Posted on 03/20/2018 10:20:16 PM PDT by texas booster
China is testing driverless tanks which could be equipped with artificial intelligence, a state-run newspaper reported on Wednesday, as the country continues with its military modernisation programme.
State television showed images this week of the unmanned tanks undergoing testing, the Global Times reported.
Footage showed a Type 59 tank being driven by remote control, in what the paper said was the first time a Chinese-made unmanned tank has been shown in a public forum.
The Type 59 tank is based on an old Soviet model first used in China in the 1950s and has been produced in large numbers and has a long service life, it said.
“A large number of due-to-retire Type 59 tanks can be converted into unmanned vehicles if equipped with artificial intelligence,” Liu Qingshan, the chief editor of Tank and Armoured Vehicle, told the newspaper.
Driverless tanks will be able to work with other unmanned equipment and integrate information from satellites, aircraft or submarines, the report added.
China is in the middle of a major modernisation programme for its armed forces, including building stealth fighters and new aircraft carriers, as President Xi Jinping looks to assert the country’s growing power.
Uber with a big gun, I can see accidental discharges or traffic accidents when it runs amok - somewhat but not completely sarcastic
I wonder how an AI tank would have responded at Tiananmen Square?
—
Like the troops used, it would have been out of contact with the news, would have been indoctrinated to see protestors as enemies of the state and shot an squashed more protestors than the regular manned tanks did. Why?
Reminds me of a sci fi book series by Keith Laumer, BOLOS.
The history of the Dinochrome Brigade going i think as far as the 33th century in the future.
Actually, appears to me this idea has a lot of potential. If it’s not necessary to design in accommodations and features for a crew, just think of the numerous attributes and weaponary that could be designed in. A whole new concept in thinking what a tank should be, mission, etc.
Tanks need to be invisible, adaptive camouflage, thermal shielding or even spoofing, the ability to place a device that uses electronics and even a thermal image to fool counter fire.
Which reminds me of the images of a couple of soldiers in WW2 that were carrying a mock inflated tank to fool the Germans.
Drones can be very effective against tanks, small ones that can specifically target parts such as track drives.
Automated reload of an armored vehicle is actually an older technology. The US decided not to build systems that used them, but the tech was around and demonstrably working back in 2002 (the Crusader artillery system). It’s been 16 years since, so automated/remotely operated ammo resupply systems are entirely realistic. Your field armored force doesn’t *have* to incorporate humans in the combat force save for repair/recovery.
Also, if you have nuclear power, you have a power system that’s ideal for railguns. The Chinese railgun programs don’t seem to be very advanced at the moment, but they’ve got tons of money to throw at it. A tank with a railgun and no crew could carry literally hundreds of rounds of main gun ammo.
Honestly, if i were Trump i wouldn’t really waste a lot of money trying to match tit for tat of either Chinas tanks or Russian hypersonic missiles but instead start NOW to prepare against a possible threat from off planet.
Starting with asteroid deflection.
Then definitely get energy fired personal weapons.
That is where money should be spent. Get a rifle that has the energy of a 20mm, a minimum 200 round capacity and to be man portable. And target seeking ammo, oh its there alright, judt make it better.
The M60 isn’t really big enough and there are internal structural issues; the thing about the Chinese tanks is that they incorporated the Soviet Bloc idea of the ubiquitous autoloader - i.e., there is no human loader in the tank, there is no provision for a human loader in the tank and if you lock down the firing switch and then bail out of the tank, the *stock* tank will actually fire and reload itself until the ammo runs out. They also have semi-automatic targeting, again imported from the Russians; Russian tank protection systems can actually slew *and lead* the gun onto targets detected by their APS sensor pack - including attack helicopters and slow moving attack aircraft - to the point where the gunner or track commander need only confirm the engagement for the tank to fire on the target all by itself. Adding remote gunnery and driving controls to a vehicle that already does that is quite a lot easier than trying to adapt an mostly-manual track like the M-60. The M1 is also a mostly-manual tank as are most NATO tanks - NATO’s dogged insistence that Active Protection Systems and automated threat detection/targeting wasn’t needed (driven in part by a belief that Russian missiles were not effective) has come back to bite in more ways than one because the recent fights in Syria where Konkurs missiles demonstrably took out reportedly Chobham-equivalent-armored ex-German Army Leopard 2A5s like they were made of tissue paper has shown that this NATO common wisdom was incredibly wrong. The US Army is now hastily re-equipping with Israel’s Trophy APS, but the M1 will not be able to gain the Israeli Merkava’s or the Russian/Chinese tanks’ ability to automatically target and counterbattery threats detected by the APS for quite some time.
Another issue with converting an M-60 is the minor little problem that we don’t actually have any any more. There are no longer any M48, M60, or M103-series tanks in the US inventory other than as ‘gate guards’ or other such monuments or museum pieces - all units, parts and such were either sold to foreign countries or scrapped.
Practical personal energy weapons are simply not going to exist until we can get an energy storage technology that is far more energy dense than anything we have on the drawing boards or have the engineering knowledge to begin to build.
At current technology levels, an energy weapon that is as combat effective as a rifle or machine gun requires a warship’s power plant to energize. It’s also about the size of a minivan. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laser_Weapon_System
We simply do not have the understanding of physics to create portable power sources needed for personal energy weapons at this time.
I don’t believe its impossible and i won’t comment that its actually been done but kept in secrecy and in reserve.
Now thinking outside the box i am looking forward to this new movie coming up, Ready Player One.
Virtual reality warfare.
China has the tech for that far beyond other countries.
Japan could too.
Sci-Fi is fun, but it’s not always reality.
What you have proposed Trump do is impossible or at least impractical at humanity’s current understanding of engineering and physics.
There’s also the not so little problem of the fact that you can locate *any* energy weapon with a simple antenna and radio direction finder. No more ambushes.
Jules Verne and HG Welles were sci fi authors of over a hundred years ago, even called sci fi fantasy.
Yet they had the vision.
You were saying?
Most of what those writers wrote of is still fiction over a century later. Where’s my time machine and flying carriage?
Well we built the nuclear sub like the Nautilus, we went to the moon, and from Edger Rice Burroughs and Tesla we have wireless energy transmission in a rudimentary form.
We have drones up the yazoo, I’m thinking of the Master of the World, not quite the scale of a flying aircraft carrier but getting there.
Still haven’t found Barsoom on Mars, let alone landed on it. Still missing the time machine of Wells. Verne said we’d use a gigantic cannon to fire people to the Moon and that didn’t happen. We still haven’t been able to journey to the center of the earth. You can Google all the things he wrote about that didn’t happen - Verne didn’t actually get all that much right.
Also, in 20,000 Leagues, the Nautilus is powered by *batteries* - in fact, it’s specifically mentioned to be a special kind of conventional wet cell battery. Not nuclear power.
Disney changed that when they made the movie in the Atomic Age.
Wireless energy transmission turned out to have so many downsides that humanity decided it was a horrible idea and decided not to use it. Radio and indeed most electromagnetic communications are practically impossible in an area that a Tesla wireless power transmission system is being used.
Robotic is the future of warfare.
How many small self contain drones can you build for the cost of one main battle tank?
Consider the possibility of a mobile tank mine. Scattered a few hundreds in the likely passage of tanks and let them sit and wait until they detect a tank. Perhaps they can link with each other so they all don’t go after the same tank. When ready they move into the path of a tank and when it is on top of it they explode taking out the tank and crew.
Or, an mobile anti infantryman gun. Goes out on patrol with heat seeking capabilities. When target found shoot to kill.
Or, an anti ship “fish” . Drop in ocean near the enemy port and they swim around until they find a target.
Also - a unmanned fighter aircraft. Sent up to provide cover and without a human could stay up hours and in a dog fight could make turns that would kill a human.
The technology for all this exist (although I am sure there are some safety problems that have to be worked out first so we are not killing friends)
You are not very optimistic, feeling depressed lately?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.