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Robotic Warfare
Matt Yglesias muses on what the growing use of drone aircraft means for the Air Force:
The military [...] is an institutional culture that puts a great deal of stock on honor, courage, and difficult physical work.
A service that consists of guys sitting in cubicles playing video games is going to have trouble holding its head high amidst a warrior ethos. And consequently, the Air Force is tending to resist the technological imperative to go more remote. Ultimately, however, that resistance is doomed and it’s not really clear what will come of it.
There's another side to this: what happens when drones become really, really good? Right now they're at about the technological phase that airplanes were in during World War I: nice tools in specific circumstances, but not really overall game changers. But that won't be true for much longer. Advances in drone technology are likely to come pretty quickly, and the result is going to be a very large fleet of drones that are bigger, faster, stealthier, more maneuverable, have better optics, and can accomodate far more — and more effective — weaponry than today's models. And since they're relatively cheap and using them runs no risk of loss of life, there's going to be very little institutional or public pressure against using them. This is likely to mean they'll get a lot of use.
You see the same two-edged sword with police officers being armed with tasers. It's great that they have a nonlethal alternative to shooting people, but the fact that they have a nonlethal alternative also means they have less reason to avoid using it. Result: lots of people being tasered.
It's not just drones, of course. It's the entire robotic revolution in warfare. When we get to the point where one side is able to conduct war effectively with virtually no fear of loss of life, does that mean that public pressure against war will start to fade away? After all, demand curves slope downward. When war becomes cheaper, we'll get more war. Right?
Cheaper?
"When war becomes cheaper, we'll get more war."
But is the price going down? A few decades back I had read a some startling statistics. The subject being discussed was the cost of war measured in dollars spent per enemy casualty. It has been rising exponentially with time. So maybe we will soon have war which is combatant-risk-free, but totally unaffordable.
Rather than such robots getting bigger, it is when robots of sufficient capability can be the size of birds or insects that I think we really have to worry. A flock of killer-bee robots are probably a lot tougher to stop than something that looks like a transformer movie monster.
New fodder for nightmares!
Ha, swarms of killer bee robots, thanks!
Part of your $/casualty statistic may be misleading. It may be a problem of total cost vs. unit cost. There haven't been many conflicts on the scale of World War II, where soldiers were dieing on by the millions. That war's total cost (for all countries) was about $1 trillion in 1944 dollars (~$5 trillion today assuming 3% inflation, imprecise).
Our current wars have a huge price tag, but lack the pitched battles and full scale engagements between regular armies. We're fighting guerrillas, so our costs for having men and machinery in place is still high, but we're not able to engage them in scale. For example, the Battle of Stalingrad had ~ 2 million casualties.
Easier to start, but not cheaper
I think BigTom is right, the price is going up, not down.
But since American politicians see the willingness to get into or stay in wars, just because it's the manly thing to do... (I mean, why are we in Iraq? And why are we putting more troops into Afghanistan? I wonder if it is simply that politicians are afraid to be less pro-conflict than the next guy.)
Of course, the price goes up, the public doesn't care because there are no casualties and it isn't like the wars are actually in the budget. Eventually these politicians and their cheerleaders in the various media will bankrupt the country, or we'll enter a hyper-inflation state. Either way, we can't continue this way forever.
"combatant risk-free"
Well, if they are so cheap and easy, it is hard to imagine that they won't also become a terrorist weapon of choice.
You don't even have to be able to build them, just to be able to hack into their control system.
evolution
And what will be the effect of all these robotic weapons upon guerrilla fighters and terrorists?
The recent killings of Taliban leaders in Pakistan indicates that a terrorist organization will become largely leaderless. The link and node model of the internet comes to mind. (Cut a link or destroy an internet node and the effect is strictly local.)
This evolution will severely limit the success of robotic aircraft of all sizes. But not the death and destruction caused by guerrilla and terrorist organizations.
The Body in Pain
The point of war is to open up bodies and let the contents drain out.
As Elaine Scarry put it in her wonderful, strange, disturbing book "The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World," "participants [in war] must work to out-injure each other...the side that is more massively injured or believes itself to be so will be the loser."
And if there are no drained bodies?
Ah, but there must be drained bodies. That is what war is.
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Robot Killers
As with all new technology, advances in robotic warfare won't remain a one-way street forever. This is the time to kill such technology in the bud. It appals me that our universities (and corporations) are receiving tons of funding from government agencies like DARPA. A friend at IBM had some real ethical problems with software work he was asked to do for such a project (although not robotics-related). What's to stop robotic warfare from being used against populations? As we see in AfPak there's a lot of collateral damage suffered already. And drones are just the tip of the iceberg. STOP IT NOW.
Stop referring to them as
Stop referring to them as drones. They are more properly termed, Hunter-Killers.
Taser deaths
Taser is not 100% non lethal. There have been over 350 deaths after someone has been tasered. Check the Amnesty International web site for more information or just google "taser deaths". We have had 2 deaths in my state recently (that I know about). One of them started with a traffic stop. Tasers are being used commonly to subdue instead of being reserved as an alternative to a gun.
I don't see how this is going to win hearts and minds
As others have noted, bad guys can use "drones" too, and this does not look like a PR win. Whatever tendency there is to root for the underdog, this will make it more so, and the last thing we need is enough angry people that we get smart terrorists (as opposed to, say, the shoe bomber, or the guys who set themselves on fire attacking an airport in England).
I imagine, also, drone-disinformation, meaning that someone might build drones outfitted to look like they came from another country -- and who, on the ground, recovering blown-to-bits drone parts, is going to know the difference between the fake and the genuine article? It's not like you'll have a soldier you can interrogate.
Robot Assassins
There is nothing fair about war, despite the illusions of honor and other lies we tell ourselves to prettify using violence to accomplish our aims. There's been a lot of foofooraw about asymmetric warfare and how the U.S. is at a disadvantage because our huge military machine has such a hard time coping with low-tech insurgents.
So where is the moral high ground when you have one side employing suicide bombers to take out targets whatever the collateral damage, versus the other using drones orbiting unseen to strike targets without risk to those pushing the button? How do you call someone a true warrior willing to risk their own life to accomplish their mission - when that isn't even an option? Is using a drone the equivalent of using a mobile I.E.D? Is it really combat any longer, or is it more like calling an exterminator to deal with a pest? War is said to be dehumanizing - so what happens when half the combatants send machines to take the field?
Drones have already changed the game. The players and coaches are still trying to figure it out - and the crowd in the bleachers hasn't picked up on it yet.
UAVs/drones have only ever
UAVs/drones have only ever been used against ragtag guerrilla forces who have had no anti-aircraft capability. How well will they cope when used in conventional war against a militarily advanced country with a modern missile and triple-A based air defence system.?
They are also destabilizing. For example, say the US decides to get in on the next war in Georgia after Saakashvili launches another artillery bombardment of Tskhinvali, the Russians learn that the US is using drones operated out of Creech AFB near Las Vegas so the Russians decide to target it perfectly legally the only way they can with conventional war heads on long-range ballistic missiles. How are the US to know whether or not they are nuclear armed?
Actually, I suspect that the Russians would take out the Pentagon's comms satellites used to control the drones and those poor grunts in Georgia might find themselves without the protection afforded by air supremacy, the first time the US military has been in that position in fifty odd years.
>How well will they cope
>How well will they cope when used in conventional war against a militarily advanced country with a modern missile and triple-A based air defence system?
I've spoken with a military research director on this topic, and apparently micro-drones are *very* difficult to detect, and even more difficult to stop. And those drones will eventually become widely available to anyone who wants one and has a degree of engineering aptitude. Right now my best guess is they control the situation by tracking the flow of the components required, but as the capability of consumer widgets increases, that will become impossible.
Robotic Warfare
Sorry, but I already read the book: Enders Game.
Goodbye, Chuck Yeager
The military has always been influenced by a “macho” heroic ethic. There is a reason the Navy builds more super-carriers than mine sweepers, the Army spends more on artillery and tanks than on counter-insurgency, and the air force spends billions on mach 3 fighters but not one dime on a low slow dedicated ground attack planes. Like any new technology, the drones will have to win their spurs by demonstrating they can perform the job better than a piloted aircraft. Yet the arc of technology suggests they will inevitably become superior at some point. Drone technology, with its need for an extensive highly technical support organization, would appear at this time to favor the technically advanced nations over the indigenous rebel movements. Still, a technically advanced country providing advanced drones to an insurgent movement could be like the U.S. providing Stinger missiles to Osama to oppose the Russians.
Drones have limitations
I have a very hard time believing unmanned drones will be effective anytime soon in ground-based roles, and this will severely limit their effectiveness, especially in asymmetric conflict situations.
Flying drones are like miniature aircraft, and can be controlled remotely in much the same fashion as manned aircraft. By contrast, a ground-based robot would need to negotiate irregular terrain and engage opponents at close hand. If you've ever seen how clumsy, fragile and stupid today's robots are when trying to do simple things like walk around or understand an unfamiliar terrain, you'd realize how ridiculous the notion of a robotic infantryman is at the present time.
Yet without a ground-based component, a robotic military would have no way to hold territory or deal effectively with a civilian population. We're going to have to rely on human ground-pounders for a good long while yet.
On the other hand...
One excellent potential outcome would be if the Air Force were largely replaced with drones. Given that that service is the one most infested with religious fundamentalists, going robotic could reduce the number of god-bothering wackos in the armed forces.
or maybe
you just get a lot of god-bothering wackos with drones.
So much for "there are no
So much for "there are no atheists in foxholes".
It turns out, empirically, that there are no atheists when it comes time to hurt other people from a distance, at little risk to yourself.
Robots fighting robots
If all human armies are replaced with robots, then the victor of war will be the general with the best strategy and tactics. At that point, we may as well give up on war and resolve disputes with video games.
It's Philip K. Dick's world
and we have to live in it.
Go re-read the "autofac" stories.
There's two implications
There's two implications that increased drone use has for the Air Force.
First, drones are cheaper than manned aircraft... by quite a lot, really. Sure, a drone with an AMRAAM missile and a radar set might not have the same performance envelope as a top-of-the-line air superiority fighter. But if you're lifting twenty drones for every fighter the other guy has, he's not dogfighting you anymore - he's getting inundated with over-the-horizon guided missiles before he ever sees you. And a swarm of drones is a lot more damage-resistant than a single jet, as well. If he gets a lucky hit in, and only 19 drones come back, you're still a lot better off than a fighter would be from that same lucky hit.
Thus, the large-scale deployment of drones has a real opportunity to become a huge force multiplier for the US air force. And pretty much JUST the US air force; we have the satellite communications network to take advantage of drones anywhere in the world, whereas none of our potential competitors do. (And the specter of hacking into drones is pretty much solved by encryption, while "jamming" them is a lot easier than it sounds - a radio signal powerful enough to jam communications is also more than enough to serve as a homing beacon for a missile, and a swarm of drones can afford to have one along for anti-jammer duty a lot more easily than a single fighter can. We, of course, have had such missiles for decades.)
The real reason the Air Force isn't interested is because couch-operators of drones don't need to be officers. The Army gets by perfectly well with sergeants, corporals, or privates operating drones; the more drones are in the Air Force, the harder of a time they have insisting that only officers may pilot aircraft. And the command structure of the Air Force is currently comprised solely of officer-pilots... There are parallels to make with the WW2 Navy, and the opposing "carrier deck" and "gun deck" admirals.
We've shown perfectly well in Iraq that we're comfortable with having soldiers teleoperate drones. But if the fighting roles of the Air Force can be filled by enlisted men, the Air Force loses its claim to being an independent service.
"The Army gets by perfectly
"The Army gets by perfectly well with sergeants, corporals, or privates operating drones; the more drones are in the Air Force, the harder of a time they have insisting that only officers may pilot aircraft."
And the more vicious the mockery of the Air Force by the other services.
Robotic Warfare
Apart from Korea and Vietnam, the US has spent most of its time since WWII shooting fish in a barrel, Grenada, Panama, Somalia, two Gulf Wars. It led us to believe, against much evidence to the contrary, that all problems could be solved by the application of overwhelming military force. It also led us to believe that war could be relatively painless and we have never had to feel the pain of the economic and social costs that other nations have experienced in their war making.
There is one truism that we are in danger of forgetting in our omnipotence and that is that a really competent enemy will always find a counter. That is a certainty. The counter may not necessarily be technological as we have found, and are finding out again, in Iraq and Afghanistan. Technological difference can always be equalized and bested by an enemy with technological competence. And there are plenty of them potentially in the wings.
If the fleabite casualties we are suffering now equate to a problem of national will then we really do have problems.
My own advice is that we should never have been in Iraq in the first place and we should have sorted Afghanistan when we had the moment and the whole of human civilization was on our side. The best we can do now is to get the hell out and work out how to limit the damage from that action.
On the matter of a drone filled airforce I was struck by a recent TV documentary. The image in mind was first of an airforce unit where the drone-pilot personnel were dressed comfortably in open-necked work shirts, contrasted secondly by the button-down white shirt and tie wearing civilian pilots of a civilian contractor also flying drone missions over Afghanistan. The latter were just a little too anal and rigid for my comfort.
Overweight, sedentary wannabe civilian warriors flying drone missions without an atom of personal danger, accountability or responsibility now that is the wave of the future. And, guess what, it won't be cheaper, you will pay through the nose. You can always rely on Defense for that.
Air Force may ultimately end up as a branch of the Army
"the more drones are in the Air Force, the harder of a time they have insisting that only officers may pilot aircraft."
Suggests that the Air Force may ultimately end up as a branch of the Army.
Why not?
And that's a bad thing?
"A service that consists of guys sitting in cubicles playing video games is going to have trouble holding its head high amidst a warrior ethos."
And that's a bad thing?
The less warrior ethos we have the fewer people get killed.
"When we get to the point
"When we get to the point where one side is able to conduct war effectively with virtually no fear of loss of life, does that mean that public pressure against war will start to fade away?"
Is this not the exact definition of the type of terrorism we are at war to defeat?
Drones: Version 1.02
tagged as:- solution
Hey, folks, how about nukes on drones? Talk about a stealth nuclear attack. No pilot is at risk as is the case with a manned bomber, and a drone can always be called back at the last minute, unlike a ballistic missile. The drone could fly under radar and then go up with the payload, as in FAIL SAFE, but without sacrificing the crew. Yee-hah!
You've just described a
You've just described a nuclear-tipped cruise missile. We've had those for a long time, too.
A taste of Armageddon
The original Startrek series aired an episode "A taste of Armageddon." See link
http://trekguide.com/padd/tos23.htm
In this episode, two planets had taken the "horror" out of war by fighting via simulations. The affects of simulated attacks were calculated and those deemed casualties reported by law/treaty to incineration chambers. Painless.
Consequently, they were at war for 500 years until Captain Kirk destroyed their simulations and put the fear of REAL war back in their minds.
BTW, the systems you refer to go by the name Unmanned Air Systems (UAS), not "drones."
Star Trek rules
I was thinking of the same Star Trek episode, but you beat me to the punch.
It is funny how Gene Roddenberry's show was so visionary about the future.
Notice that in the Star Trek universe that the Federation is very socialist? Everyone has universal, as in the entire universe, health care, no one starves to death, and anyone can attend college or even join Starfleet.
Drones
Simply an extension of the Vietnam War.
It seems "we" are pretty good at taking a target and reducing it to rubble and dead bodies.
Unfortunately, as drone warfare has proven, it seems we are really bad at making decisions in a remote manner about targeting, more often than not killing innocent people. It takes a trained person, in the seat, with a good overview of the situation as well as context, to make those decisions, something the drone does not provide.
Drones are usually sold as exceptional in a WW1 battlefield, with copious black and white images of troops lined up on one side and the other, innocent casualties are carefully avoided. It is "old war" mentality that presently sells those critters.
Until you have won the hearts and minds, you have won nothing.
Treize Kushrenada has
Treize Kushrenada has addressed the issue of war via automation at some length.
The war economy means more
tagged as:- solution
The war economy means more expensive inflated costs of equipment and black ops money with constant replacement costs to keep people working in the industry. The Ultimate Soldier programs with contracts awarded to large companies which are not manufacturers and not even the owner of the technology they integrate, meant that they had to steal technology from the scientists they enslaved. They then subcontracted all of the technology they took from entrepreneurs, effectively halting their work, in most cases ending their careers, and in many ending their lives. It ended with free access by their business partners in Asia, who are the leaders in the electronic industry.
This industry was lost during the 80' in bad trade deals to enrich tobacco industry executives at the expense of this strategically important industry. In Asia, a technocratic society, there is expertise and control over everything from the chips to the displays. The networks are inert and they have operated thus far to enrich their executives and provide cover and disinformation for what is a giant spy network of entrepreneurs. It was never for terrorism, it was for industrialism and espionage of ideas and technology they could sell. It destroyed our economy present and future and put us in grave danger, perhaps even imminent danger.
The real problem has been the failure to understand the growing and ever present hatred of the "Ugly American" syndrome. The mindless, evil, smiling, killers and torturers of today are not like the soldiers of WWI or WWII. They had to be brainwashed to behave that way while Asian leaning Yoo was changing US honor with the Torture Memos. The Government was being directed by big business interests.
The destruction of the Air Force ethic was done by introducing a double speak Christian ethic which was more of a Chinese/Israeli agenda. They are all mind controlled which is a subject worthy of discussion as a lethal, rather than a non-lethal weapon. While swarming systems and massively parallel brain interfaces are becoming interconnected, it is a mistake to think it is a Western advantage because of satellites. Satellites can be destroyed as China demonstrated from the ground and all of the major countries have them.
The real problem now is the set top box and the ability to understand your mind and affect your mind with communications technology. Combined with swarms of UAS remote warfare, biotechnology dangers and the enormous loss of critical technology from the minds of our greatest will prove to be the biggest mistake the US has ever made. This was the secret project in the Pentagon and all of us will pay the price with our lives and our freedom unless we quickly put in place a Constitutional AutoLaw and give credit and funding where it is due. This means cleaning up the crooks and sorting out whose idea was first from the subliminal mind. The inventors were so much more important than they thought and the enemies of WWII never really surrendered.
What is the cost of a human being is now being used as justifications for genocide. The more important question is what is a person worth? Now, as we enter the sickening era of no individuality and the so-called "information sharing" theft of ideas, there is a pricetag on our heads as we ourselves are sold to our captors for entertainment value. It is women and girls who have the highest value in this game.
As far as ground robots, the blob in action and trained Cyborgs are critical to our survival potentially but not with Conficker Botnet types of abilities being shrugged off by decision makers as not important just because they are not technically literate. Ignoring something does not make it go away and sweeping a problem under a rug does not remove the problem.
"Wake you sleeping giant. Wake up and meet your doom." Something like this was on the Kamikazi airplane found in Hawaii after Pearl Harbour. Now it is in your clock radio.
For over 50 years now, there has been a slow and stealthy takeover of our society with brain and body implants. You do not know it is there, but it is. It is time to pay attention to our lives now, not just our economy. The one liner scare tactics like communist and fascist frighten both sides because it speaks of a CHANGE in our Constitutional system of Government.
The Star Trek ethic was closer to reality in terms of technology and it was a military system, not a socialistic one. How did Socialism ever become equated with the sophistication of anti-barbarianism? Basic human needs and dignity should be our ideal and as the wealthiest nation on earth we deserve it after all that hard work and we need to allow elderly people to live well into old age with their wisdom, enjoying retirement. It is the American Way. We tossed out robber barons in the 30's. The mind controlled criminal element with a gun was used to put surveillance in place and disarm us.
WE NEED AUTOLAW COMMUNICATIONS DEFENSE!
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