
The US Army is developing autonomous armored vehicles - scapecast
https://www.armytimes.com/news/your-army/2017/08/29/the-us-army-is-developing-autonomous-armored-vehicles/
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StanislavPetrov
One step closer to the utopia dictators and despots have dreamed about for
millennia. No longer will they have to depend on the loyalty of Praetorians or
armies to protect them and put down the unruly peasant and proles. Soon they
will have legions of obedient killer robots to ensure their rule.

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arcbyte
Which is why we have the Second Amendment in the US and it is our right as
citizens to have our own death robots.

/seriousness

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option
The enormously high cost of war (both economical and humanitarian) is the main
reason why our time is the most peaceful in human history. Do not change that.

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taheca
Those of us who grew up playing Civilization figured this out pretty quickly.
War is fun, but is time consuming and costs enormous resources.

Much better to focus on science, and technology and grow peacefully.

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ardit33
Future of warfare is going to something more like Command And Conquer game,
where operators will direct autonomous machine with a click of a mouse and
warfare will be mostly done at a distance....

Probably with less casualties overall...

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rhcom2
The ethics of asymmetrical warfare with one side nearly completely autonomous
seem like very murky water.

Imagine Iraq occupied with pretty much only machines and Iraqis never actually
see an American. And if this removes the threat of death from one side, what
does that do to the cost of war? Could it actually make it more common because
it is less politically risky? It feels inevitable, but it also scares me.

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eeZah7Ux
Ever heard of drones? "murky water" is quite an understatement.

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jonbarker
Little known fact: one of the first self driving cars was a 'Humvee' (real
name HMMWV) which was equipped by DARPA with cameras and could navigate a road
with no other vehicles, and go straight through a 4 way intersection after
stopping (again, no other vehicles). This was in the mid 1990s. Would love a
link to this project if anyone has it.

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lsaferite
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DARPA_Grand_Challenge#2005_Gra...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DARPA_Grand_Challenge#2005_Grand_Challenge)

[http://velodynelidar.com/blog/it-began-with-a-
race/](http://velodynelidar.com/blog/it-began-with-a-race/)

~~~
jonbarker
These are cool but the footage I recall seeing was clearly from the 1990s and
lifted from VHS tape.

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djrogers
This seems like an obvious step - why put a soldier or soldiers at risk to
scout around the corner or breech a building when you can send in an armored
quad?

Or have I been reading too much SciFi?

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bad_alloc
Not only that. Friend-or-foe identification can boil down to "only targets
shooting at me are hostile". That policy isn't any good for human soldiers but
robots operating on that principle could avoid a lot of collateral damage.

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yorwba
> Friend-or-foe identification can boil down to "only targets shooting at me
> are hostile".

And those that shoot at allies. And those that haven't shot yet, but are
aiming in the wrong direction. And those that are just reloading their mortar.
And those that are setting up an explosive trap for the robot.

There are a lot of ways to be hostile that go beyond firing a weapon directly
at the robot, and if it can't handle those, it will be exploited by humans
pretending to be harmless.

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taheca
Shhh... we are going to need to preserve our Guerilla methods dude.

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excalibur
Elon Musk and Sarah Connor both told them not to do that.

~~~
blueprint
> with an automated machine gun

Yeah, how exactly can that be automated?

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ethbro
> > with an automated machine gun

> Yeah, how exactly can that be automated?

 _Be it known that we, JOHN M. BROWNING and Marrana ' S. Browning, of Ogden,
in the county of Weber and Territory of Utah, have invented a new Improvement
in Magazine Guns; and we do hereby declare the following [...] an improvement
in the construction of guns whereby the firing of the gun after the first
discharge may be made automatic so long as cartridges shall be supplied._
[1892]

[https://www.google.com/patents/US471782](https://www.google.com/patents/US471782)

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forapurpose
This is far from being deployed, per another article on the same demo (a much
better article, if you are interested in learning more):

 _Much of the technology is there to drive robotics and autonomy into maneuver
formations, but when it comes to developing the tactics, techniques and
procedures, the Army is figuring out “how we want to massage this,” said
Robert Sadowski, robotics chief with the Army‘s Tank Automotive Research,
Development and Engineering Center. “The next 10 to 15 years will help us
figure out how we want to embed robotics and autonomous systems into the
formation.”_

[http://www.defensenews.com/land/2017/08/25/us-army-
tackles-t...](http://www.defensenews.com/land/2017/08/25/us-army-tackles-
teaming-robots-and-ground-forces-on-battlefield/)

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seorphates
I find myself wary of the long tail on this one. When wars fade into
enforcement then rights fade into privileges.

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bennettfeely
[http://en.radiovaticana.va/storico/2014/05/13/archb._tomasi_...](http://en.radiovaticana.va/storico/2014/05/13/archb._tomasi_beware_of_the_increasing_dehumanisation_of_warfare/en1-798916)

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redthrowaway
What's the point in the Army developing its own, parallel autonomous vehicle
technology? Why not just have DARPA funnel funds to Google or someone and
piggyback off their research?

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throwawayjava
Well, Google already piggybacked off of DARPA ;-)

Also, combat zones != California suburbs.

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redthrowaway
> Also, combat zones != California suburbs.

We're just going to leave that one tee'd up, aren't we?

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kayman
Didn't toyota recently say, we are way off from completely autonomous
vehicles. But if anyone has unlimited resources to do it...its the army.

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ada1981
"Human neutral" is the new term.

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rodgerd
Robocop was not meant as an instruction manual.

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artur_makly
SkyNet alpha v001

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s17n
What could possibly go wrong?

