons, ammo, training, etc. One night, two of them put on civilian clothes and their body armor, sneak out of their compound and begin digging a hole in the check point to put a bomb inside of.
One of my privates is on tower guard at the time and watches them do it. After radioing back and forth with the operations center, over the course of several minutes, he finally gets the authorization to open fire. He kills one and wounds the other. They flee back into their compound.
Long story short, the second guy went to Abu Ghirab and is probably in Guantanamo. You know what happened after we had unquestionable proof that we couldn't trust the battalion of Iraqi National Guardsmen? Not a damn thing. We continued working with them. We continued feeding them. We continued giving them water and fuel, working the checkpoint with them and going on patrols with them.
Next time you think that US soldiers don't care about the lives of Iraqis keep that in mind. We knew for a fact that at any time, we could get murdered by Iraqis that we had done so much for, but because it's THEIR country, we sucked up the danger and kept working with them.
Re:The Mysterious Dr. Zecca (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Asimov must be spinning in hgis grave... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Asimov must be spinning in hgis grave... (Score:5, Informative)
I'm sure it's all in the name of "winning hearts & minds" and brining democracy and freedom, so it's okay. I'm sure the Iraqis don't mind.
Oh yeah, my cousin's pretty fucked up now. I'll be really surprised if he doesn't end up in jail for assaulting or killing someone now that he's back home. He wasn't like that before he went. The irony is that he laughs about how some kid's head was blown apart but nearly cries about a dog they had to leave on a rooftop. It's amazing what we do to others and our own in the name of democracy.
Re:This is Nothing New, the Russians did it before (Score:3, Informative)
Alas, the dogs had learned in training to associate food with the undersides of Soviet tanks, not German tanks. The result of all this was predictable.
Re:Asimov must be spinning in hgis grave... (Score:3, Informative)
My favorite Asimov story was about a robot (AI computer) running the weather system for a planet, and intentionally causing major droughts and floods. They thought it was broken and sought to repair it, but found it was working in the best interests of humanity. If it controlled the weather 'perfectly' from a human standpoint, there would always be plenty to eat, and the AI knew that with enough food, there would be overpopulation. Overpopulation leads to human suffering, which the AI was trying to prevent. It ran into a paradox...either the humans starve to death during droughts or they live in close confines with a burgeoning population and starve due to the planet's inability to supply such a large population with an adequate amount of food.
I can't remember the name of the book/story, because I went on a binge one time and read nearly all of Asimov's books back to back for a few months. Still, you get the gist.