The ultra-lethal drones of the future

http://nypost.com/2014/05/17/evolution-of-the-drone/

by spking • 12 years ago

41 46 12 years ago

nypost.com

walshemj2• 12 years ago

So ultra lethal is dead 2.0 kills you even deader than the pervious shooty /stabity technology.

pavel_lishin• 12 years ago

Could be wordplay. Ultra, as in above.

coldtea2• 12 years ago

Or you know, it's ultra-leathal in that it kills a larger percentage of targets more efficiently (e.g they are not talking about it being "more lethal" for a single person).

walshemj2• 12 years ago

or I could have been being sarcastic

nonce42• 12 years ago

  Whatever happens, we have got
  The Maxim gun, and they have not.
  -- Hilaire Belloc

A basic assumption with drones is they are great because the US has them, but that's not always going to be the case. What worries me is what will happen when drones become widespread. Sooner or later someone will make the AK-47 of drones, and there will be millions of lethal drones around. I don't know what that will do for warfare, but it can't be good. World War I showed the difficulty of adapting to widespread machine guns, and the adjustment to widespread drones could be just as bad.

throwaway5752• 12 years ago

"A basic assumption with drones is they are great"

I don't think this is a widely shared view.

jal2782• 12 years ago

It's interesting -- I would imagine a minority of Americans would support developing killer drones, because it is a terrible slope for the world as a whole to go down, yet our military -- largely because of game theory, will continue to develop them, likely to a poor outcome for the world.

Perhaps our belief in game theory is a pretty miserable self-fulfilling promise

stretchwithme2• 12 years ago

Its a concern, definitely. Every new weapon eventually falls into enemy hands.

Ultimately we'll have drones that drug soldiers and non-combatants rather than kill them. And that disable infrastructure rather than destroy it.

And we'll have drones that do battle with drones, and even search out and destroy drones, or follow them home.

The most technically sophisticated will continue to have an edge. And, no, that doesn't prevent unintended consequences. Inventing planes that can break the sound barrier didn't prevent 9/11 either.

id• 12 years ago

A basic assumption with drones is they are great because the US has them

Maybe this is a common opinion among Americans but I don't think many people outside the US see it that way.

thret• 12 years ago

I don't think many people outside of the US have ANY positive feelings about the US military.

_djo_2• 12 years ago

Drones are already widespread, which I discussed in a previous comment.[0] Like all technology, Pandora's Box has been opened and there's really nothing that can be done to stop people from developing ever more sophisticated drones. America did not invent drones and it has never been the only source for the technology. Countries like Israel and South Africa were using modern tactical drones in combat long before the first Predator took to the skies.

But drones aren't the real issue, they're still relatively unsophisticated aircraft that, even when armed, are not any more deadly than manned combat aircraft and the array of sophisticated weaponry that most countries have access to.

The real issue is the rapid development of robotics, of which UAVs (aka drones) are a subset, that promises to dramatically change warfare. The first robots equipped with AI software to automatically identify and shoot at targets will probably be ground robots like the Talon or SWORDS, not UAVs flying 20 000 ft above the battlefield. Russia is already experimenting with such autonomous AIs on their Taifun-M robot, as are others.

At the current rate of development it's difficult to even imagine how far this technology will go and what robots will be capable of, but suffice to say we're already seeing levels of capability most believed were science fiction just a decade ago.

Point is, arguing about armed drones like the Reaper and Predator is not going to solve anything and it's a distraction from the real ethical debates that need to be happening around weaponised robotics.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7709420

tritium• 12 years ago

  Drones are already widespread

Oh man, I just do not agree with you on that one.

They are not widespread like cell phones are widespread. They are not widespread like automobiles are widespread. They are not widespread like television is widespread. They are not widespread like six shooter revolvers are widespread. They are not widespread like clock radios are widespread. They are not widespread like cameras are widespread. They are not widespread like hand grenades are widespread.

Maybe they're widespread like bi-planes at the end of world war I. Maybe they're widespread like torpedos at the beginning of world war II. But that still counts as uncommon technology in my book.

ZenPro11• 12 years ago

A succinctly argued point and totally relevant.

http://www.buildyourowndrone.co.uk/ and others like it is a worryingly accessible resource that can easily be weaponised.

As well as the cheap, uniquitous and reliable drone (AK-47) we should also fear the Raspberry Pi of drone technology (simple, programmable).

In the future, shocking public attacks will come from clock towers and sniper points but also from drones in densely populated areas.

tylerkahn• 12 years ago

A basic assumption with drones is they are great because the US has them

Are you advocating for some sort of 'red line' on the use of drones much like on the use of chemical weapons so that the use of such weapons anywhere in any context would incur reprisals from the international community.

That's really the only thing I can think of that would make this make your statement relevant. Regardless of what people in the US think of the legitimacy of using drones, unaligned parties will use them if they can.

qq66• 12 years ago

Drones aren't great "because the US has them," drones are great because of the widespread civilian applications of them. Precision agriculture, logistics, law enforcement, meteorology, mapping, search and rescue, the list grows every day.

stretchwithme2• 12 years ago

How about those drones on Star Gate Universe? Relentless enough to drive you from the galaxy.

pokstad• 12 years ago

No mention of the super secret space drone???

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_X-37

The ultra-lethal drones of the future

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