The US expect to have a large fighting force made up of robots within the next decade.

The programme is believed to be making rapid progress.

A 20% increase in an already giant defence budget doesn't sound nice though!

I personally can't ever see an army of robots doing an effective job on a battlefield compared to what an human army could achieve.

http://www.sky.com/skynews/article/0,,31500-13300415,00.html

I see at first the shooting bit will be left to a human,who is the weakest link in the American Forces.Still plenty of friendly fire then ?

The worrying thing for me is that this shows what the US administration thinks the army is for, ie purely killing people.

This robot cannot do 90% of the jobs that the British Army has been doing recently.

Policing actions, not really suitable are they, and how on earth can you get anywhere near a "hearts and minds" concept with a Zanussi kitchen appliance.

I don't think they are supposed to replace the troops, but using them for high risk fairly straightforward fighting actions makes sense.
Of course most soldiers in Iraq haven't been killed whilst taking part in that kind of fight. Maybe America is still trying to fight the last war.

Originally posted by Lickszz
The US expect to have a large fighting force made up of robots within the next decade.
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Was it "The Phantom Menace" at last nights Pentagon film club ?

I like to think they'll end up looking like Robby the Robot from Forbidden Planet:

http://www.starshipmodeler.com/R&V/sj_robby_02.jpg

I imagine that they will prove very effective for high risk scenarios.

Would you like to tackle an army of them, carrying other technologies which have not been mentioned.

But another step closer to the US being completely unstoppable
:gag:

Originally posted by venger
I imagine that they will prove very effective for high risk scenarios.

Would you like to tackle an army of them, carrying other technologies which have not been mentioned.

But another step closer to the US being completely unstoppable
:gag:

A small EMP device would probably stop them, without hurting any humans.

wow... hundreds of killing machines... wonder how long it will take for some clever little bugger to hack into the mainframe and have access to an army of unstoppable machines...

hmm... obviously the movies I, Robot, The Matrix etc were never shown in the US? :?

yay, lets make lots of super intelligent robots with guns that fire a million bullets a second... wow, thats a great idea... I hope they've got some amazing programmers involved and a HELL of a lot of safeguards built in!

Originally posted by nick2
A small EMP device would probably stop them, without hurting any humans.

unfortunately the only way we know to generate an EMP is to detonate a nuke.

Originally posted by Cyclone
unfortunately the only way we know to generate an EMP is to detonate a nuke.

You could detonate it high-up in the air ?

You can create an EMP burst without a nuke though (or so this article says)

http://www.abc.net.au/science/k2/moments/s391083.htm

I can just see the headlines to come...

Hackers turn Robots on Creator
100% accurate killing machines gain control
Microsoft Robot XP Released


What are the people in power going to need us for in the future? They will just have 20 something men sitting playing chess with giant robots against other countries/plantes, whilst having robots building robots in the background.

Joy of joys...

Mmmmm!! Thousands of lower intelligence, mindless automatons firing off millions of pointless rounds of ammunition per minute. Unable to distinguish friend from foe, and easily reprogrammed by outside influences, but incapable of independent thought

By heck, its the US soldier of 2005!!!!!

..but the point is, they will only be of real use in a "stand up fight"...

...in the last one of those, not many troops were lost...

...the "attrition" type warfare, where there are long conflicts, sustaining steady troop loss, they will be of no real use.

These robots would have been great use in the opening phases of Gulf 1 or 2, but how many casualties did the US take? It's not like they will solve a known problem, or existing deficiency.

Vietnam, Iraq (keeping the peace), NI, the Falklands, Vietnam, Sierra Leone, Kosovo, Somalia, Serbia, Chechnya, Afghanistan...

...the list goes on and on, they wouldn't be of any significant use.

Does GWB not live in the real world, maybe he "mistook" what somebody meant when he heard his dad had started "the star wars project", “Hmmm, yes, I like the look of those, Chenney get me some!”

Ooh, mind you, they could be useful for romping into North Korea, ah, no, they might fight back with nukes, scratch that idea, where's the oil again...

lol, that's what i meant by fighting the last war.

It sounds like they would be ideal for fighting their way across europe in a toe to toe shoot it out match.

But pointless for hunting down terrorists, and fightings insurgents hidden amongst civilians.

Originally posted by Cyclone
But pointless for hunting down terrorists, and fightings insurgents hidden amongst civilians.
Not if you do it the US/Isreali way...

...shoot/bomb everybody who "might" be involved, or are near them.

Can they not see that they are winning the battles, but loosing the war?

Originally posted by foo_fighter
.

Does GWB not live in the real world, maybe he "mistook" what somebody meant when he heard his dad had started "the star wars project"

Maybe GWB misheard and thought what the aides said was "Start Wars Project".

Seems like a colossal waste of money. If the yanks are developing these things to do battle across the world without upsetting the electorate with pictures of their boys coming home in body bags then they have a cheaper option - employ Mexicans.

Assuming that eventually each war could be fought purely with robots, wouldn't it be easier and less expensive for the representatives from each side to sit down and have a nice game of chess. I'm sure sky could clean up on pay per view if countries were at stake.