Combat Drones in RL, US army modifing bomb disposal robots Options

[Method]

Found this on MSNBC.com

The Metal Storm company mentioned in the article has videos posted on thier site of a "Tallon" robot (among others).

[Jrayjoker]

Now that is what I'm talking about. Now we just need to get the dogbrain in there and we'll be all set.

Looks like captains chair rigging and ECCM is all set to go online ahead of schedule.

[Austere Emancipa...]

You can find plenty of info on SWORDS and other combat robots through Google.

Mad scientists at work...

[Backgammon]

See man on screen, shoot man on screen. Just like on your XBox!

Making killing easier, 1 bullet at a time! :(

[Sabosect]

I wonder if someone could hijack the signal and make the Americans and civilians look like the bad guys...

[mfb]

that would be difficult, to say the least. simply breaking the encryption isn't a viable option, as we'll all have our own personal spaceships long before they manage to crack it. the other route is stealing one of the encryption storage/transmission devices they use to fill the drone's encryption. this is slightly less impossible, but isn't by any means likely--and if it did happen, the encryption for all of the drones (and probably all of the radios in the entire region) would be changed out with freshly-generated keys.

so, in other words, no.

[Toptomcat]

Depends on the range, really. If the soldier controlling the 'drone' has to be fifty feet away, I can see the units getting captured regularly.
If it's 1mi+, less of a problem.

[Sabosect]

Also, if you pull it right, it'll look like an explosion took out the unit and nothing was left. the military tends to be lazy then.

[mfb]

since when? when anything with encryption goes down, every effort is made to either recover the parts or destroy the unit. explosions don't vaporize vehicles; there are parts and pieces left over.

why would the units be captured more regularly if the controlling soldier is within 50'? personally, i don't see these getting captured all that often. the drone units aren't just going to go out and shoot bad guys alone; they'll be moving around with supporting fire, clearing out small, well-defended nests--snipers, stuff like that. you're ot gonna see these things engaging enemy infantry units by themselves.

[Slamm-O]

mfb, could you elaborate on the encryption and electronic warfare countermeasures installed in the robot?

i ask because i would be very interested to know how well defended it is from electronic warfare (jamming and the ilk)

i know the article mentions that they tested it out, but i know as soon as i heard about it i figured the reason it was so quickly and cheaply done was because electronic warfare was not a priority right now, considering the enemy. Ans i figured they would work to improve it or future versions before engaging any more powerful opponents that may be able to use some sort of electronic warfare defense against them.

[iPad]

They will probably give them some sort of explosive termination system. Imagen if rebels capture one and try and parade it on camera?

[Sabosect]

Another problem is not all parts survive an explosion in enough quantities to be considered anything but destroyed. I'm not suggesting you fake such an explosion either. Just take what you need and make sure it is big enough anything in it would be considered destroyed.

[kevyn668]

I can't believe they're called SWORDS!! Too Cool!!

Do they burrow under the ground and home in on your heartbeat? And when they find you, do they erupt from the ground with spinning blades and cut you to pieces? And then drag your body back to the underground facility to use as raw materials for more SWORDS?

:D

[mfb]

okay, lemme clarify: i have four years of experience with US Army radios and radio encryption, especially as they are applied to an air cav unit. i'm assuming that the transmission encryption used by these drones, and the methods used to protect that encryption, will equal or exceed what is used for radio transmission.

the way it works for radios is, you've got a fill device that has all of the encryption keys for your unit on it. it's basically a durable machine with--i would guess--less processing power than a TI-81. very, very close track is kept of these fill devices; losing one generally means that someone's going to jail for a very long time, as well as paying a hell of a lot of money to replace the device. they've each got serial numbers, as well (almost all military equipment does), so you can't just say "we've got five fill devices, we're okay". you have to have the specific devices listed in your inventory.

to put an encryption key in a radio, you physically connect the fill device to the radio with a special cable. i suppose you could manufacture one of these cables if you needed to; i've never seen one anywhere else, but i've also never looked. you then fill the radio with the specific encryption key used by your unit, as well as the keys of units you communicate with (your parent unit and sister units, usually). once a radio has its encryption fill, it is guarded very carefully; again, if it's lost, someone's going to jail (and buying a new radio).

the encryption key itself is very strong; also, in order for it to work, the radios' internal clocks must be synchronized. this is because the encryption includes frequency-hopping patterns; the radio changes its frequency a hundred times per second or more, and any radio that doesn't change its frequency at the same time and in the same pattern can't communicate with yours.

when a vehicle with an encryption device--either a fill device, or a radio with an encryption fill--is destroyed, every effort is made to recover the encryption device. if recovery isn't possible, destruction is attempted. if destruction doesn't work, they try it again. and again. and again. if there's no other option, everyone simply changes their encryption with freshly-generated keys.

recovery of encryption devices is, in my experience, about on par with recovery of the vehicle operator's bodies. we had a chopper go down in our unit; the radio was recovered before the pilots' bodies, simply because the job of recovering the radios was faster and easier. and even after the bodies were recovered, we guarded the chopper itself for three days until the unit whose job it was to recover the chopper was able to replace us. in the case of a destroyed vehicle, they will recover the parts and pieces of the encryption equipment; an explosion breaks things into smaller pieces, but rarely are those pieces so small that they can't be found. and in the case of encryption stuff, they're going to be looking very, very carefully to make sure they get all the parts and pieces.

edit: oh, right, jamming. jamming is tough because of the frequency-hopping; you can't just jam one frequency and screw up the transmission, you'd have to jam a huge portion of the radio spectrum. not only is that sorta difficult (it sure as hell means you won't be using radio communication any time soon), it also makes you a nice, bright target for bombs; all they have to do is triangulate the source of your jamming signal, and boom.

[Erchael]

IMHO, this kind of robotisation (as well as any other military technology) which "helps save lifes" leads to greater approval for violence (at least international government-planned violence, ie "war").

Don't get me wrong : I don't think it's a good thing that (in this instance American) soldiers die (death of a human being is always a tragedy) but a war where the losses are all on one side cannot really be called a war : it's a massacre or a genocide (depending on numbers...:/).

It won't make me happier to know that even a thousand lives were spared on one side if it leads to 10 000 more deaths on the other side ; perhaps it would be best to use that money developing alternate, non-lethal weapons (incapacitating, stun, etc) or better yet spend that time preventing wars by negotiation and cooperation...

Again, that can be seen as idealistic but from my limited historian perspective, wars of the past were rarely unavoidable, why would the present/future be different from that stand point?...

Erchael

[mfb]

i have to disagree. in vietnam, there were daily television reports that told the number of dead bad guys; that's dehumanizing. in this latest war, and in recent conflicts, we've done our level best to avoid civilian casualties--and it's been possible to do so because of the level of automation the american military uses. automation means everyone's watching your every move--you can't just go out and kill people, because you'll be lynched on the nightly news.

[Erchael]

@ mfb :
Indeed, "modern wars" are/were mainly (considered) won or lost depending on public support at home and news broadcasting of the horrors the war brings (to both sides of the conflict, hopefully sparing civilians) can play a big part in stopping a war (Vietnam being a good example). But I wouldn't call that fact automation of the military machine (as in "on the field") but rather of the military/political/news networks.

On the topic of controlling in that way troop's violence (well documented and "natural" -even if morally unacceptable- in the deshumanising perspective of a hard-pushed soldier), I wholefully agree that today's situation is better than before but sadly (as recent Iraq examples show) is still far from perfect.

I'm not advocating fighting with sticks and rocks (or even the "flower wars" as fought by the Aztec) as a good alternative to mecanisation/automatisation, it only appears to me that people at home are often more concerned about their own people dying rather than the enemy (after all, the goal in a war is to be the last one standing...) and that by decreasing the "apparent" death toll, hesitations to wage wars will tend to disappear.

Past history as well as present times alas prove that no high technology is required for people to be willing to kill/torture/maim/rape/etc other human beings for a reason or another, so it's often fear (mainly of social, religious or legal punishment) that stops them from committing it :(.

I think the same can be said of most organizations/government : when the ratio between the expected benefits and losses associated to a certain action (ie waging war) increases, it's occurences multiply.

Anyway, i want to finish by saying this is not a criticism of any nation and/or group of people specifically (namely USA as many examples used here stem from there) and by apologizing for the bad writing as I usually get sleepy around 3 AM. :)

Erchael

[kevyn668]

We're humans. We kill eachother. Period. Saying that doing it "face to face" cuts down on the desire to do so is point blank wrong.

This is starting to remind me of that (original) Star Trek episode where the two peoples of a world had been fighting a war for hundreds of years. The fighting had (supposedly) gone on for so long because the powers that be decided that rather than actually bomb the drek outta eachother, they would use some wierd system to determine how many people would die in a given attack. Those people would then happily march into "disintigrator tubes" to die. Thus, the culture and society would survive.

I would also like to point out that most of the great technological advancements have been the result of wartime experimentation. "Neccessity is the mother of invention" and all that crap...

My prime example of this would, of course, be computers. Seconded by what we now call the "Internet." There are many, many others. Choose your flavor (or poison).

I don't advocate that any one life is worth more than another (except maybe in the case of Justin Timberlake. But you could also make the case that I'm just jealous. ;))

I guess my view on the arguement is: Since all life is considered equal and reducing the overall loss of life that results in armed conflict (which is inevitable) is considered "good," then isn't the mechanization of armed forces also a good thing since it does in fact reduce the overall loss of life?

And more importantly, DO THESE THINGS HAVE BLADES AND DETECT HEARTBEATS OR WHAT!?! :D

[Kanada Ten]

[mfb]

half of those aren't even technological, man. come on, show me what lab "diplomacy" or "manners" came out of.

the proof of the humanity in technological warfare can be found in the exponential decrease in civilian deaths from WW2 to vietnam to the gulf war/gulf war 2. whether that has to do with something as high-falutin' as "the desire to kill each other" or whatever is largely irrelevant. reducing casualties on both sides = good, pretty much no matter how you cut it. i suppose you could construct some improbable dystopia where the Gummint uses high-precision weaponry to vaporize dissidents before they become a problem, a la philip k. dick, but i don't think we're going to have to worry about that for a long, long time.

[Kanada Ten]

[mfb]

what? read what the guy said--"most of the great technological advancements have been the result of wartime experimentation." manners and diplomacy are not technological advancements. hell, it's stretching the definition of the word to say that they were created through experimentation, since experimentation generally implies purpose and forethought. do you really think "salad forks go to the far left of the setting" came from some guy tinkering with forks to find the perfect placement for each? you threw out a bunch of ideas that sound good, but actually have nothing at all to do with the statement you're trying to refute. if you're going to argue, argue the point.

there are no "such wars" anymore. we haven't, in the entire decade that we've been conducting operations in and against iraq, killed half as many people as we did in twenty-four hours over dresden. i don't see the death of anything, in that; i see the lives of lots and lots of iraqis who didn't get lit on fire because they were within a kilometer of someone we wanted dead.

some people you can never please. we stop firebombing civilians, and it's "war has become inhuman!" i'm crying into my keyboard, over here, about the inhumanity of not making people die.

[Kanada Ten]

"Whatever" as in "fine [they are] not 'technological'".

[mfb]

ah, misinterpreted. damn, i hate it when i waste a really good retort on a misunderstanding. the above post came off a bit more anti-kanada ten than it was intended; it was more a general railing against people who don't understand war as i understand it. (not that my understanding is necessarily more correct... but i think it's more correct.)

i'm against war, as well, especially since a real war at this point means my ass will get dragged back into the army. i have to disagree that reducing risk to soldiers will encourage war, though--or, rather, i don't feel that reducing risk will lead to "better" wars (which is, i think, a more realistic goal than no war at all). soldiers in fear for their lives, or enraged by loss of their buddies lives, almost universally make poor decisions. the more risk a soldier has to bear, the more likely that soldier is to do things like slaughter a village in search of on guerilla. you can't stop war, but you can make it less bad.

[kevyn668]