

Robotic Warfare Has Arrived – 30% of US Military Aircraft are Drones - masterfanman
http://singularityhub.com/2012/02/09/the-era-of-robotic-warfare-has-arrived-30-of-all-us-military-aircraft-are-drones/

======
sbierwagen
Typical singularityhub blogspam: this is a rewrite of
<http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2012/01/drone-report/>

I don't know why singularityhub links haven't been banned from HN yet.

------
ck2
Now that it's legal to fly them domestically, your police force is going to
have so much fun with all that "anti-terrorism" money. Be sure to write
Congress and the president a "thank you" letter for signing that into law.

[http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/feb/7/coming-to-
a-s...](http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/feb/7/coming-to-a-sky-near-
you)

 _the FAA has issued hundreds of certificates to police and other government
agencies [...] to allow them to fly drones over the United States_

~~~
Nick_C
The reason is that every single flight has to have its own certificate. It
could be a few drones on dozens of flights, or many drones on a few flights.

Cleaning this up is part of the FAA Reauthorization bill that Obama is
signing. The FAA is being tasked to integrate unmanned flight into the
national airspace system.

At the moment, each flight must have either a ground spotter or a chase plane
in order to provide the see-and-avoid capability that is a requirement for all
flights in visual conditions.

One reason I am not as pessimistic as some others is that the private pilot
brigade, through AOPA and others, is extremely political and vocal. To
generalise, they epitomise the self-reliant, freedom characteristics often
associated with America.

There is no way they are going to accept that their freedom to fly wherever
they want is being restricted just to accommodate drones. Expect an
increasingly vocal campaign over the next several years.

------
itmag
John Robb has been on a drone trip lately:

[http://globalguerrillas.typepad.com/globalguerrillas/2012/02...](http://globalguerrillas.typepad.com/globalguerrillas/2012/02/mr-
drone-and-the-199-universal-dronepilot.html)

[http://globalguerrillas.typepad.com/globalguerrillas/2012/02...](http://globalguerrillas.typepad.com/globalguerrillas/2012/02/battledrones.html)

[http://globalguerrillas.typepad.com/globalguerrillas/2012/02...](http://globalguerrillas.typepad.com/globalguerrillas/2012/02/drone-
swarms-are-here-1-minute-to-midnight.html)

[http://globalguerrillas.typepad.com/globalguerrillas/2012/01...](http://globalguerrillas.typepad.com/globalguerrillas/2012/01/is-
there-a-defense-against-drones.html)

[http://globalguerrillas.typepad.com/globalguerrillas/2012/01...](http://globalguerrillas.typepad.com/globalguerrillas/2012/01/drone-
diplomacy-comply-or-die.html)

[http://globalguerrillas.typepad.com/globalguerrillas/2012/01...](http://globalguerrillas.typepad.com/globalguerrillas/2012/01/the-
future-of-warfare.html)

------
spodek
When I started reading the article I thought I'd post here something about how
it might seem effective and useful to Americans until other countries start
using them against us.

Then I saw our government is _already_ using them against us. This is sad.

Renoir's 1937 film _La Grande Illusion_ , beautifully illustrated how those on
the other side of battle lines often have more in common with you than you
think and those on the same side may not share your interests.

I have no problem with the average Joe on the street in the middle east, yet
he is being harmed with my tax money. I have a big problem with someone spying
on a peaceful protest near my home.

EDIT: resolved ambiguity someone responded to. I have no problem with the
average Joe. I do have a problem with him being harmed with my tax money.
Sorry for any confusion.

~~~
bambax
> _I have no problem with the average Joe on the street in the middle east
> being harmed with my tax money_

Really? It's quite amazing to be able to say this after having said that
"those on the other side of battle lines often have more in common with you
than you think".

How do you think "the average Joe on the street in the middle east" feels
about having an unmanned plane over his head? How do you think his children
feel when they see him being killed by such a machine? They swear they will
seek vengeance.

You will have only yourself to blame for this.

------
melling
Most of the comments are somewhat negative. People should look at this like
we're at the beginning of WWI and planes are just starting to be used for
warfare. Things will evolve rapidly because the DoD has a lot of money. Within
a decade the drone fleet will evolve a couple of more generations.

If we could find some consumer uses for robotics, the tech will evolve even
faster.

At the end of the day, it's about finding the money to pay for the advances.

~~~
Craiggybear
AI research has been going now for 60 years and we have pitifully little
(apart from a few expert systems) to show for it. It is on-going and billions
are still being spent on it but its a barren dry field. The most important
thing it has given us is the realisation that intelligent behaviour and sense
of self is remarkably complex and digital machines can't replicate it. Mimic,
to a limited extent, but not actually show aware, self-seeking behaviour.

Another sixty years won't change that.

That's why all the smart money is in biotech -- because that _might_ show more
promise. A computer with a synthetic mind made out of living neurons might be
more promising.

~~~
weavejester
Wait just a minute! Just because we've yet to build a machine as intelligent
as a human being doesn't mean we haven't made remarkable progress,
particularly in the last decade.

And where do you get the notion that digital machines can't be self-aware?
What, exactly, are you basing this theory on? Are you claiming that some form
of quantum state is required, or are you saying that intelligence needs to be
analog?

~~~
Craiggybear
I can see you don't have any background on this otherwise you would already
know the answers. This has been well researched by biologists, linguists and
cyberneticians for well over half a century both at the academic and applied
level.

"Intelligence" is neither digital or analogue (or maybe its a quantum
artifact) -- we don't have a clue what it is. That's the point. It _appears_
to be an emergent property of organic systems that must evolve over the
development of that system but we still can't prove that _we_ are intelligent
or self-aware. But we can be certain it doesn't appear in purely deterministic
machines who's every parameter can be assessed at the fine grain level.

~~~
drcube
>But we can be certain it doesn't appear in purely deterministic machines
who's every >parameter can be assessed at the fine grain level.

I don't know why you think this statement doesn't apply to humans. We're
deterministic machines as well. More complicated perhaps, and less is known
about the "fine grain level", but there is no evidence that we are anything
more than complicated meat machines.

~~~
Craiggybear
It _does indeed_ apply to humans. If you could be bothered to read the rest of
this thread you'd see that this is precisely the point I am trying to make.

Humans _are_ machines. But we (and other living things) appear to exhibit
defined properties that are not present in complex digital machines. It also
seems that what we refer to as self-awareness is an emergent property that
living things have, although in theory, not specifically limited to living
things.

That set of properties is what is formally defined as having a mind. Whatever
that means, and I agree its far from clear what that is.

But -- and its a _big_ but -- digital processes don't seem to be able to mimic
or model it (that could be _our_ shortcoming -- the models are not any good)
and it isn't just a matter of more memory/processing power/a big enough look-
up table. These are not the problem nor the answer. It isn't just a CompSci
issue. If it _were_ just that, we would have it licked by now and we would all
have interchangeable minds that we could simply reprogram and upload with new
sets of skills and belief systems (yes, Robots would definitely need them too,
by the way).

We have a long way to go and for a while now we've been heading down the wrong
road. But don't take my word for it.

~~~
drcube
I agree we have a long way to go, and I don't know enough about the state of
the art to say whether we're heading down the wrong road or not. But I'd like
to point out an something that made an impact on me. Thomas Nagel's essay
"What is it like to be a bat?":

<http://instruct.westvalley.edu/lafave/nagel_nice.html>

He makes a distinction between subjective understanding of consciousness
("What is it like to be X?") and the objective understanding (What are the
atoms and neurons doing? What is the structure of the mind?) I think this
distinction is a big part of why you, and society as a whole, dismisses AI.

We have a much deeper objective understanding of computers than we do about
our own brains. But comparatively, bats are as familiar as our own siblings
next to our subjective understanding of "what it is like" to be a computer. We
simply have no basis for comparison. We can't put ourselves in a computer's
shoes. And without this subjective, gut feeling comparison, people in general
find it difficult or impossible to assign the word "intelligence" to any non-
humanoid entity, be it whales, robots, or computers.

~~~
Craiggybear
No, whales are intelligent alright. There's no doubt about that. Bats almost
certainly are as well. At least I believe they are self-aware and have an
inner life as an individual as well as being part of a group.

I also am a great believer in things being more than just the sum of their
parts -- or at least to _have_ that _potential_. I just don't believe there
are any sentient machines. Yet. And I'm not going to waste my time
anthropomorphising them.

Because that's not going to make them happen any sooner.

------
fallous
One wonders when we reach the logical conclusion of pure drone warfare...
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Taste_of_Armageddon>

------
mise
I don't know what they classify as a drone, but if it includes small aircraft
of several feet long, then I could imagine they have hundreds (?) of them for
the same price of a fighter jet.

------
lrhot9
Power used to be a function of the number of soldiers at your disposal. It
will soon be a function of the quality of your roboticists.

------
Craiggybear
It isn"t robotic warfare unless they are totally autonomous and goal seeking.
These are not AI's - strong or otherwise.

~~~
Retric
They are fairly autonomous and goal seeking, the military does not use 1 pilot
per drone. Details rapidly become classified after this point. But, the DoD
does a lot of AI research and put's this stuff into practice see cruse
missiles for some ancient, but still powerful tech.

~~~
Craiggybear
Yes, indeed cruise missiles are robots (they have a sophisticated automated
guidance and auto pilot for a start).

My understanding is that most drones are remotely controlled by human
pilots/personnel. I saw a documentary about this and they seemed pretty dumb
compared with military tech from the 80s such as cruise missiles.

I'm sure that they are working on AI controlled drones but I'm pretty sure
none of them are autonomous yet. They would have to be Asimov machines to some
extent to prevent them from doing bad stuff to allies and friends or even
their owners.

No robot AI combo to my knowledge is yet safe or reliable enough to be
deployed on their own unsupervised. If they think that they are then, boy, are
they going to get their asses kicked sooner or later when they inevitably
malfunction.

~~~
_djo_
Many newer UAVs are fully autonomous in the flight operations sense, as they
are able to take off, fly a pre-defined track through a set of waypoints and
return to land all without direct human intervention.

As an example, the US Navy's X-47B UCAS-D demonstrator has already
demonstrated autonomous flight, but the USN plans to test autonomous carrier
landings at sea sometime next year with fully-autonomous aerial refuelling the
year after that.

The thing is, autonomous flight isn't that difficult and the technology for it
has been in place for some time. Where complications arise is with bad
weather, which can confuse an aircraft's sensors; situations where precision
instrument approaches aren't available and, most importantly, other aircraft.
There is still not complete certainty that it's safe to fly an autonomous UAV
in congested airspace where other other pilots often do unexpected things.

Many of these issues can be solved by technical means alone, including the
ability to monitor, anticipate and avoid other aircraft. But we're still a
very long way from solving that fuzzy boundary when things go wrong and only
human judgement can prevent disaster.

I also do not believe that aircraft like the X-47B will be given autonomous
freedom to select their own targets when they are deployed in about a decade.
Instead, while they'll fly autonomously, their targets will be selected by
human operators who'll also authorise the release of weapons.

True autonomy is going to require the answering of plenty of technical and
ethical questions.

~~~
Craiggybear
"True autonomy is going to require the answering of plenty of technical and
ethical questions."

Precisely my point. Thanks. We all know flight autonomy is already here. Has
been for ages.

The aerial refuelling is a neat trick which I'm not convinced will be able to
be taken for granted yet -- I can see this won't become fully autonomous for a
while. That procedure would have to be completely predictable and reliable --
at least as reliable as a human-managed manoeuvre and that isn't without risk.

~~~
_djo_
Just pointing out that 'autonomy' can mean different things depending on your
point of view. The kind of autonomy that has already been achieved coupled to
a reasonably safe ability to operate in congested air space will mean that
regular autonomous cargo flights will become possible.

As for aerial refuelling, I think autonomous probe & drogue refuelling is
definitely feasible. They've already proven the ability of the X-47B's flight
systems to maintain the refuelling position behind a 707, which is technically
one of the harder things to get right.

One of the reasons aerial refuelling is so tricky is that it requires constant
rapid adjustments by the pilot in the receiving aircraft to stay in position
while receiving fuel. The X-47B should be able to process those adjustments
much faster than a human pilot.

------
drstrangevibes
i just hope that we advance so far in this field , so that eventually we have
robots the exclusively fight and destroy other robots, the hope being that
human casualties and destruction of human infrastructure is completely
removed. Perhaps one day, we'll take robots out of the picture and fight wars
virtually altogether!

