So, here's the nasty undercurrent to all this, right?
Drone warfare (whether by land, sea, or air) is about using disposable machines to kill and injure human beings. Engineering dictates that we'll eventually optimize away the part of the control system that is slowest and most prone to failure: the people.
The discussion of "How can we keep people running the robots" is uninteresting, because the entire deck is stacked to guarantee that it will be rendered moot.
~
The real discussion--I posit--is somewhat darker and more chilling:
In order to field a drone army, you need capital. You need factories to build the devices, you need command and control infrastructure to deploy them, and you need bright minds to develop them. Drone warfare is difficult to conduct in any meaningful fashion as a third-world nation, or more importantly as a populace in rebellion.
To put it bluntly, the use of these engines of war is limited only to the rich kids, and there is no chance for appeal or mercy when you are identified as a target.
Think about that for a second.
The wealthy murderer who decides to unleash these does so without any skin in the game, without any chance of dealing with repercussions back home for lost sons and daughters, without any care whatsoever except for a line-item expense. Stubborn rebel holdout? Spin up more terminators the same way we spin up dynos to deal with spikes in load.
The teenage kid holding the rusted AK their parent just dropped, looking at the robot which just made them an orphan? No chance in hell that they'll be spared because they are obviously not a threat--they are a human wielding an automatic rifle, p = .975, execute.
~
This whole thing needs to become verboten, forbidden, the same way we nominally treat chemical and biological weapons.
If we support our .gov and .mil in the use of these weapons, we'll be doing everyone a disservice, and come the day we decide to rescind the support which backs those bastards, we'll find that they no longer need our support for they already have the drones and the capital to make their whims felt.
The flipside of this argument is that wars happen anyway. We might as well use the machines to save lives. (I don't necessarily believe this; I don't know what I believe, but this is the other side of the debate).
The prolonged wars in Iraq and Afghanistan happened despite the repercussions for lost sons and daughters. We're losing people right now, and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis lost their lives because we didn't have enough manpower (or weren't willing to take the risk) to enforce order. If we could spin up machines the way we spin up dynos, these problems would go away. No American soldiers would die. We'd spin up production and deployment to enforce near total order. We could reduce Iraqi deaths by orders of magnitude. The machines don't necessarily have to act like terminators. They could act like military police too.
This might be a scary future, no doubt. But it might be a bright one too. If we trust our values and trust that our elected representatives won't go on mindless killing sprees, the machines might be a blessing in disguise. (Also note that by the time we get machines with this capability, our government, social structure, our entire economic model, and our appreciation for civil liberties will evolve quite far from where it is now too).
We might as well use the machines to save lives...No American soldiers would die. We'd spin up production and deployment to enforce near total order.
The mistakes made in Iraq which led to rebellion are complex, but they didn't have to do with manpower alone. Disbanding the army and most of the administration are the two largest mistakes IMO - those have nothing to with US manpower and meant a huge supply of Iraqis with nothing to lose, military training, and access to huge arms dumps. They could equally well fight and subvert machines as they could people.
It's interesting the society you propose for Iraq as a bright new future - total order = totalitarian dictatorship imposed by force by a proconsul directing machines. Would you accept that for your own country? Would you rebel against it if a foreign army invaded on a pretext and occupied the country using robot warriors? We've already half-glimpsed that future with the use of drones in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen - and it isn't pretty, resulting in many more civilian deaths.
I agree machine soldiers are almost inevitable, but it will not be a good thing - it'll be a further step in abstracting away warfare so that those ordering killings a world away risk nothing but money (easily reproduced) and domestic reputation (easily managed).
i personally think that it is a GOOD thing that we lose sons and brothers in wars. It makes everyone think twice before engaging in war. It also gives you an incentive to stop (or to your citizens to pressurize you to stop).
If these machines are allowed to be used, war would be a push of the button away. And that is never a good thing.
Sure ideally, war should be ONLY between machines so no one on either side dies, but as the parent pointed out, this tech is for the rich kids. The poorer countries would suffer immensely in such bloodbaths
It is true that this could be _one_ of the flip side arguments in favor of using machines. However, as we probably know, it's a pretty weak one. I don't think any human beings should be subjected to having somebody else's idea of a "brighter future" shoved down their throats regardless of whether they agree with it or not. This is especially true when the people deciding this future is half way around the globe and does not actually have to live that future.
Remember "They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety."
Your entire argument seems to be built around paranoid and hysteria and things you've seen in sci-fi movies.
We already have drones that kill and injure human beings. They're called missiles and torpedoes, and the third world has plenty of them too.
Also, there's this assumption that keeps getting made that humans will always make better decisions than machines. Personally, I think you're seriously overestimating the ability of scared, tired 18 year olds to make quick rational decisions under extreme pressure. Every single war ever, is littered with examples of human beings making mistakes, which end up with the deaths of allies or civilians, it's not even remotely rare.
And you know what, machines will make mistakes too, they'll kill their own side or civilians occasionally. But after they do that, their software can be improved and refined, over and over and over, with no limit. They will constantly and forever be improved.
A human soldier will not. There's only so much training you can give to someone in nine months before they're in combat.
And there's also the fact that machines are a helluva a lot less likely to think it's funny to piss on a Koran or to go rape some of the locals.
Your entire argument seems to be built around paranoid and hysteria and things you've seen in sci-fi movies.
I'm a mechanical engineer by training and a software engineer by profession--the amount of work to create a robot whose sole purpose is to open fire upon things matching the heat signature and rough shape of a person is well within the reach of even a small university research lab, much less a defense contractor.
There is no paranoia or hysteria here; the tools and methods have already been developed.
They will constantly and forever be improved.
The nature of improvement will be technical in nature ("Did it engage the designated target fast enough? Can we make it easier to manufacture? Is the precision of the weapon carried able to be increased?"); there is no reason for the rules of engagement or anything else to be improved, because it is an arbitrary decision--a decision placed, as I've suggested, in the hands of the rich and powerful and least likely to be empathetic with the intended targets.
There's only so much training you can give to someone in nine months before they're in combat.
Quite so, and a nice part of that is that it is hard to beat basic empathy and humanity out of a person--the machine, by contrast, never had it to begin with.
The soldiers, though they may make mistakes, are more likely to be able to think critically and show compassion and mercy.
And there's also the fact that machines are a helluva a lot less likely to think it's funny to piss on a Koran or to go rape some of the locals.
No, they'll just kill them instead, as per orders.
EDIT:
We already have drones that kill and injure human beings. They're called missiles and torpedoes, and the third world has plenty of them too.
Those are munitions, not drones. Most importantly, they are deployed by human beings and are controlled by same.
For certain definitions of improved. Military victory will always be considered more important than civilian survival, so I don't think you can expect machines to improve the moral calculus of war (which always tends to total war).
Interesting point. The machine soldiers would solve the problem of rampant soldiers raping locals.
But if you look at drones, haven't the drones been around long enough? Their algorithm still seems to be faulty considering all the civilian casualties they have caused.
Modern warfare is already vastly stacked against the poorer side. This has arguably always been the case but it is especially true in the present with billion dollar warships and million dollar jets, missiles, satellites, etc. Not to mention nuclear missiles.
Robots don't change anything. Your evil rich people can just as easily fight the rebels with human flown planes or human guided drones and paid mercenaries.
And please with the "imagine a robot shooting a kid, we can't ever allow that to happen" hypothetical. Soldiers kill innocent people all the time, just on accident. Missiles miss, land mines get abandoned and kill innocent kids, warfare has never been tame. A robot would arguably be better because it might rarely if ever miss, it could have better vision than a human, it could possibly be a better judge than even a human with sufficient AI, and it never gets emotional, angry, or tired or insane.
This is the second time in this thread that you've brought up the shortcomings of current drones as evidence against the use of future robots. And it's the second you've conflated human-operated drones, possessed of little intelligence or ability to learn, with hypothetical fully-autonomous robots.
Would these robots behave better than humans or human-controlled drones? That remains to be seen. But the emphasized shortcomings of current aerial drones are about as relevant to future aerial robots as RC toys are to self-deiving cars. (Much less future ground-based robots, which in uncertain situations might be able to choose a third option besides "shoot to kill" or "fly away".)
Those kids were killed by people radio-controlling bombs, not by autonomous drones.
On the other hand, how many civilians, including kids, have been killed by troops on the ground for motivations such as rape, boredom or robbery? Robots wouldn't have this motivation for useless/counterproductive violence, but some human soldiers unavoidably do.
The population could make it costly by exploiting the weakness of state-of-the art armies of the time, hence partisans. Today the population can make it costly by exploiting today's army's weaknesses, hence IEDs. Future populations can make it costly by exploiting future army's weaknesses, which will probably involve a lot of hiding and striking from where robots can't go, and possibly cracking systems.
Speaking of which, has anyone here played Deus Ex? Rewiring big drones surrounded by large amounts of troops to reverse their friend/enemy detection was the most fun I had in months.
Not that this is funny in real life, but the game is great at exploring how fighting that includes supersuits and drones could work.
How exactly does a drone replace boots on the ground - bipedal robots at the moment are fabulously expensive corporate toys - I doubt that asimo is going to be replacing a squaddie anytime soon
Well, technically a message to village elders "We're watching you through airborne drones - if you'll give support or food to guerillas, we'll bomb your kids" would be somehow analogous to boots on the ground enforcing the same compliance.
There are numerous examples of simple tracked vehicles armed with weapons. It does not take much imagination to see how those combined with larger drones (tanks, humvees), artillery, or aircraft could be used.
Um real warfighting isn't like anime where cute chicks in tight fitting catsuits fight with giant robots.
Tracked vehicles have the dalek problem how do you go inside a building/cave to engage the enemy - watch black hawk down how do you replace a seal team or ranger brick with robots
And any military tracked vehicle is not simple one of the main reasons that MBT's still have 4 man crews is they need the fleshy meatbags to keep the bugger running.
Here's really the root of the problem. Thousands of years ago, real warfighting consisted of men in centuries and phalanxes, piking each other to death--it wasn't sporting to, for example, ambush a legion as it marched through a forest and cut them down ("Quintili Vare, legiones redde!").
A century and a half, "real warfighting" involved massed troops lining up across from one another and firing in volleys while ignoring civilians--it wasn't sporting to, for example, raze towns and crops and destroy railroad tracks in order to demoralize the enemy.
Two decades ago, "real warfighting" involved massing mechanized infantry, achieving air superiority, and engaging regular forces until their ruler surrendered.
The problem is that this notion of "real warfighting" is constantly changing. Once upon a time, real warfighting didn't involve violating neutral national borders and airspace and dropping munitions on civilians without having clear proof of the target or its strategic value. That is clearly no longer the case, as we've seen with the drone strikes that have been carried out.
We can't ignore the probability that one day, "warfighting" will mean a text sent over IRC to an automated artillery battery to target a village and fire for effect, because the little killbots saw their one target disappear into a place with stairs.
Everything about warfare has always been stacked for the rich. Honestly, how could wealth disparity exist if didn't gain the rich the power to defend their wealth against those who would want to take it?
Drone warfare, low-level warfare and terrorism would be the exceptions. Right now for drone warfare the software is too difficult to write (hard to believe. Hooking up opencv face recognizer to a robot that can aim a rifle is not hard).
That will change. Not soon, it'll take maybe a decade. But it will change.
Oh and ... dumb question ... who enforces any rules that are decided upon during war ? Without that component we might as well legislate the ethics of solar flares ... Right now there are tons of countries that are either in blatant violation of things like human rights and guilty of war crimes, and no-one's getting persecuted. Not just in problem countries like Iran or North Korea, there's plenty in Africa, Saudi Arabia would be another obvious example, even South America. Only in very specific cases does anything seem to happen ... it seems to me more of a pr-campaign than an actual attempt at enforcement.
Not that having zero practical use or effectiveness has ever stopped anyone from legislating, but why not legislate something equally fictional, but more fun ? Let's legislate traffic lights for faster-than-light travel ! Or let's demand something be done about fictional abuse of Indonesian babies ! Won't somebody think of the children ? Let's legislate that no-one can award the "worst dressed sentient being in the universe" prize to the same character more than 6 times in either prose or poetry. Also it seems prudent to preventively outlaw Vogon poetry. These seem like more productive endeavours.
I agree that "making laws" isn't necessarily a solution, but it lays the foundation of future debates. This topic would no doubt involve a ton of debate and it would be VERY useful if it materializes into international law. "Why" you ask?
Well because when someone violates it, there would be no question of whether this is right or wrong. We wouldn't have to go through the whole above debate all over again, just to come to a consensus that this was evil. You could just cite the law and (hopefully/in an ideal world) prosecute.
Ps: They still might be able to cirumvent drone strikes by saying that by defintion of war agreed upon in the first geneva convention, it isn't war. so this rule doesn't apply. I hope they think of this when making the law
in line with the mention of the Geneva Convention in my other post, i just remembered something. I am not sure how legally correct this is it, but someone brought it up in a Model UN that govt officials who sanction drone strikes can NOT be tried for war crimes because they aren't technically Soldiers. If this is true, wtf? The rules seriously need major revision in sight of modern tech
UN govt officials who sanction drone strikes can not be tried for war crimes because they're diplomats of a sovereign organisation. You have to understand what kinds of people these are (in general). They're part of powerful political families, spoiled rich kids with entitlement issues that would make all US congresscritters volunteer for public apologies. They don't agree on anything, least of all human rights (note that the UN human rights council is dominated by governments that don't respect human rights. Which is why the only government to get dinged on human rights is the one government that actually attempts to respect human rights in the region). They will go to war if they saw any of their members threatened with so much as a citation. So no they can not be tried for war crimes.
They will, however, attack others every now and then.
So international law, and human rights, effectively don't exist. So of course since this is just used as a political tool, it can be cheated with when convenient. That's why they went so ridiculously hard after Serbia and let (for example) North Sudan/Egypt/Saudi Arabia/... continue their crimes without a peep.
Even when they do have money, it only works when enforcement works. So in order to get a conviction you need :
1) the political interests need to be aligned
2) some military needs to kidnap the sacrimonial lamb* and this can't lead to an incident
3) the lamb can't have any good political structure left to support him
That's all international law is. Look at the money behind it and you will understand how it works. Attempt to analyse it legally and it will remain a mystery. Look at the conflict between Russia and Saudi Arabia and you will see why they intervened 10 years after the Yuguslav wars, and why they only convicted Serbians, and take note that in this "genocide" of civilians, first only young males, armed, were killed. The whole thing was precipated by an attack by said "victims", which was obviously part by an attempt at territorial conquest by said victims, and more than a few of the perpetrators died. Another army tried to intervene and couldn't because it suddenly found itself under attack by the "victims" and the commander decided to withdraw (it's not that they couldn't intervene, they didn't after finding themselves under attack by the victims). Both America and Europe took the side of the "victims". Understand why that last part happened, who was on whose side, and you'll see where the convictions come from, and just who and what the ICJ is working for.
Note that I'm not making the case that all governments are corrupt (beyond a certain degree). Just that a toothless, powerless, jurisdiction-less, "court" 100% dependant upon foreign interests cannot have a shred of integrity in practice.
But of course, don't let reality stop you from feeling entitled, and in the US, and some parts of Europe, you can actually more-or-less enjoy these rights (keep in mind that in the EU, due to WWII, you don't have full freedom of political opinion. If you think human rights will save you from conviction if you do something that's technically a human right but flies in the face of this policy, don't expect human rights arguments to save you from conviction. In Europe freedom of ideology does not apply nazism and a few forms of communism/socialism). If you actually wish to test human rights policies though ... I'd advise you NOT to leave the US.
* they're generally guilty, although proof tends to be lacking in the extreme, and people convicted are generally not the only guilty parties.
Even if people are manning the drones, you could have one person handling thousands of drones, and just being offered a long series of yes/no prompts ("Shoot here?"). As long as there is any way for a country to decide to deploy drones they will find a way to comply with the letter of whatever restrictions you put in place.
The drones are perhaps a good opportunity to look at the broader picture. Maybe we need to recognize that one country sending weapons and troops into another country on their own initiative is a fundamental violation of human rights and basic morality. The only way troops or weapons should be deployed is to stop greater harm from happening, and the only entity that can judge the greater harm is one that looks beyond national borders.
For me the simplest way to "clean up" war is to make all war illegal, and only allow troop and weapon deployments outside of a country's own national borders under the UN banner for peacekeeping purposes. This sidesteps the rich kids vs poor kids issue because there is no us vs them, there is only the global community and how it polices itself. Not that the UN is necessarily ready for such a thing, but even in its inadequate capacity it would be a whole lot better than the horrible inhumane mess we are in right now.
Yeah. Watch a pro playing starcraft. Keyboard and mouse, selecting and directing, almost faster than the eye can follow. This group of terminators, attack here. That group, charge the bunker over there.
Modern army control systems are already a lot like starcraft, even up to the progress bars that get shorter and change color as tank crew members get killed.
Tell me how well that ban on chemical and biological weapons is working out. Lets be honest about it, the art has to be advanced in countries where it might be consider abhorrent to engage in such combat just to insure that when the other guy does use it it can be defended against.
Automation is coming whether we like it or not. If we end up with a world were large armies are no longer fielded and only robots exist on the combat field perhaps we can move weapons to those that incapacitate instead of kill. We can only get there is we continue to push development. Regardless, strikes will become more surgical which could reduce casualties amongst non combatants. Figure it this way, if they become good enough maybe the leaders will be the ones looking over THEIR shoulders.
'Drone warfare (whether by land, sea, or air) is about using disposable machines to kill and injure human beings'
The disposable machines are built by human beings belonging to a nation (or entity) who are interested in self-preservation and protecting the nation. Of course profit doesn't hurt.
Thinks about this. Lately, the rich nations are facing shortage of men willing or able to risk death/injury. The populace lacks the stomach.
And the 'poorer' nations (ones with little to lose) have no qualms about bloodshed as long as they get what they want.
I see drones in warfare as inevitable. How autonomous will they be? Think no one knows for sure at this point...
I find it insane that human with AK47 still poses any threat in the warzone. I look forward to the times when human with small arms has absolutely no value on the battlefield. War should be only for the richest kids.
Comments
So, here's the nasty undercurrent to all this, right?
Drone warfare (whether by land, sea, or air) is about using disposable machines to kill and injure human beings. Engineering dictates that we'll eventually optimize away the part of the control system that is slowest and most prone to failure: the people.
The discussion of "How can we keep people running the robots" is uninteresting, because the entire deck is stacked to guarantee that it will be rendered moot.
~
The real discussion--I posit--is somewhat darker and more chilling:
In order to field a drone army, you need capital. You need factories to build the devices, you need command and control infrastructure to deploy them, and you need bright minds to develop them. Drone warfare is difficult to conduct in any meaningful fashion as a third-world nation, or more importantly as a populace in rebellion.
To put it bluntly, the use of these engines of war is limited only to the rich kids, and there is no chance for appeal or mercy when you are identified as a target.
Think about that for a second.
The wealthy murderer who decides to unleash these does so without any skin in the game, without any chance of dealing with repercussions back home for lost sons and daughters, without any care whatsoever except for a line-item expense. Stubborn rebel holdout? Spin up more terminators the same way we spin up dynos to deal with spikes in load.
The teenage kid holding the rusted AK their parent just dropped, looking at the robot which just made them an orphan? No chance in hell that they'll be spared because they are obviously not a threat--they are a human wielding an automatic rifle, p = .975, execute.
~
This whole thing needs to become verboten, forbidden, the same way we nominally treat chemical and biological weapons.
If we support our .gov and .mil in the use of these weapons, we'll be doing everyone a disservice, and come the day we decide to rescind the support which backs those bastards, we'll find that they no longer need our support for they already have the drones and the capital to make their whims felt.
The flipside of this argument is that wars happen anyway. We might as well use the machines to save lives. (I don't necessarily believe this; I don't know what I believe, but this is the other side of the debate).
The prolonged wars in Iraq and Afghanistan happened despite the repercussions for lost sons and daughters. We're losing people right now, and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis lost their lives because we didn't have enough manpower (or weren't willing to take the risk) to enforce order. If we could spin up machines the way we spin up dynos, these problems would go away. No American soldiers would die. We'd spin up production and deployment to enforce near total order. We could reduce Iraqi deaths by orders of magnitude. The machines don't necessarily have to act like terminators. They could act like military police too.
This might be a scary future, no doubt. But it might be a bright one too. If we trust our values and trust that our elected representatives won't go on mindless killing sprees, the machines might be a blessing in disguise. (Also note that by the time we get machines with this capability, our government, social structure, our entire economic model, and our appreciation for civil liberties will evolve quite far from where it is now too).
We might as well use the machines to save lives...No American soldiers would die. We'd spin up production and deployment to enforce near total order.
The mistakes made in Iraq which led to rebellion are complex, but they didn't have to do with manpower alone. Disbanding the army and most of the administration are the two largest mistakes IMO - those have nothing to with US manpower and meant a huge supply of Iraqis with nothing to lose, military training, and access to huge arms dumps. They could equally well fight and subvert machines as they could people.
It's interesting the society you propose for Iraq as a bright new future - total order = totalitarian dictatorship imposed by force by a proconsul directing machines. Would you accept that for your own country? Would you rebel against it if a foreign army invaded on a pretext and occupied the country using robot warriors? We've already half-glimpsed that future with the use of drones in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen - and it isn't pretty, resulting in many more civilian deaths.
I agree machine soldiers are almost inevitable, but it will not be a good thing - it'll be a further step in abstracting away warfare so that those ordering killings a world away risk nothing but money (easily reproduced) and domestic reputation (easily managed).
i personally think that it is a GOOD thing that we lose sons and brothers in wars. It makes everyone think twice before engaging in war. It also gives you an incentive to stop (or to your citizens to pressurize you to stop).
If these machines are allowed to be used, war would be a push of the button away. And that is never a good thing.
Sure ideally, war should be ONLY between machines so no one on either side dies, but as the parent pointed out, this tech is for the rich kids. The poorer countries would suffer immensely in such bloodbaths
I would like to cite the entirety of human history as evidence to the contrary.
Yes look at that mankind and imagine making it EASIER for them to wage war. See my point?
It is true that this could be _one_ of the flip side arguments in favor of using machines. However, as we probably know, it's a pretty weak one. I don't think any human beings should be subjected to having somebody else's idea of a "brighter future" shoved down their throats regardless of whether they agree with it or not. This is especially true when the people deciding this future is half way around the globe and does not actually have to live that future.
Remember "They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety."
War is peace, right. The faster and more we kill, the quicker we will be at peace?
Your entire argument seems to be built around paranoid and hysteria and things you've seen in sci-fi movies.
We already have drones that kill and injure human beings. They're called missiles and torpedoes, and the third world has plenty of them too.
Also, there's this assumption that keeps getting made that humans will always make better decisions than machines. Personally, I think you're seriously overestimating the ability of scared, tired 18 year olds to make quick rational decisions under extreme pressure. Every single war ever, is littered with examples of human beings making mistakes, which end up with the deaths of allies or civilians, it's not even remotely rare.
And you know what, machines will make mistakes too, they'll kill their own side or civilians occasionally. But after they do that, their software can be improved and refined, over and over and over, with no limit. They will constantly and forever be improved.
A human soldier will not. There's only so much training you can give to someone in nine months before they're in combat.
And there's also the fact that machines are a helluva a lot less likely to think it's funny to piss on a Koran or to go rape some of the locals.
Your entire argument seems to be built around paranoid and hysteria and things you've seen in sci-fi movies.
I'm a mechanical engineer by training and a software engineer by profession--the amount of work to create a robot whose sole purpose is to open fire upon things matching the heat signature and rough shape of a person is well within the reach of even a small university research lab, much less a defense contractor.
There is no paranoia or hysteria here; the tools and methods have already been developed.
They will constantly and forever be improved.
The nature of improvement will be technical in nature ("Did it engage the designated target fast enough? Can we make it easier to manufacture? Is the precision of the weapon carried able to be increased?"); there is no reason for the rules of engagement or anything else to be improved, because it is an arbitrary decision--a decision placed, as I've suggested, in the hands of the rich and powerful and least likely to be empathetic with the intended targets.
There's only so much training you can give to someone in nine months before they're in combat.
Quite so, and a nice part of that is that it is hard to beat basic empathy and humanity out of a person--the machine, by contrast, never had it to begin with.
The soldiers, though they may make mistakes, are more likely to be able to think critically and show compassion and mercy.
And there's also the fact that machines are a helluva a lot less likely to think it's funny to piss on a Koran or to go rape some of the locals.
No, they'll just kill them instead, as per orders.
EDIT:
We already have drones that kill and injure human beings. They're called missiles and torpedoes, and the third world has plenty of them too.
Those are munitions, not drones. Most importantly, they are deployed by human beings and are controlled by same.
They will constantly and forever be improved.
For certain definitions of improved. Military victory will always be considered more important than civilian survival, so I don't think you can expect machines to improve the moral calculus of war (which always tends to total war).
Interesting point. The machine soldiers would solve the problem of rampant soldiers raping locals.
But if you look at drones, haven't the drones been around long enough? Their algorithm still seems to be faulty considering all the civilian casualties they have caused.
I don't think current drones are automated. They're glorified RC planes. It's still a human piloting and firing the weapons, albeit remotely.
Compared to area bombing like rolling thunder in Vietnam or Coventry or Hamburg in ww2
Point noted
Modern warfare is already vastly stacked against the poorer side. This has arguably always been the case but it is especially true in the present with billion dollar warships and million dollar jets, missiles, satellites, etc. Not to mention nuclear missiles.
Robots don't change anything. Your evil rich people can just as easily fight the rebels with human flown planes or human guided drones and paid mercenaries.
And please with the "imagine a robot shooting a kid, we can't ever allow that to happen" hypothetical. Soldiers kill innocent people all the time, just on accident. Missiles miss, land mines get abandoned and kill innocent kids, warfare has never been tame. A robot would arguably be better because it might rarely if ever miss, it could have better vision than a human, it could possibly be a better judge than even a human with sufficient AI, and it never gets emotional, angry, or tired or insane.
Well then what aout all the children killed by drones[1]?
[1] http://droneswatch.org/2013/01/20/list-of-children-killed-by...
This is the second time in this thread that you've brought up the shortcomings of current drones as evidence against the use of future robots. And it's the second you've conflated human-operated drones, possessed of little intelligence or ability to learn, with hypothetical fully-autonomous robots.
Would these robots behave better than humans or human-controlled drones? That remains to be seen. But the emphasized shortcomings of current aerial drones are about as relevant to future aerial robots as RC toys are to self-deiving cars. (Much less future ground-based robots, which in uncertain situations might be able to choose a third option besides "shoot to kill" or "fly away".)
Those kids were killed by people radio-controlling bombs, not by autonomous drones.
On the other hand, how many civilians, including kids, have been killed by troops on the ground for motivations such as rape, boredom or robbery? Robots wouldn't have this motivation for useless/counterproductive violence, but some human soldiers unavoidably do.
Everything about modern warfare is for the rich kids.
http://www.kipling.org.uk/poems_arith.htm
To a point, sure, but the prior to drones an unwilling population could make it costly indeed--politically--for an occupation force to hold ground.
With drones, though, there's no longer a blood cost associated with oppression.
The population could make it costly by exploiting the weakness of state-of-the art armies of the time, hence partisans. Today the population can make it costly by exploiting today's army's weaknesses, hence IEDs. Future populations can make it costly by exploiting future army's weaknesses, which will probably involve a lot of hiding and striking from where robots can't go, and possibly cracking systems.
Speaking of which, has anyone here played Deus Ex? Rewiring big drones surrounded by large amounts of troops to reverse their friend/enemy detection was the most fun I had in months.
Not that this is funny in real life, but the game is great at exploring how fighting that includes supersuits and drones could work.
How exactly does a drone replace boots on the ground - bipedal robots at the moment are fabulously expensive corporate toys - I doubt that asimo is going to be replacing a squaddie anytime soon
Well, technically a message to village elders "We're watching you through airborne drones - if you'll give support or food to guerillas, we'll bomb your kids" would be somehow analogous to boots on the ground enforcing the same compliance.
There are numerous examples of simple tracked vehicles armed with weapons. It does not take much imagination to see how those combined with larger drones (tanks, humvees), artillery, or aircraft could be used.
Um real warfighting isn't like anime where cute chicks in tight fitting catsuits fight with giant robots.
Tracked vehicles have the dalek problem how do you go inside a building/cave to engage the enemy - watch black hawk down how do you replace a seal team or ranger brick with robots
And any military tracked vehicle is not simple one of the main reasons that MBT's still have 4 man crews is they need the fleshy meatbags to keep the bugger running.
how do you go inside a building/cave to engage the enemy
That would be where the airstrikes and artillery come in, right?
any military tracked vehicle
Think smaller, like on the order of one of the Talon defusal robots ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foster-Miller_TALON ).
~
real warfighting
Here's really the root of the problem. Thousands of years ago, real warfighting consisted of men in centuries and phalanxes, piking each other to death--it wasn't sporting to, for example, ambush a legion as it marched through a forest and cut them down ("Quintili Vare, legiones redde!").
A century and a half, "real warfighting" involved massed troops lining up across from one another and firing in volleys while ignoring civilians--it wasn't sporting to, for example, raze towns and crops and destroy railroad tracks in order to demoralize the enemy.
Two decades ago, "real warfighting" involved massing mechanized infantry, achieving air superiority, and engaging regular forces until their ruler surrendered.
The problem is that this notion of "real warfighting" is constantly changing. Once upon a time, real warfighting didn't involve violating neutral national borders and airspace and dropping munitions on civilians without having clear proof of the target or its strategic value. That is clearly no longer the case, as we've seen with the drone strikes that have been carried out.
We can't ignore the probability that one day, "warfighting" will mean a text sent over IRC to an automated artillery battery to target a village and fire for effect, because the little killbots saw their one target disappear into a place with stairs.
Everything about warfare has always been stacked for the rich. Honestly, how could wealth disparity exist if didn't gain the rich the power to defend their wealth against those who would want to take it?
Drone warfare, low-level warfare and terrorism would be the exceptions. Right now for drone warfare the software is too difficult to write (hard to believe. Hooking up opencv face recognizer to a robot that can aim a rifle is not hard).
That will change. Not soon, it'll take maybe a decade. But it will change.
Oh and ... dumb question ... who enforces any rules that are decided upon during war ? Without that component we might as well legislate the ethics of solar flares ... Right now there are tons of countries that are either in blatant violation of things like human rights and guilty of war crimes, and no-one's getting persecuted. Not just in problem countries like Iran or North Korea, there's plenty in Africa, Saudi Arabia would be another obvious example, even South America. Only in very specific cases does anything seem to happen ... it seems to me more of a pr-campaign than an actual attempt at enforcement.
Not that having zero practical use or effectiveness has ever stopped anyone from legislating, but why not legislate something equally fictional, but more fun ? Let's legislate traffic lights for faster-than-light travel ! Or let's demand something be done about fictional abuse of Indonesian babies ! Won't somebody think of the children ? Let's legislate that no-one can award the "worst dressed sentient being in the universe" prize to the same character more than 6 times in either prose or poetry. Also it seems prudent to preventively outlaw Vogon poetry. These seem like more productive endeavours.
I agree that "making laws" isn't necessarily a solution, but it lays the foundation of future debates. This topic would no doubt involve a ton of debate and it would be VERY useful if it materializes into international law. "Why" you ask?
Well because when someone violates it, there would be no question of whether this is right or wrong. We wouldn't have to go through the whole above debate all over again, just to come to a consensus that this was evil. You could just cite the law and (hopefully/in an ideal world) prosecute.
Ps: They still might be able to cirumvent drone strikes by saying that by defintion of war agreed upon in the first geneva convention, it isn't war. so this rule doesn't apply. I hope they think of this when making the law
in line with the mention of the Geneva Convention in my other post, i just remembered something. I am not sure how legally correct this is it, but someone brought it up in a Model UN that govt officials who sanction drone strikes can NOT be tried for war crimes because they aren't technically Soldiers. If this is true, wtf? The rules seriously need major revision in sight of modern tech
UN govt officials who sanction drone strikes can not be tried for war crimes because they're diplomats of a sovereign organisation. You have to understand what kinds of people these are (in general). They're part of powerful political families, spoiled rich kids with entitlement issues that would make all US congresscritters volunteer for public apologies. They don't agree on anything, least of all human rights (note that the UN human rights council is dominated by governments that don't respect human rights. Which is why the only government to get dinged on human rights is the one government that actually attempts to respect human rights in the region). They will go to war if they saw any of their members threatened with so much as a citation. So no they can not be tried for war crimes.
They will, however, attack others every now and then.
So international law, and human rights, effectively don't exist. So of course since this is just used as a political tool, it can be cheated with when convenient. That's why they went so ridiculously hard after Serbia and let (for example) North Sudan/Egypt/Saudi Arabia/... continue their crimes without a peep.
Even when they do have money, it only works when enforcement works. So in order to get a conviction you need : 1) the political interests need to be aligned 2) some military needs to kidnap the sacrimonial lamb* and this can't lead to an incident 3) the lamb can't have any good political structure left to support him
That's all international law is. Look at the money behind it and you will understand how it works. Attempt to analyse it legally and it will remain a mystery. Look at the conflict between Russia and Saudi Arabia and you will see why they intervened 10 years after the Yuguslav wars, and why they only convicted Serbians, and take note that in this "genocide" of civilians, first only young males, armed, were killed. The whole thing was precipated by an attack by said "victims", which was obviously part by an attempt at territorial conquest by said victims, and more than a few of the perpetrators died. Another army tried to intervene and couldn't because it suddenly found itself under attack by the "victims" and the commander decided to withdraw (it's not that they couldn't intervene, they didn't after finding themselves under attack by the victims). Both America and Europe took the side of the "victims". Understand why that last part happened, who was on whose side, and you'll see where the convictions come from, and just who and what the ICJ is working for.
Note that I'm not making the case that all governments are corrupt (beyond a certain degree). Just that a toothless, powerless, jurisdiction-less, "court" 100% dependant upon foreign interests cannot have a shred of integrity in practice.
But of course, don't let reality stop you from feeling entitled, and in the US, and some parts of Europe, you can actually more-or-less enjoy these rights (keep in mind that in the EU, due to WWII, you don't have full freedom of political opinion. If you think human rights will save you from conviction if you do something that's technically a human right but flies in the face of this policy, don't expect human rights arguments to save you from conviction. In Europe freedom of ideology does not apply nazism and a few forms of communism/socialism). If you actually wish to test human rights policies though ... I'd advise you NOT to leave the US.
* they're generally guilty, although proof tends to be lacking in the extreme, and people convicted are generally not the only guilty parties.
Even if people are manning the drones, you could have one person handling thousands of drones, and just being offered a long series of yes/no prompts ("Shoot here?"). As long as there is any way for a country to decide to deploy drones they will find a way to comply with the letter of whatever restrictions you put in place.
The drones are perhaps a good opportunity to look at the broader picture. Maybe we need to recognize that one country sending weapons and troops into another country on their own initiative is a fundamental violation of human rights and basic morality. The only way troops or weapons should be deployed is to stop greater harm from happening, and the only entity that can judge the greater harm is one that looks beyond national borders.
For me the simplest way to "clean up" war is to make all war illegal, and only allow troop and weapon deployments outside of a country's own national borders under the UN banner for peacekeeping purposes. This sidesteps the rich kids vs poor kids issue because there is no us vs them, there is only the global community and how it polices itself. Not that the UN is necessarily ready for such a thing, but even in its inadequate capacity it would be a whole lot better than the horrible inhumane mess we are in right now.
Yeah. Watch a pro playing starcraft. Keyboard and mouse, selecting and directing, almost faster than the eye can follow. This group of terminators, attack here. That group, charge the bunker over there.
Modern army control systems are already a lot like starcraft, even up to the progress bars that get shorter and change color as tank crew members get killed.
Tell me how well that ban on chemical and biological weapons is working out. Lets be honest about it, the art has to be advanced in countries where it might be consider abhorrent to engage in such combat just to insure that when the other guy does use it it can be defended against.
Automation is coming whether we like it or not. If we end up with a world were large armies are no longer fielded and only robots exist on the combat field perhaps we can move weapons to those that incapacitate instead of kill. We can only get there is we continue to push development. Regardless, strikes will become more surgical which could reduce casualties amongst non combatants. Figure it this way, if they become good enough maybe the leaders will be the ones looking over THEIR shoulders.
'Drone warfare (whether by land, sea, or air) is about using disposable machines to kill and injure human beings'
The disposable machines are built by human beings belonging to a nation (or entity) who are interested in self-preservation and protecting the nation. Of course profit doesn't hurt.
Thinks about this. Lately, the rich nations are facing shortage of men willing or able to risk death/injury. The populace lacks the stomach.
And the 'poorer' nations (ones with little to lose) have no qualms about bloodshed as long as they get what they want.
I see drones in warfare as inevitable. How autonomous will they be? Think no one knows for sure at this point...
Right because if we ban it nobody will use it. Great idea!
well, its worked with nukes so far (mostly).
Because those who have nukes conveniently forbid their further proliferation.
I find it insane that human with AK47 still poses any threat in the warzone. I look forward to the times when human with small arms has absolutely no value on the battlefield. War should be only for the richest kids.