The Robots are Coming (DoD to replace one fourth of soldiers with bots by 2030)

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Big Phoenix

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Erronius_sl said:
Yes and no. If we were to somehow develop a way to power robots w/o having to attend to them constantly, maybe, but that's unlikely. Solar seems unlikely except in the most passive or sedentary application, I don't need to mention nuclear, batteries raises the question of how to recharge them, and the most likely (some sort of combustion) requires refueling and maintenance. Mechanical failures would likely require maintenance by people, and the more complicated and cumbersome the system then the more difficult it will be to recover and then repair those robots. Then you have ammunition concerns...how do you resupply 50,000 robots in the field? If your goal was to keep soldiers out of harms way then forcing soldiers to constantly repair/supply/recover robots in the field brings the entire thing into question.

It's going to either have to be a stupendously gigantic undertaking where almost everything is automated (currently not plausible) or you're going to have to use robots in specific roles (EOD, recon, etc) where they're used only as a tool rather than being used as a wholesale replacement for soldiers across the board. Which is the gist I get from the article, but I imagine even that is probably far too optimistic.

The real rub for me isn't that "people are expensive", though that's true. If that was the only concern they could address that without having to bring robots into the mix. The reality is that in this day and age a draft will almost never happen and they can't get enough people to sign up. Not only that, but when we draw-down between conflicts we then need to recruit unbelievable amounts of people when we do go to war, and as Iraq and Afghanistan showed us, it's impossible to do. When at one point the DOD was forced to make up for the military manpower shortage by hiring so many civilian contractors that there were actuallymore contractors in theater than combat troops, you know that there is a critical issue with recruitment in general and upsizing/downsizing specifically. And bear in mind that if you think that soldiers are expensive, just imagine how much contractors cost.

Costs are somewhat a secondary concern, as bizarre as that sounds. The gov't doesn't have an issue with spending trillions of taxpayer dollars. They just need to address our endemic manpower shortages that we have when we go to war and they're hoping that robots can do what they last did with hiring contractors. Except instead of hiring contractors to move soldiers out of the rear and into frontline roles, they want to try using robots to move soldiers out of front line roles and into the rear. I don't think it's going to work as well as they hope, though.

I'm still laughing that the OP article mentioned wanting to control costs...ludicrous.
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Military needs better manpower management. I worked with guys who spent 4 years in the Marines(05-10 timeframe, same MOS as me) and never deployed, and this was in a artillery unit. Hell the only reason I deployed was because I was asked if I wanted to. If I had said no I would have never of deployed to Iraq.
 
Tuco

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Asherah_sl said:
I think the answer depends a bit on the situation. If we're talking about a government in a country using force on it's own population for example I think it would be a lot easier to convince people to do it if they don't have to be there in person and pull the trigger. Furthermore, the next logical step is autonomous drones/robots. Would it be easier to convince an operator to enter a certain set of parameters than to tell someone to go out and shoot people? I think so.

I think relatively cheap, small, disposable, mass produced autonomous weapons will make up the bulk of the military forces in the future. Maybe it will take 20 years or even 50 years before this change occurs, but if you extrapolate the current technical development it seems pretty obvious that humans will be too slow and too squishy for war soon.
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Yeah I agree with this. If the tech improves enough to allow for that much autonomy you start to centralize the power over life and death into a smaller and smaller group of people. Whether or not that fact will make it easier for a govt to forcibly control a population is difficult to determine. In many ways I feel like today's population is harder to control than it was 50 years ago despite the advances in military technology because they've come with improvements to sharing information. Perhaps it's just my own naivete and hindsight but I can't imagine today's govt being able to put 100,000 people in internment camps based on race.
 
Lejina

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Tuco_sl said:
Perhaps it's just my own naivete and hindsight but I can't imagine today's govt being able to put 100,000 people in internment camps based on race.
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Did you look at the incarceration breakdown by race in the US lately?
 
iannis

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In a lot of cases we are and in some of those cases the institutional racism is even justifiable.

But if you honestly think we are not then research the subject for yourself. Good lord, don't take anyone elses word for it. I'm serious, don't. Not mine not anybodies. It won't take much of your time. Take a look at the list of inmates scheduled for execution, note their skin colors, and ask yourself if you think this is truly indicative of the population. Take a look at drug convictions. Take a look at violent crime statistics and convictions. Just the basic facts of it point to institutional racism.

The argument over justification, justice, effectiveness, and basic decency of these attitudes -- well, that's an entirely different argument. And lets not blow things out of proportion either. That it does happen does not mean that it always happens.
 
A

Asherah

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Tuco_sl said:
Perhaps it's just my own naivete and hindsight but I can't imagine today's govt being able to put 100,000 people in internment camps based on race.
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Even a relatively minor incident like 9/11 made people accept a lot of things. What would people accept today in a crisis as severe as WW2?
 
Big Phoenix

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Iannis_sl said:
In a lot of cases we are and in some of those cases the institutional racism is even justifiable.

But if you honestly think we are not then research the subject for yourself. Good lord, don't take anyone elses word for it. I'm serious, don't. Not mine not anybodies. It won't take much of your time. Take a look at the list of inmates scheduled for execution, note their skin colors, and ask yourself if you think this is truly indicative of the population. Take a look at drug convictions. Take a look at violent crime statistics and convictions. Just the basic facts of it point to institutional racism.

The argument over justification, justice, effectiveness, and basic decency of these attitudes -- well, that's an entirely different argument. And lets not blow things out of proportion either. That it does happen does not mean that it always happens.
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Who is being murdered at a higher rate? Whites or blacks?
 
Ritley

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Iannis_sl said:
In a lot of cases we are and in some of those cases the institutional racism is even justifiable.

But if you honestly think we are not then research the subject for yourself. Good lord, don't take anyone elses word for it. I'm serious, don't. Not mine not anybodies. It won't take much of your time. Take a look at the list of inmates scheduled for execution, note their skin colors, and ask yourself if you think this is truly indicative of the population. Take a look at drug convictions. Take a look at violent crime statistics and convictions. Just the basic facts of it point to institutional racism.

The argument over justification, justice, effectiveness, and basic decency of these attitudes -- well, that's an entirely different argument. And lets not blow things out of proportion either. That it does happen does not mean that it always happens.
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Socioeconomic status is a much better indicator than race. Why blacks are more likely to be towards the bottom is a legitimate question, but one all together different from incarceration statistics
 
BrutulTM

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Iannis_sl said:
In a lot of cases we are and in some of those cases the institutional racism is even justifiable.

But if you honestly think we are not then research the subject for yourself. Good lord, don't take anyone elses word for it. I'm serious, don't. Not mine not anybodies. It won't take much of your time. Take a look at the list of inmates scheduled for execution, note their skin colors, and ask yourself if you think this is truly indicative of the population. Take a look at drug convictions. Take a look at violent crime statistics and convictions. Just the basic facts of it point to institutional racism.

The argument over justification, justice, effectiveness, and basic decency of these attitudes -- well, that's an entirely different argument. And lets not blow things out of proportion either. That it does happen does not mean that it always happens.
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You can make an argument for institutional bias based on race and/or socioeconomic status but by no means are we putting people in prison based on race. We are not perfect, but we are really fucking far from rounding up certain races and throwing them in camps. Further than we have been at any point in history and trying to compare the two things is asinine at best. I'm sure that you don't believe that a black man who obeys the law, does a job, pays taxes, etc is remotely likely to wind up in prison because of his skin color.
 
Tuco

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Lol @ a robot thread getting derailed by a racial debate. Its like mankind needs a robotic revolution.
 
fanaskin

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Navys UCLASS Could Be Air to Air Fighter | USNI News

Manazir contemplated the possibility that that the UCLASS, which is primarily being designed for the intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) and strike roles, could be used as a flying missile magazine which could supplement the firepower of the F/A-18E/F and F-35C Joint Strike Fighter in air-to-air combat as a robotic wingman of sorts.

?This is not beyond the state-of-the-art,? Pietrucha said.
?The difficulty is always that the aircraft it self has no judgment and no prioritization scheme and isn?t going to have the systems onboard to do all things that a fighter does.?

The solution, Pietrucha said, is to leverage the sensors, situational awareness and inherent human judgment of a fighter pilot in a manned command aircraft. The manned aircraft would detect, track and identify the target, then hand-off the target for the unmanned aircraft to engage the ?bandit??as hostile targets are known.

?The Navy is ahead of the Air Force on this,? Pietrucha said, specifically citing the Naval Integrated Fire Control-Counter Air (NIFC-CA) concept where a common air picture would be shared across multiple air platforms via a network of data-links.

Under the NIFC-CA concept, any ?shooter? can fire on a target that is being tracked by a ?sensor?, so long as the target is within range.

?If you solve that problem, then your missile caddy UCAV [unmanned combat air vehicle] wingman is a going concern,? Pietrucha said. ?You can now target his missiles for him.?
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they don't have a supersonic drone to do this but eventually you have to imagine they will.
 
Tuco

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The biggest reason we don't have unmanned air to air fighters is because there aren't many losses on that front:
Post??"World War II air-to-air combat losses - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Technically speaking modern air to air fights are fairly conducive to teleoperation and semi-autonomy given the already automated systems that are present with most of the weapons and the reliance of the pilot on onboard and offboard perception. There just isn't a huge need because air superiority isn't difficult or risky for the US to achieve.
 
Z

Zhaun_sl

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Erronius_sl said:
How about we talk about motherfucking robots or something?
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GIS "Motherfucking Robots"

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Tuco

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Motherfucking Robots or something!!
What I have to simulate and then handle tomorrow:
 
Tuco

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Tuco_sl said:
Motherfucking Robots or something!!
What I have to simulate and then handle tomorrow:
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Go to going away lunch. Be only one that orders a single beer. Beer ends up being 56 ounces. Buzzed as fuck coriolis is bullshit anyway. Acceleration is just 2 * 0.000729 * sin(annArbor) * linearVelicoty. Biggest problem is it's an very small angular acceleration on a vehicle that's on rubber tires on asphalt. How much does a car move when you lean a toddler on it? fuck this I'm just going to skip to doing euler force anyway.
 
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