Robot Warfare Going Open Source

destinyland writes "Peter Singer, author of the new book Wired for War: The Robotics Revolution and Conflict in the 21st Century, says 'You can build your own version of the Raven drone, which is a widely used military drone, for about $1,000.' Singer argues that 'just like software, warfare is going open source.' He warns that, ultimately, robot warfare may even expand beyond the military using more DIY and off-the-shelf systems. In addition to 43 countries now working on military robots, there are 'non-state actors ranging from Hezbollah to this militia group in Arizona to a bunch of college kids at Swarthmore... One person's hobby — such as the hobbyist who flew a homemade drone from North America to Great Britain — can be another person's terrorist strike option.'"

Sure you can

[QuantumG]

You can build your own version of the Raven drone, which is a widely used military drone, for about $1,000.

You mean this? Raven Drone [wikipedia.org]. Umm.. maybe you could build the airframe for under $1000.. or at least something that looks like it. I seriously doubt you could get the radio control equipment, let alone the camera or milspec GPS receivers (which cost $10k each and you have to justify why you want them and promise not to export them).

If the book is as accurate as this interview, I think I'll just read fiction.

Re:Where's the V-1?

[triffid_98]

One thing that's surprised me is that nobody in the Third World has built something like a V-1 "buzz bomb". That's WWII technology, and it was a low-end technology back then, built from sheet metal. Just duplicating the V-1, adding a JATO bottle so you can use a short portable launch ramp, and adding a half-decent autopilot would provide a precision cruise missile capability at a low price. A low-end GPS plus a backup capability to revert to compass and time in case of jamming would work.

If they want a V1, why not just buy one ready made from N.Korea, Egypt, Syria, [wikipedia.org] etc.?

Of course, for the price of one of those they can buy an awful lot of fertilizer and diesel fuel [wikipedia.org].

Re:Robot Wars and the Three Laws

[DNS-and-BIND]

So...the Soviets defeated the Nazis by controlling the semiotics of the situation? Napoleon won because he could control what the Austrian press told its readers? Come on man, that stuff doesn't fly in the real world.

And lets not forget

[Aceticon]

Lets not forget the other common reason to go to war:

- Being faced with internal dissent and a real possibility of loosing power, portray another nation (or even a minority within your own nation) as "the Enemy" and go to war against them, thus distracting the masses from your own faults as leader, rallying them against somebody else and having a convenient excuse to take on "state of emergency"-like powers which then can be use against your personal internal enemies.

This technique is as widely used in tin-pot-dictatorships as in "democracies" *cough* war on terror *cough*

Re:Sure you can

[hughk]

Funnily enough, you can get some not-quite milspec stuff from these people [sparkfun.com] and they specialise in things like miniature GPS receivers and 3 axis accelerometers. It might not handle the deserts or the tundra but will handle normal conditions without problems. There are even projects that use these for autopilots for model sailplanes and airplanes. Sure the GPS receiver in the Raven may have better interference rejection and be able to use the military GPS channel, but for accuracy you can always use DGPS relative to your base and for interference rejection, upwards facing antennas help a lot.