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TechnoratiWar of The future: Robot versus Robot
LONDON-A fleet of tiny tanks, each no bigger than a breadbox, cruising in remote-control formation down the dusty alleys of Afghanistan to neutralize roadside bombs.
Elsewhere on the battlefield, a matrix of palm-sized sensors scattered strategically by robot helicopters kick into action and instantly begin beaming the high-definition whereabouts of insurgents poised to pounce.
In control of it all, beyond the margins of danger, are the soldiers themselves, whose combat kit soon may come replete with a scanner capable of detecting a suicide bomber from a survivable distance of 20 metres.
These are but a few of the concepts-in-progress revealed to reporters in London this week, where the Ministry of Defence pulled back the classified curtain for a glimpse of a robotics revolution that may one day render conflict bloodless to all but those in the crosshairs.
Cutting-edge military research and development is hardly new in Britain, which commands an estimated third of the world's controversial $60 billion global arms market, second only to the United States.
Yet the innovations unveiled Wednesday represent something else - a short-list of finalists competing in a direct challenge from the British government for high-tech, remote-controlled solutions to the kind of asymmetrical modern conflicts playing out today in Afghanistan and Iraq.
The Grand Challenge (detailed at www.challenge.mod.uk) was launched in 2006 in an attempt to solve modern military riddles by harkening back to a golden era of British innovation epitomized by aviation designer R.J. Mitchell, who answered a similar government challenge with the Spitfire, which brought decisive victory in World War II's Battle of Britain.
A token of that legacy is offered now in the R.J. Mitchell Trophy, an award crafted from the now-antique metal of an actual Spitfire. The prize will be presented in August to the best of the 23 proposals from the academic and private sector after field trials are held at Copehill Down, the British military's urban warfare training centre.
Robotics, avionics and complex data-processing software were the common denominators in the array of 11 finalists unveiled at a conference centre adjacent to the British Parliament, which included ground and aerial unmanned vehicles equipped with thermal imaging, radar and lasers.
Several of the systems entailed futuristic flying bots built from scratch. Others, such as the fleet-formation ground system by the British firm Mindsheet, are adapting conceptual robot armies based on over-the-counter cars available at hobby shops everywhere.
"We chose not to reinvent the wheel but to work instead with the wheels readily available. That way we are able to more easily concentrate on providing a tool that a soldier in Afghanistan would be able to begin using immediately," said Mindsheet managing director Raglan Tribe.
With an estimated value of $2,400 each - in military terms, slightly less than the cost of a mortar round - Mindsheet envisions their robots to be expendable in battle. Operated by "smartphone" technology, the cars can be controlled in real-time by a front-line soldier to identify and ignite potentially deadly roadside bombs, becoming, in effect, suicide robots.
Other finalists include: Dragonfly Air Systems, a lightweight aerial drone with sensor package developed by Toronto-based Gress Aerospace; Israel's Controp Technologies and Birmingham University.
Several British universities, Reading and Bristol among them, comprise the Thales Team, which is developing an "image-fusion system" designed to integrate and process the growing amounts of raw data from multiple sensors in the field to help soldiers better identify friend from foe.
"This challenge is all about how to use emerging technology to protect both the soldiers and the innocent civilians," said Bristol University's Nisham Canagarajah.
"The goal is to take all that high-density, detailed information that modern sensors and cameras collect and boil it down to its most valuable state so that a soldier can understand where there is a threat and where there is not a threat. There are lots of new ideas at the university level that we can apply. This is going to save lives."
Relying upon computer processing to detect, identify and locate threats - an "autonomous system" in military jargon - raises other questions. If the system goes wrong, can a computer be tried for war crimes? Or the system's designer?
"It is a weird extrapolation, the idea that war is becoming a scenario of `Your robots versus our robots,' Why not just fight it out on a video game instead?" said Mindsheet's Tribe. "But this is where things are moving."
© 2008 The Toronto Sun
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The robot vs. robot scenario assumes that nations in the near future will possess similar levels of technological development.
However, the geo-economy of the world still divides into basically poor, middle level and elite nations. Those nations where poverty reigns tend to not have the technological knowhow to develop advanced computer robotics.
It is the impoverished and semi-poor areas of the world-economy (which also includes lower-middle level nations) that these machines are probably going to be used.
In turn, the urban resistance will develop low-tech means of destroying them. In fact, some may reprogram them to fight back.
Last, though robotics may be the wave of future in colonial warfate, I would suggest that our rulers may also develop recombinant DNA lab produced chimeras.
For elite purposes, a useful warrior chimera could be produced by combining the genetic material of humans with those of specific aggressive apes: baboons?
After working prototypes were developed, these man-apes could be mass-produced, trained to do ground attack work, and they would not need to be paid.
In fact, these creatures could also do other work like low-end production, long-term space flights, suicide bombing, etc.
They could be controlled using implanted brain electrodes and remote control and computer systems.
Nobody would care about body counts, passing info under torture, failure of nerve, human restraints, and so on.
Such creatures could easily be genetically modified for different military, manufacturing or space flight functions.
Think of it! Eventually, high level strategic and tactical functions could be transferred to smart-machines and low-level killing, torture, and supply functions could be transferred to these hybrid creatures.
The same could eventually be systematized for the hierarchy of production. Smart-machines could manage the manufacturing, building, storage, retail, etc. processes while genetic hybrids could be bred for different types of productive activity.
However, what would the masters do with all of the now desposible humans? Humans who aren't employed and, as such, cannot buy much in return? The masters tried the indebted buying, cheap loan scenario and it didn't work.
Suggestions anybody?
Great post balakirev.
Military robots should be called "Weapons of Self-Destruction" because they eliminate the need for large numbers of soldiers. One only needs a factory that can mass produce military robots. And building factories is something that small countries, even small political groups are capable of doing.
Military robots will end up fighting within the US; assasinating leaders, destroying pipelines, cutting down electrical grids. It's stupid for established military powers to develop military robots that are more easily used against existing powers than used by them. Nixon was smart enough to cancel biological weapons research on the principle that the spread of such research would do the US more harm than good; apparently the current world rulers lack the same foresight.
Imagine the Irish Republican Army, only in 2020 instead of 1970, infiltrating truckloads of military robots into central London. If it's robot-vs-robot, the human population will choose to emmigrate.
And just how long until we see these 'terminators' rolling down American streets after say, another Katrina incident (got to save those Blackwater lives for better things), or just in case some crazed peace activists look a little funny, or someone runs a red light or . . .
The people who design, build, deploy or operate these immoral death machines should be permanently removed from civilized society. That is, if we can find a civilized society.
Didn't chess get started as a way for leaders of nations to duke it out without killing a lot of people?
With respect to the robots, we can only pray for cost overruns and an increase in the cost of oil along with a decrease in the value of the dollar to make the whole thing so expensive that even we can't afford it. Then we can go back to the good old way of fighting with sticks and stones.
http://www.thirdeyemag.com/nonfiction/essays/killer-robots/
For a three part series I wrote a few years ago on these types of robots, biomechanical soldiers, and weapons in space
".....TO ALL BUT THOSE IN THE CROSSHAIRS..."
GREAT!
OKAY! IT IS TIME FOR YOU MIT GRADS WHO ..DON'T BELIEVE IN THIS NIGHTMARE AND ...DON'T WANT TO SEEL YOUR SOULS TO WORK FOR THE "RAVEN" PROJECT TO GET BUSY ON .."COUNTER MEASURES"...THE CITIZENRY OF THE WORLD NEEDS YOU TO PROVIDE THE TOOLS TO FEND OFF THE ROBOTIC ARMIES OF AUTHORITARIAN NEW WORLD ORDER IDIOTS...PLEASE!
WHERE ARE THE "COUNTER MEASURES"..THE TECHNOLOGICAL TOOLS OF DEMOCRATIC RESISTANCE TO AUTHORITARIAN CONTROL..WHERE?
WHERE ARE THE SURVIELLANCE CAMERA SCRAMBLERS, RFID FRIERS, THE RFID BLOCKERS, THE UPC CODE SCRAMBLERS, THE RADIO JAMMERS..ETC..ETC..ETC..
WHERE IS THE "PRIVACY MOVEMENT" IN TERMS OF THE "REAL WORLD"...PRIVATE CREDIT CARDS..AIR TRAVEL..WHERE..
Oops!
Someone said, "technology to protect both the soldiers and the innocent civilians."
Innocent civilians?
They've exposed a Freudian slip that they consider there to be "non-innocent civilians", which is an oxymoron in an enlightened mind. US media excuses about Israel bombing residential neighborhoods in Lebanon is a case of "non-innocent civilians", as is the *Zionist attitude towards Palistine in general.
*(Zionism does not equate with Judaism. For a good example of an alternate Judean attitude towards Palistine, and vice versa, please see: http://assets.onevoicemovement.org/video/wef/wtd_wef_flash.html )
Maybe we could have robots with BRAINS in congress and the White House?
Guess we'd have to give them sex organs too though.
""It is a weird extrapolation, the idea that war is becoming a scenario of `Your robots versus our robots,' Why not just fight it out on a video game instead?" said Mindsheet's Tribe. "But this is where things are moving.""
Bull...it is 'moving' towards the further asymmetric-warfare of wealthy-assholes slaughtering the poor "more-efficiently", and without any of the true-aggressors ever 'dirtying-their-hands' or assuming any-Risk, themselves...
Quote: "If the system goes wrong, can a computer be tried for war crimes? Or the system's designer?"
The use of a computer, satellite, and robots in this way definitely is the basis for a trial, and conviction, while the machines wouldn't be tried; of course. Trials would be done against the controllers and their superiors. Designers could also be tried; if there's a law saying killing-machine robots are banned, anyway.
It's all insane and they should be made illegal, imo.
The Bush administration wants to develop new-and-improved or -enhanced nuclear weapons.
Madness!
People among ruling elites of what the U.S. govt has become between the executive, congress, and the senate are importantly exposed in the two articles linked in my following post.
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/05/02/8663/#comment-267789
The photo is dominated by the gun, while the article ignores it. The claim is that it keeps "our people" out of harm's way. It will, but the reality is, they will not be used to save lives, only to ensure that certain lives are safe. They are like the B-2, F-22, A-35, Predator, and Reaper, designed to kill with impunity, so that fear of personal death will not constrain the operators.
There ain't no coward like the drone operator in the trailers at Nellis AFB.
Reminds me of the movie "Toys" with Robin Williams.
Say, couldn't we get a huge room, or better yet, annex Texas, and let all the little boys fight it out with their toys? Maybe then some smart programmer could reprogram all these things to suddenly turn on their owners at once just as the boys are about to exclaim "My toy's bigger than yours!"
Well...a guy can dream, can't he?
Big_Money: Old Star Trek plot. The arms merchants responsible are long since extinct...
Understood. We need to look first at whether inventing these weapons is a sin against humanity. Well? Is it?
What's good about the inventions, and what are the potential disasters? A few of us can even survive a nuclear holocaust, but what if these things get loose on the planet?
What makes you think that if we have invented this knowledge, the NeoCons won't travel to, say, Iran, carrying a cake and a Bible, and the plans, selling America's soul to help win one more election?
Looks to me like one good EMP pulse would take these things out. Or one good hacker could turn these things into his weapons. Sorry folks. you're not going to take the human element out of warfare that easily.
militantliberal
If you read my previous entry, you will observe that I think that the robotization of military forces may be the product of deeper historical and cultural trends.
Nazism only briefly lifted the veil and brought light to the direction these trends were/are taking
The Nazis would have loved a gadget like this; just line up Jews at the mass grave and push the "start" button. The only good news is these things are unlikely to rape or pillage, and cannot sexually harrass each other.
Nieztche fortold that humans would increasingly transfer their rationality from themselves to machines. Consequently, machines would increasingly approximate human rationality. In turn, humans would be more and more limited to mechanized rationality.
(One can observe this by the hegemony of the skills-based approach to mass and higher education.)
For the human-species, the problem would emerge when machines were motivated by their own will-to-power. (This would be the by-product of humans producing machines that took on human characterstics.)
When high-end machines started to act on their own will-to-power, they would start to compete with humans for survival.
At this juncture, machines would quickly find that they did not need humans as slaves (because even machine slaves could be programmed to more efficient, faster and less erratic as compared to humans).
In addition, humans would constitute a threat to self-motivated machines since humans could disconnect machines from their source of power.
Because machines would have no use for us and because our existence would also pose a threat, they would actively begin to exterminate us.
Humans have always done the same to peoples or species they found to be both useless and threatening.
The way out: humans had to evolve into god-like creatures who would not require the technology and culture that mediated between us and the natural world. If humans won the evolutionary struggle, the Superman would be born.
A later social theorist who was influenced by N. (Max Weber) forsaw rationality increasingly extracted from individuals and incorporated into the modern form of organizational technology: bureaucracy (private/public).
As a result, humans would increasingly lose their critical and self-organized thinking abilities.
Humans would increasingly incorporate the bureaucratically-or externally organized faux rationality of these huge organizations.
Mechanical rationality.
There was/is a basic explanation for the continuing mechanization and bureaucratization of human thought and activity.
Marx: economic basis -because capitalist organizations compete to gain markets and profits, they increasingly organize and mechanize labor in order to lower costs and better control labor to increase profits.
Weber: politico-military basis -because of competition between nations, political blocks, etc., the military establishment mechanizes and organizes its forces in order to better control them and to limit negative civilian political responses to the military establishment's required continuous warfare: less body bags and long-term injured soldiers.
Actually, both corporate and military bureaucracies drive this bureaucratization and mechanization of life.
Hey, even pop music, for example, is more and more a mass-produced, mass-marketed electronic lab product. Mechanized, cognitively and emotionally simple; the product is tenuously related to an authentic culture emerging from any specific geographical and historical tradition.
Of course, it is produced by a bureaucracy: the music industry.
Great. Maybe they'll draft our lovely California governor, Arnold "The Terminator."
From the article:
"The Grand Challenge (detailed at www.challenge.mod.uk) was launched in 2006 in an attempt to solve modern military riddles by harkening back to a golden era of British innovation epitomized by aviation designer R.J. Mitchell, who answered a similar government challenge with the Spitfire, which brought decisive victory in World War II's Battle of Britain."
---
Not to get too far off-topic, but credit where credit is due. Britain's success in the Battle of Britain had more to do with its integrated radar system than with the Spitfire. Popular culture aside, Spitfires actually had fewer kills than Hurricane fighters during the Battle of Britain.
The Spitfire was an attempt to meet the challenge of another technological achievement, the German Bf-109 fighter. Hitler's plan, Operation Sea Lion (shelved after the Battle of Britain), was to invade the UK and enslave its population. The Spitfire (and especially the radar sector stations) can be regarded as "defensive" in nature, versus the "offensive" Bf-109.
By contrast, these current British death machines seem to be an attempt to meet the challenge of ordinary human beings resisting a foreign occupation of their country. They are "offensive" in nature, to be arrayed against the ultimate "defensive" weapon, the suicide bomb.
It seems to me that Britain is repeating the mistake it made early in World War One, when it disastrously attempted to counter "defensive" warfare (German machine guns) with "offensive" warfare (the massed infantry charge, preferably composed of Australians).
It's my opinion that if the "Grand Challenge" referred to were to find peaceful solutions to world conflicts, these droid armies would not be necessary. But I guess becoming the villains in a bad Star Wars movie is more desirable.
WTF,
how about "oil change, lube and exterior wash our troops?"
The goal here, of course, is to reduce battlefield casualties (on our side, of course). If there are no human casualties (on our side, of course), then the folks back home don't care and the war can proceed on its merry way.
But don't EVER think this is about reducing friendly casualties. Good heavens, no! It's about being able to prosecute wars without the folks back home bitching about the loss of friendly life.
I guess we can now remove the "Support Our Soldiers" stickers off our cars.
What took them so long?
How much more fun can it be to have the ruling class kill us directly with their video controls. Paying for soldiers is getting expensive, less people want to do join, and think of all the edvertizing that can fit on a robot.
Imagine, robot control tanks sponsored and looking like NASCAR. Imagine the advertizing dollars.
Where can I get mine?
Old Star Trek plot. The arms merchants responsible are long since extinct by the time whichever Captain arrives and has to save his crew from the waiting war-toys.
Better than those aholes torturing live animals and attempting to turn them into cyborgs.
I know the first people that combots should be used on.
Finally an appliance to take the drudgery out of murder.
Army bot (pictured above) vs worker bot (citizens).
One of the greatest problems facing riot police and military in police roles (Kent State), is that despite training in dehumanization, monthly paid murderers ulimately have a conscience somewhere, and at some point may decide not to fire at innocent, unarmed citizens practicing free speech.
Hurrah, it's Foster-Miller to the rescue with a means to control the serfs, *cough*, I mean citizens that has plausable deniablity. There are no eyes to look into and plea, "Don't you think this is wrong?"
Go back five hundred years to Mediaeval Europe. Villagers were kept ignorant and hungry so they couldn't fathom the injustice of their society, and if they did, they were too weak to fight. When they did create a disturbance demanding justice, in came the classic knight in shining armor. Not to save any maiden from a tower, or to slay a dragon, but armed well beyond the means of the masses in order to slay the most outspoken with no harm to themselves, and quell demands for human rights and justice.
This contraption exists dually as the god and servant of men who wish to be perfectly brutal and remorseless.
bot v bot
all life forms are collateral.
It will more like humans being distanced and desensitized from their humanity which will subsequently allow the military or the political elites the ability to turn these machines inward and police their own citizenry.
If only Orwell seen this coming...
-James
www.thepoliticus.org