Tuesday, January 31, 2012

the future of warfare

globalguerillas | Here's the future. Courtesy of Northrop Grumman. It's an autonomous aircraft/drone that has a full weapons bay (4,500 lbs). Say that word again: autonomous. That's the breakthrough feature. This also means:

It can make its own "kill decision." Again and again and again. That decision is going to get better and better and cheaper and cheaper (Moore's law has made insect level intelligence available for pennies, rat intelligence is next).

It isn't vulnerabe to a pilot in Nevada directing it to land in Iran. Oops.

It will eventually (sooner than you think) be the "Queen," making decisions for thousands of smaller swarmed (semi-autonomous) drones it lays on a battle zone (aka "city").

In sum: It allows an unprecedented automation of conventional violence.

Granted, it will be possible for small groups to put together systems like this on the cheap. For offensive or defense reasons.

However, I'm much more worried about their ability to automate repression, particularly if combined with software bots that sift/sort/monitor all of your data 24x7x365 (already going on).

4 comments:

John Kurman said...

I notice Sandia has developed a self-guiding bullet. When will those be autonomous?

So, the flip side of this is the "No Kill I" option. Might cut down on friendly fire. Bullet realizes "Whoops, One of Us".
Or maybe you (you being the other, you otherfucker) get designated "Maim Only" to slow the unit down.

CNu said...

http://io9.com/5880884/this-self+guided-bullet-can-chase-you-down-from-over-a-mile-away nice....,

Ed Dunn said...

Please Watch "Ghost in the Shell 2nd gig - Natural Enemy" before making any frothy comments about automonous crafts  http://youtu.be/xyDki4KhGhw

Makheru Bradley said...

With the risk to its own military personnel virtually eliminated the greatest purveyor of violence on the planet is destined to become even more aggressive.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/jan/30/deadly-drones-us-cowards-war 

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