Robots that kill. In the movies, this scenario is presented as a future in which things have gone terribly wrong. But, as revealed in the new Zoot Pictures documentary Remote Control War, such robots are no longer science fiction.
From today’s CIA drone strikes to the next generation of armed autonomous robot swarms, killer robots are about to change our world. The question chillingly posed in Remote Control War is how this shift will affect not only warfare….but mankind.
Robotic war is already here. Every evening in Indian Springs, Nevada, an hour outside of Las Vegas, a group of ordinary-looking men and women say goodbye to their families and go to war. They fight insurgents in Afghanistan and on the mountainous borders of Pakistan. They watch, they bomb, and they kill. Sometimes their vehicles crash, but the pilots always go home to their families in the morning. They are remote control warriors.
Remote Control War illustrates how warfare is being revolutionized in a monumental shift unlike anything in our human history. The current campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan exemplify the world’s first Robotic War. The American robotic fleet, almost non-existent when the US and its allies invaded Iraq in 2003, has today grown to number 7,000 robots in the air and 12,000 others on the ground. Some 43 other countries, including Canada, are now using robots in combat.
The Bear, designed to be a medical rescue robot in the field
Military robots are appealing: they save soldiers’ lives – avoiding the negative publicity of planes repeatedly returning home with flag-shrouded coffins.
But, as Remote Control War shows us, today's drones and robot tanks are like "the first horseless carriage" compared to new generations of robots already being developed. Robot warriors will soon move beyond taking directions - they will become autonomous, acting independently. Surveillance and other non-lethal tools will be turned into attack weapons, as the military reconfigures today’s R2-D2 and C-3PO into RoboCop and Terminator. We see in the film how this is already happening.
Remote Control War producers Leif Kaldor and Leslea Mair of Regina-based Zoot Pictures hunt down the most up-to-date information on military robotics. They travel to Europe, Israel and across North America, gaining entry to the Pentagon, robotic production facilities and cutting-edge research laboratories. While discovering the latest technology, they pose the serious ethical questions we need to ask: When robots are used to kill human beings, what are the new rules of engagement?
Robots only have the ethics with which they are programmed, and human/robot wars raise many ethical questions. Does the ability to kill anyone, anywhere, using a robot, amount to lawlessness? What happens when future robots can decide, on their own, whom to kill? Would the military send out an autonomous swarm of micro-robots to kill an enemy? Will having no casualties on your own side make going to war too easy a decision?
The development and deployment of militarized robots also opens a Pandora’s Box. Currently, the West has the upper hand, but very soon, all sides will have access to remote control weapons. In that frightening scenario, will robots become the future’s suicide bombers?
To contribute to our understanding of what is going on right now in the world of military robotics, and the implications of these developments, Kaldor and Mair talk to such knowledgeable experts and insiders as:
Lt. General David Deptula, U.S. Air Force Chief of Staff for Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance
Jody Williams, Nobel Peace Prize winner
Peter W. Singer, Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution and author of Wired for War: The Robotics Revolution and Conflict in the 21st Century
Chris Anderson, editor-in-chief of Wired Magazine
David Rohde, two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times investigative reporter
United Nations Special Rapporteur Philip Alston
Noel Sharkey, Professor of Artificial Intelligence and Robotics at the University of Sheffield.
"This started as a documentary about military robots and ended up more like a science fiction film,” says Remote Control War director Leif Kaldor. “The technology is almost unbelievable, yet very few people know there are thousands of robots on the battlefield right now, let alone what the next generation of lethal, autonomous robots will be capable of.”
Kaldor adds: “When a leading roboticist tells you he wouldn't be worried if we had Terminators because he’s far more concerned with the lethal, autonomous flying robot ‘swarms’ that are being developed and tested right now, you know this is something we’d better be aware of and talking about….soon!”
Saturday, June 30, 2012
New Military Technology
I have put together a video, largely comprised of YouTube videos, to illustrate how military technology is changing as we move from the Energy Age to the Information Age. The major innovation in the previous age was undoubtedly the nuclear bomb. In the emerging age, where information becomes incorporated within existing military technology such as guided missiles, "smart-bombs", and aerial drones, we are struggling to adapt this technology to fighting a new non-state enemy. If the nuclear bomb is an example of a weapon of pure energy, what will the pure information weapon look like? It may emerge from ongoing research into the brain and its control of both human behaviour and the weapons of war.
The video may be viewed on YouTube at this website.
Tuesday, January 10, 2012
Pentagon Tries to Counter Cheap, Potent Weapons
The US is finally taking seriously the threat posed by guerillas/insurgents' use of IEDs, man-held anti-aircraft missiles, suicide bombers and cyberattacks. This is evident from the new strategy announced by President Obama:
President Obama’s new military strategy has focused fresh attention on an increasingly important threat: the use of inexpensive weapons like mines and cyberattacks that aim not to defeat the American military in battle but to keep it at a distance.
The president and his national security team predict that the security challenges of the coming decade will be defined by this threat, just as the last one was defined by terrorism and insurgency.
A growing number of nations whose forces are overmatched by the United States are fielding these weapons, which can slow, disrupt and perhaps even halt an American offensive. Modern war plans can become mired in a bog of air defenses, mines, missiles, electronic jamming and computer-network attacks meant to degrade American advantages in technology and hardware.
It is a lesson that potential enemies drew from the way American public support for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan plummeted as armored vehicles — each costing millions of dollars — were broken and their troops killed and maimed by roadside bombs costing only a few hundred dollars apiece.
China and Iran were identified as the countries that were leading the pursuit of “asymmetric means” to counter American military force, according to the new strategy document, which cautioned that these relatively inexpensive measures were spreading to terrorist and guerrilla cells.
At his announcement at the Pentagon last week, Mr. Obama said the country should invest in “the ability to operate in environments where adversaries try to deny us access.”
The new strategy specifically orders that efforts to counter the threat, which the military calls “anti-access, area-denial,” become one of the 10 primary missions of the American military. That will help define how the four armed services compete for shares of a shrinking Pentagon budget.
“The United States must maintain its ability to project power in areas in which our access and freedom to operate are challenged,” the strategy document said.
“Sophisticated adversaries will use asymmetric capabilities, to include electronic and cyberwarfare, ballistic and cruise missiles, advanced air defenses, mining and other methods to complicate our operational calculus.”
For example, in recent exercises by the naval arm of the Revolutionary Guards, Iran has practiced “swarming” attacks by a number of small, fast boats that could be loaded with high explosives; if one such boat got through, it might blast a hole in the hull of a major American warship.
“Iran’s navy — especially the naval arm of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards — has invested in vessels and armaments that are well suited to asymmetric warfare, rather than the sort of ship-to-ship conflict that Iran would surely lose,” Michael Singh, managing director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, wrote in a recent essay for Foreign Policy.
With Chinese and Russian help, Mr. Singh added, Iran is also fielding sophisticated mines, midget submarines and mobile antiship cruise missiles.
Nathan Freier, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said, “Iran’s capabilities are best suited for imposing high costs on those who might need to force their way through the Strait of Hormuz, and on those in the region whom the Iranians perceive as being complicit in enabling foreign access.”
The potential challenge from China is even more significant, according to analysts. China has a fleet of diesel-electric attack submarines, which can operate quietly and effectively in waters near China’s shore to threaten foreign warships. China also fields short-, medium- and long-range missiles that could put warships at risk, and has layers of radar and surface-to-air missiles along its coast.
Finding, identifying and striking an American warship is a complex military operation. But the thicket of Chinese defenses could oblige an American aircraft carrier and its strike group to operate hundreds of miles farther out to sea, decreasing the number of attack sorties its aircraft could mount in a day and diminishing their effectiveness.
Perhaps most worrisome is China’s focus on electronic warfare and computer-network attacks, which might blunt the accuracy of advanced American munitions guided by satellite.
To counter these threats, the Air Force and Navy set up an office to develop complementary tactics and weaponry for what they are calling air-sea battle.
One idea is to attack an outer ring of enemy air defenses with F-35 Joint Strike Fighters, opening an alley for an F-22 stealth jet carrying sensitive surveillance pods to fly deeper into contested territory, where it could, for example, guide a powerful sea-launched cruise missile to a mobile or hidden target.
According to Lt. Gen. Herbert J. Carlisle, the Air Force deputy chief of staff for operations, plans and requirements, American computer warfare techniques could be used to spoil an adversary’s decision-making process. “If we can give them bad information, or we can make them doubt the good information they have,” he said.
Vice Adm. Bruce W. Clingan, the Navy’s deputy chief for operations, plans and strategy, said the military was carefully studying anti-access, area-denial techniques to pinpoint potential weaknesses in an adversary’s ability to identify and strike American targets.
“Do you take out his ability to shoot? Do you take him out once he’s shot? Do you deny him accuracy once the missile is airborne and then you create a greater ‘miss distance’?” Admiral Clingan said. “You have to work your way across that entire effect chain and how you’re going to do those things to keep those missiles from threatening you.”
Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, will soon release his concept for operating in an anti-access, area-denial environment. The 65-page directive will identify 30 capabilities that the armed forces will need to carry out missions across contested battlefields.
Source: New York Times
President Obama’s new military strategy has focused fresh attention on an increasingly important threat: the use of inexpensive weapons like mines and cyberattacks that aim not to defeat the American military in battle but to keep it at a distance.
The president and his national security team predict that the security challenges of the coming decade will be defined by this threat, just as the last one was defined by terrorism and insurgency.
A growing number of nations whose forces are overmatched by the United States are fielding these weapons, which can slow, disrupt and perhaps even halt an American offensive. Modern war plans can become mired in a bog of air defenses, mines, missiles, electronic jamming and computer-network attacks meant to degrade American advantages in technology and hardware.
It is a lesson that potential enemies drew from the way American public support for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan plummeted as armored vehicles — each costing millions of dollars — were broken and their troops killed and maimed by roadside bombs costing only a few hundred dollars apiece.
China and Iran were identified as the countries that were leading the pursuit of “asymmetric means” to counter American military force, according to the new strategy document, which cautioned that these relatively inexpensive measures were spreading to terrorist and guerrilla cells.
At his announcement at the Pentagon last week, Mr. Obama said the country should invest in “the ability to operate in environments where adversaries try to deny us access.”
The new strategy specifically orders that efforts to counter the threat, which the military calls “anti-access, area-denial,” become one of the 10 primary missions of the American military. That will help define how the four armed services compete for shares of a shrinking Pentagon budget.
“The United States must maintain its ability to project power in areas in which our access and freedom to operate are challenged,” the strategy document said.
“Sophisticated adversaries will use asymmetric capabilities, to include electronic and cyberwarfare, ballistic and cruise missiles, advanced air defenses, mining and other methods to complicate our operational calculus.”
For example, in recent exercises by the naval arm of the Revolutionary Guards, Iran has practiced “swarming” attacks by a number of small, fast boats that could be loaded with high explosives; if one such boat got through, it might blast a hole in the hull of a major American warship.
“Iran’s navy — especially the naval arm of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards — has invested in vessels and armaments that are well suited to asymmetric warfare, rather than the sort of ship-to-ship conflict that Iran would surely lose,” Michael Singh, managing director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, wrote in a recent essay for Foreign Policy.
With Chinese and Russian help, Mr. Singh added, Iran is also fielding sophisticated mines, midget submarines and mobile antiship cruise missiles.
Nathan Freier, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said, “Iran’s capabilities are best suited for imposing high costs on those who might need to force their way through the Strait of Hormuz, and on those in the region whom the Iranians perceive as being complicit in enabling foreign access.”
The potential challenge from China is even more significant, according to analysts. China has a fleet of diesel-electric attack submarines, which can operate quietly and effectively in waters near China’s shore to threaten foreign warships. China also fields short-, medium- and long-range missiles that could put warships at risk, and has layers of radar and surface-to-air missiles along its coast.
Finding, identifying and striking an American warship is a complex military operation. But the thicket of Chinese defenses could oblige an American aircraft carrier and its strike group to operate hundreds of miles farther out to sea, decreasing the number of attack sorties its aircraft could mount in a day and diminishing their effectiveness.
Perhaps most worrisome is China’s focus on electronic warfare and computer-network attacks, which might blunt the accuracy of advanced American munitions guided by satellite.
To counter these threats, the Air Force and Navy set up an office to develop complementary tactics and weaponry for what they are calling air-sea battle.
One idea is to attack an outer ring of enemy air defenses with F-35 Joint Strike Fighters, opening an alley for an F-22 stealth jet carrying sensitive surveillance pods to fly deeper into contested territory, where it could, for example, guide a powerful sea-launched cruise missile to a mobile or hidden target.
According to Lt. Gen. Herbert J. Carlisle, the Air Force deputy chief of staff for operations, plans and requirements, American computer warfare techniques could be used to spoil an adversary’s decision-making process. “If we can give them bad information, or we can make them doubt the good information they have,” he said.
Vice Adm. Bruce W. Clingan, the Navy’s deputy chief for operations, plans and strategy, said the military was carefully studying anti-access, area-denial techniques to pinpoint potential weaknesses in an adversary’s ability to identify and strike American targets.
“Do you take out his ability to shoot? Do you take him out once he’s shot? Do you deny him accuracy once the missile is airborne and then you create a greater ‘miss distance’?” Admiral Clingan said. “You have to work your way across that entire effect chain and how you’re going to do those things to keep those missiles from threatening you.”
Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, will soon release his concept for operating in an anti-access, area-denial environment. The 65-page directive will identify 30 capabilities that the armed forces will need to carry out missions across contested battlefields.
Source: New York Times
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