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Comments: 245 +- News: Rise of the Robot Squadrons on Tuesday November 03, @12:53PM
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timothy
on Tuesday November 03, @12:53PM
from the nothing-can-go-wrong-nothing-can-go-can-go dept.
from the nothing-can-go-wrong-nothing-can-go-can-go dept.
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Velcroman1 writes 'Taking a cue from the Terminator films, the US Navy is developing unmanned drones that network together and operate in 'swarms.' Predator drones have proven one of the most effective — and most controversial — weapons in the military arsenal. And now, these unmanned aircraft are talking to each other. Until now, each drone was controlled remotely by a single person over a satellite link. A new tech, demoed last week by NAVAIR, adds brains to those drones and allows one person to control a small squadron of them in an intelligent, semiautonomous network.'
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Semi-autonomous being key (Score:5, Insightful)
And personally, I'm not especially afraid the armed forces are going to change their tune on that aspect. They most definitely want to have a human being in the firing loop. And I bet part of the reason is that we may be close to having machines that can find and attack targets on their own, we're a hell of a long way from having machines that you can usefully reprimand for fucking up. :) But in all seriousness, this seems like a deeply ingrained philosophy in the military that humans should be in charge of the technology.
Re: (Score:2)
I don't think they want a man in the loop simply because you would have a weapon system that could be subverted by the enemy.
At worst, a robot weapon system run amok is a hazard (like a minefield) and can be dealt with.
Re:Semi-autonomous being key (Score:5, Insightful)
That's akin to saying you wouldn't trust your squadmate to cover your ass in battle because he could be subverted by the enemy. Military is going to trust their brothers in arms that have fought and bled beside them far more then some piece of code.
Mainly because unlike a robot their buddy isn't going to hang him out to dry without care or regard if the contractors that put his helmet together didn't properly ensure the security between it and the company that put the chinstrap together.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
That's exactly what I'm saying, imagine if your fire support was autonomous but with a remote override, that remote override gets subverted and now you have your own support fire shooting you in the ass or worse, not providing the cover its supposed to.
I'd rather have a person manning a weapon system BECAUSE he is much more difficult to subvert. Joe in the trench doesn't have a wifi port you can hack.
Leave the automation to mines.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
In other words, mine removal is not an issue when they are used by a force with overwhelming military superiority over their opponents, which is in control of the terrain where the mines were planted after hostilities are over and which can come back and remove them based on their maps.
In a situation where the mine-user doesn't have overwhelming superiority and the breathing room to accurately document their locations, ensure that that documentation is kept, and remove them after the war, it's not that simp
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
but as long as we're off topic, please note the following pages on land mine statistics-
http://www.newint.org/issue294/facts.html [newint.org]
http://www.redcross.ca/article.asp?id=1945&tid=110 [redcross.ca]
http://www.unicef.org/sowc96pk/hidekill.htm [unicef.org]
a couple of key facts:
2,000 people are involved in landmine accidents every month - one victim every 20 minutes. Around 800 of these w
Re:robots don't break rules or geneva (Score:5, Insightful)
You're clearly trolling, but what the hell:
Robots have bugs and glitches requiring timely patches and PRODUCT recalls
So do people. Psychiatrists and psychologists exist for a reason.
Blue screen of DEATH gets a new meaning.
It's had that meaning for quite a while, seeing as how much of our modern transportation infrastructure is either computer controlled or heavily dependent on computers. Yet, amazingly, the majority of accidents still happen due to driver/pilot error. Thousands of lives could be saved if we'd take control away from people, yet we continue to insist on having human operators because of our paranoid fears of computer malfunctions.
Seriously, this only illustrates how ethics and courage are not part of the empire mindset; just window dressing. This is how fat lazy cowards can take over the world. On the grander scale, its no different than traditional cultures going up against the Spanish, Romans etc- who's goal was conquest and not the honor of a risky act of sacrifice.
That's right - I'm sure that the Aztecs would have been complaining about the "unfairness" of it all, if they hadn't been scared shitless by the sound of boom-sticks, and I'm sure some spoiled twits back in Spain had notions similar to yours. Idiots have been whining about the advance of military technology for centuries - meanwhile those with a decent IQ and a bit of common sense have gladly embraced new tech as a means to protect lives and be more effective. If you want to clutch on to a Vietnam-era AK while cowering with the Taliban in some shitty little cave, feel free. You can feel all warm and fuzzy about how much "ethics and courage" you're showing as a hellfire missile turns you into pink jello. Me, I'll gladly watch from a distance, happy in the knowledge that every such explosion means I'll have one less flag-draped casket to carry down the tarmac.
Americans would attack everybody if it didn't cost them anything personally; that IS the reality.
President Ahmedinejad? I didn't know you had a Slashdot account! I guess being laughed at during your speeches at the UN and Columbia University wasn't enough for you, huh?
Parent
Easier to reprimand, really. (Score:2)
You turn it off and replace the code. Try doing the same with a human soldier, pilot, etc.
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"Turn it off and replace the code" is easy to type, but in practice it is immensely difficult, to the point of impracticality. It's far more likely to just stop working and be a UXO threat... or be salvage for terrorists (if they don't blow an arm off in the process).
Sibling to parent post actually got it right; a compromised system is more of a hazard than anything else.
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There is at least one general who believes that robots should be deployed right now with the ability to fire their own weapons. Quoted from the linked article:
Re:Semi-autonomous being key (Score:5, Informative)
It's not necessarily up to the military. Congress has blocked funding on a program that could autonomously fire grenades, much like a minefield, except much easier to set up, program and dismantle afterwards. Congress, and thus the people still have the power of the purse to decide whether or not our weapon systems can be autonomous or not.
There have been cases where our own drones have been shot down by us because they did not return to a safe mode when instructed to. As of now, that could simply mean that they were in an armed state when it shouldn't have been and couldn't change back.
A co-worker of mine always jokes that we should be adding requirements that state if the system becomes self aware it should be loyal to the US Constitution. I told him that could cause a lot of trouble for politicians in Washington depending on how it interprets the Constitution.
Parent
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Somewhere, in a quiet, dark corner of the Capitol, Ron Paul is grinning an evil grin.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Human operators are also cheaper to rollout and maintain than all but the simplest robot AI, and will remain so for the foreseeable* future.
-- 77IM
* For certain values of foresight -- I'm sure some AI enthusiast will jump on here and say that realistic, reliable target-acquisition AI should be possible in "about 10 years..."
We need robots that can walk around... (Score:5, Insightful)
All this air stuff is awesome, but the guys on the ground could still use a device that can detect a buried pipe bomb from a safe distance.
Mark 1 Eyeball (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
We already have this. And they function on more or less the same swarm functions. They scale really easily, since they simply communicate with each other to navigate. If one blows up, no loss, and you've found a bomb.
It's not quite as elegant as a magic bomb detector, but it's just as effective. I saw them demoed at a CS conference a few years back, and the designer said that they sent them off to Iraq and got back the empty husks (they're basically rolling cylinders with a single 'payload' unit that is jus
Re:We need robots that can walk around... (Score:5, Insightful)
The hope has always been that if your air stuff is awesome enough, you don't need guys on the ground. That's at least as old as Dunkirk and as recent as the US invasion of Iraq.
Negative. The US currently has air superiority over every nation on Earth, to put it lightly. That will only go so far. You always need feet on the ground to take and hold an area.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Or the balls to use that air superiority. When used in WWII the war ended quickly.
Air superiority... (Score:5, Interesting)
Or the balls to use that air superiority. When used in WWII the war ended quickly.
Ending WWII was just as much due to Soviet air superiority and Soviet tank superiority as it was to US air superiority. The US didn't have tank superiority since, apart form Soviet armor, Allied armor uniformly sucked a**. A major reason the 8th air force was able to wreck the Nazi military industrial complex, and more importantly their fuel production from the air (which was easily the part of the bomber campaign that hurt the Nazi armies the most) was the fact that from 1943 onwards the Soviets managed to re-equip their forces with large numbers of modern Soviet designed fighter and bomber designs and those Soviet air forces tied down large numbers of german fighters on the eastern front. If anything defeated the Nazis it was the fact that they over-extended themselves militarily in every way.
Parent
Re:Air superiority... (Score:4, Insightful)
--A major reason the 8th air force was able to wreck the Nazi military industrial complex, and more importantly their fuel production from the air (which was easily the part of the bomber campaign that hurt the Nazi armies the most) was the fact that from 1943 onwards the Soviets managed to re-equip their forces with large numbers of modern Soviet designed fighter and bomber designs and those Soviet air forces tied down large numbers of german fighters on the eastern front.--
Hugh, what about fighter escort? The P51.
--The US didn't have tank superiority since, apart form Soviet armor, Allied armor uniformly sucked a**. --
Numerically we did. As far as a T34 being that superior to a Sherman, at least the Sherman all had radios. In 43 at Kursk the Germans could have won and they may have even bee able to win at Stalingrad, but we had a lot of help from Hitler ignoring his generals.
--Ending WWII was just as much due to Soviet air superiority and Soviet tank superiority as it was to US air superiority.--
Just for the war in Europe. Remember, the Russians didn't declare war Japan until after we fire bombed the crap out of them. Air power was a big factor for the US. The Russians, we'll they can afford to use bodies since they have so many.
--If anything defeated the Nazis it was the fact that they over-extended themselves militarily in every way.--
Yes, this is true. If they would have went straight for the oil and left the rest alone for later, who knows how far they would have got.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah, I guess it depends on if your aim is to take the area itself or the area + civilians living in the area.
Boots on the ground (Score:4, Insightful)
The hope has always been that if your air stuff is awesome enough, you don't need guys on the ground.
And it's been proven time and again that sooner or later there is no substitute for boots in contact with pavement. Never mind the fact that without ground support the drones are going to have a tough time figuring out what to shoot at. Little bit tough to identify Osama from 10,000 feet.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
If all you have in the area are drones, everyone with a heat signature is a target. Notice I didn't say a valid target.
I guess this means... (Score:3, Funny)
And we call this new technology... (Score:2)
Well that explains the Starcraft II delay.... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Well that explains the Starcraft II delay.... (Score:5, Informative)
You're joking, but I work in R&D for one of the biggest US manufacturers of UAVs, and the DuneII/C&C/WarcraftII/Starcraft paradigm for controlling and commanding "swarms" of UAVs, and for displaying the data they retrieve, is exactly the inspiration we're using for multiple platform systems with one operator. We ultimately envision one pilot commanding tens or even hundreds of Protoss Observers...
(And for those of you who are FUDding about "skynet" -- 99.9% of the UAVs in the sky are ISR-only, like the Protoss Observer, not weapon platforms. And the ones that do have weapons don't fire at anything without a human issuing at least two orders, and that human is under observation himself. Please stop the FUD. The only functions these craft do autonomously are piloting (i.e., responding to stick commands and short time constant variations in atmospherics) and waypoint-to-waypoint navigation. The rest is done by human pilots and payload operators.)
And yes, we can't wait for StarcraftII to come out.
Parent
Re:Well that explains the Starcraft II delay.... (Score:4, Insightful)
Quite a bit actually - as in, only within the realm of Science Fiction.
This "rogue swarm" would need to be aware enough to 1) have a motive to do such a thing in the first place, 2) learn enough about outside systems to 2a) break into an outside network and 2b) research information about its target, and 3) learn how to fuel itself or recharge its batteries, 4) socially engineer some E4 to load a few bombs on board (what, you think these things are kept armed in the hangar?), and 5) manage to elude the ground and air traffic controllers long enough to get off the ground and 6) evade fighter interceptors that will eventually chase after them when they're noted missing.
Now, it's reasonably arguable that one of these systems could fall into the hands of someone with foul intentions. But so could a tank, or a Harrier Jet, or a nuke. In fact, it's far easier to take control of something that is not remotely piloted, and that has a standard unencrypted interface like a stick, rudder and throttle.
But to seriously argue that these things could have a mind of their own is ludicrous. Anyone who argues such a position is heedlessly ignorant of how these things are designed, built and operated.
At the very basic level, they don't have enough processing power on board to be any smarter than a moth. We don't put anything more powerful in them than absolutely necessary because we need to conserve as much mass and power as possible for flight endurance.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
This ability isn't exactly new.
Torpedoes at the end of WWII had seekers. A diving sub could fire one that would circle and hit any ship that it happened to find. We have had captor mines for years that sit on the seabed and wait for a sub to come buy and sinks them. Should we worry about the abuse of weapons?
Well heck yes. Ever since we developed the bow we need to worry about people abusing the ability to kill at a distance but this drone tech isn't revolutionary.
I've seen this movie, and it was terrible (Score:3, Insightful)
No, I don't mean Terminator.
Did anybody actually watch Stealth? I wish I could unwatch it.
starcraft (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
You still had to build all of the drones first. You'd think they would have stocked that thing up before teleporting it in from Auir.
That's no swarm. (Score:3, Funny)
For our sake... (Score:2)
WOW (Score:2, Funny)
Robots vs. Drones/UAVs (Score:5, Informative)
While we're on the subject, let's talk about the difference between drones/UAVs and robots so we use the right words.
A drone/UAV is controlled remotely by a human. If a UAV is on autopilot flying to the target area, it is function as a robot. With the US military, there is a "man in the loop" for any attack using a UAV. The bomb disposal machines are not robots. They are remote controlled. A land mine would be closer to a robot.
A robot follows a program and is NOT controlled by a person. An air to air heat seeking missile is a robot. The software tells it what to do.
An android is a robot in the shape of a human, like the T800.
Mecha in Robotech and the like... are NOT robots. They are vehicles piloted by people. The transformers are robots that happen to be sapient. Big metal walking thing != robot. Absence of pilot inside != robot.
The machines in Battle Bots are remote controlled cars with armor and weapons. They are NOT robots. But it would be awesome if they were.
Re:Robots vs. Drones/UAVs (Score:4, Informative)
No, he meant "sapient".
My friend's dog is sentient - it senses, is aware of its surroundings, etc.
It most certainly is NOT sapient - it is not wise.
Too many SF writers use "sentient" when they mean "sapient".
You should perhaps look more closely at the very links you included.
Parent
A larger drone... (Score:3, Interesting)
Out of context (Score:4, Informative)
The reason why they are calling these UAVs "swarms" is because they are using Particle Swarm Optimization to determine their flight path and schedule. (The basis for this research was done at my school, Purdue, so I know a lot about it.) The whole 'networking together' idea is not necessarily true either. The UAV's status is reported to a central machine/server/program that constantly reprocesses the incoming data to determine an optimal order of operations (such as blowing this up, looking at this, etc.) The program considers all of the situations of various other drones, in addition to other external data (wind speed, etc) to determine the optimal result.
Taken out of context, it sounds a lot like terminator type stuff, but it's not really... it's more like optimizing the operations of drones so that they can be controlled by less people.
This technology is essential - get used to it (Score:4, Insightful)
It takes three people to remotely pilot a Predator. There are never enough Predators or Global Hawks in the sky for all the intelligence we would like to gather. We don't have enough people, platforms and dollars to buy, launch, pilot, and support all the reconnaissance we would like. And while the imaging capabilities on the big unmanned platforms is impressive, they still can't see through mountain ridges or down deep urban canyons. For that you need something that can fly right overhead and get close enough without being seen or heard and that requires lots of small UASs. But the only way we can get enough of those into the air is to have some way for a single person to manage two or a hundred platforms just as easily as one.
Swarm may be an unfortunate term, since it can evoke the image of a killer swarm of bees - hence we naturally think of swarms as lethal attack technology. In fact, unmanned attack swarms are still science fiction. The swarming research that is going on (and demonstrated in the article) is all about surveillance and reconnaissance. Even if we get to the point of arming the individual swarming platforms, there will always be a human in the loop making the final decision to fire a weapon. Don't kid yourself: even with all the new technology it has only gotten more difficult to make the decision to engage not easier over time. Ask those that do this for a living about the hoops they have to run through before they can fire a weapon from a Reaper.
Not Brains! (Score:3, Funny)
Peter Singer, Defence policy advisor interview (Score:3, Informative)
Former Defense policy advisor to President Obama, Peter Singer does a great [abc.net.au] interview for [abc.net.au] Hungry Beast on autonomous military robotics. Quite an interesting interview. It is a video but it won't start buffering until you hit play.
He raises a good point about us human doing things like this and then thinking 'maybe that wasn't such a good idea'. So much for Asimov's laws for robotics.
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He clearly doesn't know the difference between The Predator and The Terminator.
I think it's time for someone to hang up their geek spurs.
Controversy what? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Controversy what? (Score:4, Interesting)
Controversial? The only controversy is people who want to fly planes but are losing their jobs to video game nerds.
They are controversial because they are rather indiscriminate weapons; figures vary wildly but a midrange one would be that they kill about 10 civilians for each target killed. There's a tradeoff between killing terrorists and alienating the civilian population.
Parent
Re:Controversy what? (Score:5, Informative)
They are controversial because they are rather indiscriminate weapons; figures vary wildly but a midrange one would be that they kill about 10 civilians for each target killed.
Credible cite please. Sounds like a made up statistic to me. FYI the Predators and other UCAVs are simply a weapons delivery platform, nothing more, nothing less. Its the missiles (Hellfire AGM-114) that do the killing -- same as when they are launched from manned aircraft like F-16. They have the same accuracy and blast radius regardless of what launches them. They hit what they are aimed at and affect everyone in the designed-in lethality/damage radius. Also remember that these were originally designed as anti-tank weapons for the cold war -- US Anti-Tank helicopters like the AH-64 and is Air Force counterpart the A-10 anti-armor aircraft were the original platforms, so they may in fact be "overkill". So stop the fallacious argument of blaming the delivery platform and the weapon; its not the weapon you have issues with, its the targeting and proper usage (which is a completely different -- and far more political -- issue).
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
The most equipped drone will also be able to pick up ancient scrolls lost in the valleys of Afghanistan which would enhance its armor and features, such as Insightful +3 for improved vision.
Negative on the scrolls. They've been burned by the Taliban since the only words man was intended to read is the Holy Quran.