
Age of fully autonomous and lethally armed battlefield robots approaching - sjreese
http://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20160826/p2a/00m/0na/021000c
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Impl0x
I have a morbid fascination with the idea of all-robot wars between countries
with rough parity to each other (both countries have robot armies/navies/air
forces). War always seemed sorta pointless to me but it becomes so much more
so when you can quantify all the elements of what should make a military
successful. If you know all the aspects of a robot force (power efficiency,
sensor suite, decision-making, etc) and have a rough idea of the production
capabilities of the warring countries then it seems like you could just crunch
some numbers and have an idea of who would win in a war of attrition.
Strategic objectives and planning might still be relegated to human generals,
of course, but at that point the generals are practically just playing a real-
time strategy game set in real life rather than in a computer.

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galdosdi
Ah, but there's another layer: each side would work hard to keep the other
side as uncertain as possible about its own capabilities, since that makes the
other side less likely to make the optimal decision (eg, they might start a
war they can't win, or fail to start a war even though they would win if they
did)

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Impl0x
Of course there's always uncertainty involved, but uncertainty of outcome
doesn't really lend any more purpose to an armed conflict.

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huherto
Is it going to be easier to start wars if it only means sending robots ? At
least at the beginning before it escalates into full war.

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Unbeliever69
Was anyone else expecting terminators? :)

