The Drone Armies Are Coming

Wired News ^ | Aug. 30, 2002 | Lakshmi Sandhana

[Lucius Cornelius Sulla]

Dispatched on a rescue-and-capture mission, unmanned vehicles arrive at the scene in minutes, corner a potential suspect and await visual confirmation before proceeding. Star Wars 2020? It might be happening sooner than you think.

Allen Moshfegh at the Office of Naval Research is the head of the Autonomous Intelligent Network and Systems (AINS), a program that aims to create an operational drone army by the year 2020.

[Lucius Cornelius Sulla]

U,S. plans robot armies within 20 years. A key paragraph is: 'Going well beyond autopilot and preprogramming, he envisions swarms of unmanned, unattended and untethered drones on the ground, in the air and underwater. These machines would be capable of independently handling events in a hostile combat zone, such as surveillance, strike and even capture and detention. Aiming to create an adaptive, dynamic, self-healing network of drones, Moshfegh intends to rework the whole idea of military structure. '

[rdb3]

That's the thing about technology, isn't it? On its face, it's value-neutral. But once the evil genie has been let out of the bottle...

[LenS]

At this rate, Arnie's Terminator movies will switch genre categories -- from sci-fi to historical thrillers. *g*

[Thud]

ping

[Reeses]

War is the mother of invention as well as where most human evolution occurs. Our evolutionary process has just leaped into machine life.

Our intelligence as well as many of our good and bad qualities is the end result of 2 million years of killing and rape. Few of us recognize who we really are and where we come from. It will be interesting to see how machines evolve once they start killing us and each other.

Most of the basic technology exists today, it's just that there is no world war going on. There would be a lot more interest in this right now, a lot more inventing going on, if we were fighting someone more challenging than cavemen.

[Momaw Nadon]

[UnBlinkingEye]

The odd thing is we claim the dinosaurs were dumb.

[Lucius Cornelius Sulla]

It will be interesting to see how machines evolve once they start killing us and each other.

Anybody who thinks of allowing these things to reproduce and/or reprogram themselves should be immediately shot as an enemy of the human race.

[VaBthang4]

((((((((((((((((((((((((((((PING))))))))))))))))))))))))))))

[Paul C. Jesup]

I think the future of unmanned killing machines will be something like a company making and saling wholesale Terminators. Kind of like what Genom (Bubblegum Crisis OVA) does with Boomers (think Terminators on steroids)

If you like this subject, I might subject you check out the original anime Bubblegum Crisis OVA series (not 2040 TV series) and the original anime AD Police OVA series (not TV series). You might like watching them.

[Sam Cree]

bump

[Momaw Nadon]

[Texas_Longhorn]

I'm still waiting for my "flying car of the 90's" dang-it.

[Saturnalia]

Of course once the evil corporation begins selling large numbers of killer robots
cute women in power armor will procede to blow them up. That and Tokyo will be blown up yet again.

[multitaskmom]

Now, what was that formula for setting off an electro-magnetic pulse?

I can't help but think of "The Matrix" when I read this.

[RandallFlagg]

Here ya go!!!

---

--The judge smiled at the D.A., but it was entirely without humor. "Mr. Barry," he said in a resonant voice, "there is no mention made in the Constitution about making whiskey. There is a very clear mention made of the right to keep and bear arms. You may be entirely right that our government does not issue our soldiers shotguns of the exact type that Mr. Miller had in his truck. However, you are forgetting everything you were taught in grade school civics class." The District Attorney turned crimson at this barb.--UC

[He Rides A White Horse]

I think the future of unmanned killing machines will be something like a company making and saling wholesale Terminators. Kind of like what Genom (Bubblegum Crisis OVA) does with Boomers (think Terminators on steroids)

Sometimes I see something a bit different. More like miniature poison delivery systems. As microtechnology expands and progresses, it would be possible to unleash a cloud of 'mechanical insects' on an enemy, one whose sole mission is to delivery a poison to enemy soldiers. Try defending against that. 'DEET' won't work.

[tet68]

Skynet.

[templar]

Wasn't this the sort of thing that led to the postulated future in The Terminator?

[Paul C. Jesup]

The only thing I can think that can counter that is an EM Pulse. Due to their size, I doubt Nanite can be properly shielded from a desently power EM Pulse.