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First operatioanl UAV Reaper pictures in Afghanistan


getsno

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I agree with FTW.

It's a scary step down a dangerous & slippery slope.

It's removing the reality of what you're doing from the whole process.

You're not killing anyone - you're sitting a thousand kilometres away playing a video game.

Next step - targeting algorithms, which will never get it wrong because - by definition - anything they shoot will have been an aggressor...

 

(Self edit -this is where my political rant went :-)

Cheers.

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I agree with FTW.

It's a scary step down a dangerous & slippery slope.

It's removing the reality of what you're doing from the whole process.

You're not killing anyone - you're sitting a thousand kilometres away playing a video game.

Next step - targeting algorithms, which will never get it wrong because - by definition - anything they shoot will have been an aggressor...

 

(Self edit -this is where my political rant went :-)

 

I'm going to support the military on this one . . . . I think they've got a pretty clear idea of the ethical nightmare of allowing a robot to attack on it's own.

 

Identifying potential targets is one thing - but I believe you'll always have to have a human in the loop to press the "Kill" button.

 

Yes, it'll cost more to have a crewman on hand taking the decisions . . . . but that cost is nothing compared to the R&D, purchase, and running costs of a manned aircraft over a UAV. There's no reason to fully automate them.

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Ironically, I still think the people who are most qualified to fly such a machine from a console are the ones right here reading this message. No one else has as much experience flying a console that most of the readers in here....now thats scary!

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Identifying potential targets is one thing - but I believe you'll always have to have a human in the loop to press the "Kill" button.

 

There's nothing new about 'automated' weapons - landmines, booby traps, the 'automatic guns' of the East/West germany border.

 

It's just a question of definition & acceptable 'collateral damage'.

 

Once you've laid a landmine - or any other booby trap (assuming you're doing it to target military personel not civilians) - you don't leave someone to monitor it in case it gets a civilian, you assume that anyone it gets shouldn't have been there in the first place. (like the civilian deaths from airstrikes - there's so many combatants killed, so many women killed & so many children killed - but never any civilian men of military age killed, because if there were any men of military age there, they were by defininition combatants..)

 

Same with a feck off big pit-bull left to watch a yard - do you stay up all night to make sure it doesn't eat a kid that climbs the fence ?

 

There are already autonomous non-lethaly armed 'robots' doing security work in closed buildings in the states on the assumption that if you're there, you're up to no good.

 

Ethically, I can't see much between laying a landmine, and putting up a drone that kills anything that enters a specified area that it can't identify as friendly.

Area denial is area denial & where armed forces can do this automatically, they have done and presumably will, accepting that there may be some 'costs' associated with it.

It'll take a bit of selling to governments, but there's too much money to be made for manufacturers to let this one pass.

That's because regarding the 'extra cost' of manning a control unit for an unmanned plane - I'm guessing that when they deliver the UAF-49 or whatever the first full autonomous combat aircraft ends up being called, the cost of training & paying a remote pilot will pale into insignificance when compared to what the manufacturers charge to re-coup their R&D (plus secure a little margin...)

Cheers.

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That fact its unmanned scares me

 

It's "manned". Crew is sitting on the ground and have full remote control over it. It's just plain dumb. What it can do without human supervision: it automatically goes back and land at predetermined base in case communication with it fails. It's just bigger and more bad ass RC plane :)

 

MiG-23 could be totally remotely controlled from the ground, no pilot required. He was just there to visually confirm the target and press the trigger. However the entire interception could be done by navigator on the ground. Things just improved a bit since then.

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ok..

We have bot fly'n

fallowing a pattern, joining in formation, identifying enemies, fires and sometimes gets a kill in this game. Imagine that the same program (or a much more advanced one) controlling one of these things, or a deadlier one..

It is not sci-fi anymore..

But.. we all familiar with the concept of programs gone haywire (we all use windows right?). This scares me man!

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One things for sure. It will take the glory out of safely returning from a mission.

 

Swagger into the club....

 

"How dangerous was that! I got me a blister"

 

:noexpression:

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One things for sure. It will take the glory out of safely returning from a mission.

 

Swagger into the club....

 

"How dangerous was that! I got me a blister"

 

:noexpression:

 

 

It will still be there. The screen will flash 'Level 4 Complete!' Please tell me that's not glory?

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And, if the opposing force has drones as well, what's the point of waging a war at all? You can then either commit mass suicide of both sides, or not start the whole unmanned drone contest at all. This all assuming the drones won't target any people, which they will in RL. But in a hypothetical case of both sides having comparable drone armies, what's the point of wasting all that hardware? To create jobs in the underground factories?

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I think it is a lot *less* scary than a human flown NTISR aircraft:

 

- first, the reaper pilots are flying from a cooled, nice ground station, where they can relay eachother, have a drink, go to the washroom if needed

--> so more relaxed, more alert pilot

 

- second, the pilots are totally networked in their ground station, and can process all relevant information

--> better SA, better information

 

- third, they are not themselves flying in hostile territory

--> less stress, less physical strain, less fatigue

 

- fourth, the reaper does not easily betray its presence, it actually is quite stealthy

--> more time to observe the scene and identify the bogeys.

 

- fifth, the reaper has extreme endurance, since no thirsty human pilot on board

--> again more time to patiently observe the situation and act safely.

 

All in all, the reaper will less likely be involved in blue-on-blue incidents. And it still is a human controller that presses the kill button.

 

Me thinks Reaper is the way to go!

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