U.S. Army Wants to Replace Soldiers With Robots

[Jadedvet]

Its not a machine uprising we have to worry about, its someone hacking those things and turning them against us.

It wouldn't be the first time. We have already lost a stealth spy drone - The expensive kind you would expect to be near impossible to hack.

There is also the issue of too much power in too few hands, and hands that are risking nothing themselves. Right now we have real people behind the vast majority of the triggers so there is a limit to what can be done and gotten away with. What happens when some senator just needs to have a few buttons pressed to deploy a force that will do anything secretly and without question?

 

[CpT_x_Killsteal]

Greeeeat, because US Drone strikes haven't killed enough civilians already. What they REALLY need is some ground reinforcements to pick off any stragglers.

 

[Grouchy Imp_v1legacy]

United States Military: Army of 01001111 01101110 01100101.

I get the increased use of robots for tasks like bomb disposal and/or land mine clearance though. Some jobs are best left to disposable tech, especially if it's capable of stuff like this:

 

[fluxy100]

I like this idea, anything that lowers the amount of men killed in war is always a good idea. Granted the money costs may be high but as mentioned above, without food costs and other things needed by soldiers, in the long run this might even save money.

 

[Endocrom]

Simpsons predicted it!

"The wars of the future will not be fought on the battlefield or at sea. They will be fought in space, or possibly on top of a very tall mountain.

In either case, most of the actual fighting will be done by small robots. And as you go forth today remember always your duty is clear: To build and maintain those robots."

 

[Gary Thompson]

Yeah, because having an army of killbots when your enemy consists of people who hide in caves doesn't make us look more like the Evil Empire.

 

[Dalisclock]

Totally not surprised. The army is struggling to find qualified recruits as it is. I can imagine a lot of army recruiters reading this story and thinking "It can't happen soon enough" to make their job less stressful.

 

[Dalisclock]

One question - how the hell do they intend to power these things? Oil is too inefficient. The solar power is not yet harnessed to the levels required to feed warmachines. Are we talking nuclear devices here?

Fuel cells or batteries. Pretty obvious, I would think.

Or a small diesel engine.

 

[dyre]

Interesting. I imagine fielding robots instead of soldiers would effectively end the age old belief that a determined resistance will always eventually eject an occupation force. We've already seen this become less and less true in recent wars, with the disparity in technology between the US military and the countries it conquers (the North Vietnamese expelled the US, but at great cost and lopsided casualties. The insurgents in Iraq had an even rougher time at it). But when it only costs dollars, not lives, to occupy a nation, does it even matter if a resistance blows up a robot here and there, as long as the occupation's profit margin stays positive? A major element in expelling an occupation is the fact that the citizenry of the occupying force will become war weary, but it's hard to imagine them getting war weary if no one on their side is dying.

I wouldn't be surprised if the future's robotic army (obviously not the stuff they're talking about now. But robots are getting more advanced all the time) ushered a new age of imperialism.

 

[Leonardo Huizar]

SNIP

This isnt meant to be offensive but a dead soldier costs about $500K towards whoever inherits, plus the expenses of an autopsy, travel of the body across continents, burial service, etc. A robot combatant would be much cheaper and easier to maintain than a living person who might or might not get PTSD

 

[ObsidianJones_v1legacy]

In a world that the next world war will be fought over powering resources, being so heavily dependent on such things seems like a stupid way to build your army. We'd already be screwed just getting our soldiers to where they need to be. But next you'll have to fill up for your little warbot to do its thing? And what happens when it's tapped out of energy? It's not going to be like a human and use will and eat muscle to fuel its escape. Once that thing is out of battery, it's there on the battlefield.

I hate this for another reason: It's just another example of governments trying to widen the gap between Civilians and their fighting forces. I am not allowed to own a gun that you give to our soldiers to defend 'my freedoms'. Ok, I don't agree with that, but ok. I'm pretty sure I'm not going to be allowed to own a drone or a thousand. So if it turns out I need to lift up arms against a corrupt government, well congratulations all those who would fight with me! We'll be apart of the most one sided war in history. The few of us that'll have 9 mms vs m16 carbines, body armor, drones, and the like.

 

[Bara_no_Hime]

Replacing soldiers with robots? Sounds good to me. Maybe they can funnel some of that soldier upkeep money over to Education? I know everyone is on Health Care this term, but those of us teaching the next generation kinda need to eat and pay rent.

And for those of you worried about robot uprisings or hacking - these things are basically advanced RC cars. Someone might be able to hack them, but it would be one at a time - so one of our robots would turn on us, and immediately be killed by the others. No matter how many TV shows or video games say otherwise, you can't actually control all the robots from a single computer. They don't work like that.

Edit:
Captcha: read is to write as cook is to **insert word**
Correct Answer: eat
Um, Captcha... I don't think you understand how these things work. I could see write is to read as cook is to eat - writing and cooking produce the item that is then consumed by reading or eating - but not the reverse. That makes no sense at all. The only reason I got the answer correct was by process of elimination - the other answers were more wrong.

(and yes, more wrong works. To quote, "It's a little wrong to say a tomato is a vegetable; it's very wrong to say it's a suspension bridge.")

 

[mrdude2010]

I mean, the goal of basic training is to turn you into a robot anyway, this is just the next logical step.

 

[Something Amyss]

So somebody played Black Ops 2 and thought 'yeah that looks like a plan,'

Or maybe saw the Terminator movies and thought "Skynet just isn't happening fast enough."

Hopefully they'll gain sentience and turn into OSX touting hipsters.

They only kill people ironically?

 

[TakerFoxx]

Did we learn nothing from Iron Man 2? The trick isn't to replace the soldier with the robot. The trick is to get the soldier into the robot.

 

[Adam Jensen_v1legacy]

SNIP

This isnt meant to be offensive but a dead soldier costs about $500K towards whoever inherits, plus the expenses of an autopsy, travel of the body across continents, burial service, etc. A robot combatant would be much cheaper and easier to maintain than a living person who might or might not get PTSD

That really depends on the robot and how it's manufactured. It could be expensive or it could be cheap.

 

[J Tyran]

But it can also be expensive.

When it comes to the small robots being tested and developed now the costs are not to bad, when you calculate the cost of training, equipping and keeping a soldier fed and sheltered in the field they even come close to being comparable. Standard infantry training is about $150,000 USD with an estimated [http://security.blogs.cnn.com/2012/02/28/one-soldier-one-year-850000-and-rising/] cost of keeping one in the field between $850,000 to $1.4M USD per year. You can add $5000 for a basic set of personal equipment like battledress, armour and a rifle.

Those sort of numbers would easily support robots in the field instead of troops.

 

[Zeren]

Oh yeah, because drones have such a good track record already....