Solution to the War - Build a robot army

[ck4829]

Super-Kill-Bots with built in radar, IED detection, missile launcher, guns, and a device which can win the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people.

This will be the increase of troops that we need.

Here's the question though:

How do you think Bush will mess it up?

[Tom Joad]

1. So we can continue the imperialist project by using robots?

NO Thanks.

[liberal N proud]

2. Better yet, a virtual war - I was at a presentation last week where they were demonstrating

how they used 3D technology to fight the battles before they actually went into the street. I had two thoughts at the time, one was that it was a shame that they were using a piece of software designed to create to help them destroy. My other thought was, why not just fight the war in this little 3D model and save all those lives.

[soothsayer]

19. well, in the Star Trek episode you had to report to the disintegrator

if the computer model registered a 'hit' where you were. So the death was real, but the infrastructure was spared.

[Ian David]

21. Or, make it so if you die in the game, you die in real life.

Then, you get to kill all the people you want, without all that messy "collateral damage" and loss of infrastructure.

Credit to Anti-American nightmare of multi-Culturalism Episode #23, "A Taste of Armageddon"

[Richard Steele]

3. With B*sh in charge, how could this possibly end badly?

[ck4829]

7. LOL. Thank you for knowing that my thread is satirical.

"Super-Kill-Bots", did people still think I was serious at that?

[The2ndWheel]

11. Do you work at DARPA?

[americanstranger]

23. Sure, maybe YOU'RE not serious...

But Google 'Rumsfeld Robot Army' and see what turns up.

http://www.informationliberation.com/?id=12003

This is no geeky fantasy. Much of the hardware and software already exists and the race to produce the rest is on such a scale that US officials are calling it the "new Manhattan Project". Hundreds of research projects are under way at American universities and defence companies, backed by billions of dollars, and Donald Rumsfeld's department of defence is determined to deliver as soon as possible. The momentum is coming not only from the relentless humiliation of US forces at the hands of some determined insurgents on the streets of Baghdad, but also from a realisation in Washington that this is the shape of things to come. Future wars, they believe, will be fought in the dirty, mazy streets of big cities in the "global south", and if the US is to prevail it needs radically new strategies and equipment.

Only fragments of this story have so far appeared in the mainstream media, but enough information is available on the internet, from the comments of those in charge and in the specialist press to leave no room for doubt about how sweeping it is, how dangerous and how imminent.

Military omniscience is the starting point. Three months ago Tony Tether, director of the Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa), the Pentagon's research arm, described to a US Senate committee the frustration felt by officers in Iraq after a mortar-bomb attack. A camera in a drone, or unmanned aircraft, spotted the attackers fleeing and helped direct US helicopters to the scene to destroy their car - but not before some of those inside had got out. "We had to decide whether to follow those individuals or the car," he said, "because we simply didn't have enough coverage available." So some of the insurgents escaped. Tether drew this moral: "We need a network, or web, of sensors to better map a city and the activities in it, including inside buildings, to sort adversaries and their equipment from civilians and their equipment, including in crowds, and to spot snipers, suicide bombers or IEDs . . . This is not just a matter of more and better sensors, but, just as important, the systems needed to make actionable intelligence out of all the data."

Darpa has a host of projects working to meet those needs, often in surprising ways. One, called Combat Zones That See, aims to scatter across cities thousands of tiny CCTV cameras, each equipped with wireless communication software that will make it possible to link their data and track the movements of every vehicle on the streets. The cameras themselves will not be that different from those found in modern mobile phones.

- as

[leveymg]

15. Don't those things have a way of turning on their masters?

[Tom Joad]

4. Have you considered that the people on the recieving end will not

be robots... but people? Whose land will be invaded, whose wealth will be taken, whose rights will be trampled on.

[Bucky]

28. Well said, Tom! I was about to agree with this "robot army" proposal until I read your post.

[HereSince1628]

5. What problem would robots solve exactly?

How does that result in a solution to this war?

Military deaths and soldier shortages are not the only problem to solve about an illegal aggressive war of choice.

[Javaman]

6. Hey I saw Terminator, I don't want a robot for a governor, oh wait. nt

[originalpckelly]

12. Those were autonomous robots...

allowing a machine to kill a person is pretty fucked up, even more so than letting another human do it.

That's why remotely controlled robots are the next major military development.

[soothsayer]

20. that's the first step towards autonomous robots

[John Gauger]

8. By buiding killer robots!

The very idea so fucked up that it's already something he would do. He doesn't need to put his own special spin on: it's already a catastrophe.

[ComerPerro]

22. Ahh, but there is a BushCo solution to that. We build super-killer robots

to kill the killer robots when they inevitbly go berserk.

[John Gauger]

24. Oh, that's okay.

Good. Just as long as you've thought this all out.

[leeroysphitz]

9. Oh, that's your answer to everything! nt

[originalpckelly]

10. Actually, I agree...

and the Army and Air Force are already working on robots.

That will also allow us to have universal conscription, because no one will really be putting their lives on the line.

All the video game players will be the soldiers of the future.

[billbuckhead]

14. They're building minidrones that fly down alleys and through windows

They're building minidrones that fly down alleys and through windows that can be launched by small robot tanks. It reminds me of the Star Trek next generation episode where the crew is trapped on a planet by a weapons system that launches a new improved version of a drone by the minute.

[Ron Green]

13. Even though you're kidding, you bring up something important:

We make war "remote control" at our peril. Any weaponry that takes our OWN soldiers out of danger makes it not only more likely that we'll win, but also more likely that we'll go to war. Rather than learn from the horror of WWI not to make war, we've learned how to better kill the "enemy."

[wtmusic]

16. Already being done.

Our (temporary) disengagement from the horrors of battle is why we're losing.

[valerief]

17. Here's an idea. Get rid of poverty and you'll do away with war. Naw.

The rich have to be the torturers.

[Tesha]

18. Oh yeah, that'll work great.

Oh yeah, that'll work great.

[walldude]

25. I assume your post is slightly sarcastic... but

it's not like they aren't already working on this:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4199935.stm

This is all we need. Somebody better start training Jedi...

[blues90]

26. Bush already treats the human troops as robots

I think that any admin or leader that wants to go to war should hope on a plane or invite the determined enemy over and let them fight to the death and let the end result be the factor .

I don;t believe in wars of any sort . Iraqis just want to live and dream just like anyone else .

[Bucky]

29. The original meaning of "robot" was a servile artificial person, not a machine.

From Karel Capek's play RUR

[dysfunctional press]

27. why not just get the caminoans to build us a clone army of jenga fets?

supposedly it's worked before...in a galaxy far far away.