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Fully autonomous drones have killed human soldiers for the first time

newscientist.com

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Re: Fully autonomous drones have killed human soldiers for the first time

#211

Post by sebastiennight »

john_strinlai wrote: post #64
YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> I'm not sure it's accurate to define yourself as a pacifist if you believe safeguarding the concept of a nation-state is more important than human life, ethics, or the downstream effects of using "every weapon at your disposal". Wait till you hear that I'm also an anti-nationalist :P But I'm also pragmatic. Nations aren't going away and they have armies and they like to invade each other. If my country were to be…

> I think I do but why do you say this? I didn't understand how it connects to the rest of your comment, or to mine. not the parent, but i have a guess. they mention the variety of weapons because some weapons are abhorrent. designed to be maximally painful, for the maximum amount of time, purely to bring about maximum suffering. "every weapon at your disposal" includes those weapons. and that is really difficult to…

Thank you. Yes, that was my exact point.

I live in a country that has been under missile strikes recently. This country has the ability to strike back at the aggressor and make their land unliveable.

Even if there was the certainty of non-retaliation for such a disproportional defense, I would not consider using these weapons acceptable while calling yourself "a pacifist."

Re: Fully autonomous drones have killed human soldiers for the first time

#212

Post by sebastiennight »

YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #199
somenameforme wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But don't you think Greece, if nothing else, emphasizes that a country isn't defined by whoever happens to declare it as part of their borders, but the people within those borders? Greece persisted for millennia, even when there was no Greece. The state disappeared but the people persisted. I'm not at all a pacifist but there is no country I would fight, let alone die, for. Because when we say that we're really speak…

>> But don't you think Greece, if nothing else, emphasizes that a country isn't defined by whoever happens to declare it as part of their borders, but the people within those borders? Greece persisted for millennia, even when there was no Greece. The state disappeared but the people persisted. Yes, I have considered this argument and it rings true to me. On the other hand, it is worth considering that there are no Gr…

Thanks for sharing your perspective and the events that shaped this view.

> But, if it came to that, I would give my life for peace as much as I would give my life for my people.

Staging a nonviolent protest to make the British leave or to let an authoritarian government you're refusing to go fight their war of choice, or trying to help a woman getting mugged by masked militia and getting shot as a result is "giving your life for peace".

But if you'd had the choice of leaving the place before the invadors massacred your family, or fighting back with "all the weapons at your disposal", and chose the killing, I don't see why you are so attached to this "pacifist" label.

I'd summarize your stance as "if somebody declares war on my nation, I will fight with all my strength". Am I getting it right?

This sounds more like non-aggressive nationalism to me. I'm not criticizing it, it's just the mismatch that I find surprising.

Pacifism is:

> The conviction that it is morally wrong to settle disputes (especially between countries) by war or other violent means

> The ethical avoidance of inflicting harm on others in one's daily life.

Re: Fully autonomous drones have killed human soldiers for the first time

#213

Post by trhway »

machomaster wrote: post #206
trhway wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately they don't miss by hundreds of meters. And Russia frequently uses 3000lb and 6000lb bombs. So missing a bunker a bit doesn't matter - it will still collapse. Here for example it is clearly visible that the bomb misses the building by about 20m https://t.me/RtrDonetsk/25282

https://t.me/milinfolive/100367 https://t.me/arrowsmap/9958 Plus all those bombs that fell in Russia, dozens of kilometers away from the target. The precision does get better, but still look at the second pic: https://t.me/milinfolive/150513?single

Of course, there are a number of cases where those bombs go awry. At least a couple fell even right into the Brjansk city. Those cases though doesn't affect much overall operations. Your first link is more typical - about 15-20m off the target.

This is why Russia uses at least 500kg or larger bombs, even 3000kg ones. With that precision they can't use 100kg and 250kg bombs. Which naturally affects how many bombs say a Su-34 can launch - it would have been 8 x 250 and instead it is 4 x 500 or even 1 x 3000. Compare that to say US using 45 kg warhead in a very precise Hellfire missile - the precision hit with that 45 kg warhead in many cases would achieve the same objective as 500kg at 20m.

Re: Fully autonomous drones have killed human soldiers for the first time

#214

Post by [deleted] »

victorbjorklund wrote: post #209
nozzlegear wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we accept that the use of chemical weapons versus kinetic weapons is clearly different even though both were used on military targets, we should also consider whether a cruise missile and an autonomous drone are clearly different. Just because the target has a Russian uniform on doesn't mean it's okay to kill them in whatever way we can dream up.

That’s why we have said it is OK to blow up soldiers but not gas them. Ukraine has followed the international laws and are legally blowing up them. Nothing different from shooting a tomahawk on them.

[deleted]

Re: Fully autonomous drones have killed human soldiers for the first time

#215

Post by s1artibartfast »

bawolff wrote: post #162
alephnerd wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The meta... I hate this kind of terminology with such fervent hatred as someone DefTech adjacent. It's just the sheer callousness of gamifying warfare. Edit: can't reply > How would you have me call it Tactics. It's emotionally neutral and sounds less like someone who follows warfare the same way someone follows competitive StarCraft 2 or DoTA.

People have been gamifying war since prehistoric times. Most traditional sports are basically practise for war. While we have moved past it in the last few decades, most toys for boys are war based (tin soldiers aren't being used to act out an imaginary disarmament scenario). We even use the word "game theory" to denote the mathematical study of strategy (which often ends up being about war). The ship has well and tr…

This doesnt mean we cant retain any decorum or limits around it, especially when discussing the real thing.

Re: Fully autonomous drones have killed human soldiers for the first time

#216

Post by somenameforme »

sebastiennight wrote: post #212
YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> But don't you think Greece, if nothing else, emphasizes that a country isn't defined by whoever happens to declare it as part of their borders, but the people within those borders? Greece persisted for millennia, even when there was no Greece. The state disappeared but the people persisted. Yes, I have considered this argument and it rings true to me. On the other hand, it is worth considering that there are no Gr…

Thanks for sharing your perspective and the events that shaped this view. > But, if it came to that, I would give my life for peace as much as I would give my life for my people. Staging a nonviolent protest to make the British leave or to let an authoritarian government you're refusing to go fight their war of choice, or trying to help a woman getting mugged by masked militia and getting shot as a result is "giving…

That's also, more or less, exactly what I was thinking. For instance I don't eat foie gras because I find it inhumane, but I would never call myself an animal rights activist because of that.

I think in modern times we are, for some reason, attached to labels when in reality people's positions are, if they're thinking for themselves, going to be nuanced enough that there will be no appropriate label. Not wanting to participate in the development of autonomous killing machines, let alone ones that inevitably will be abused, is a perfectly reasonable position, but does not at all make one a pacifist in and of itself.

Re: Fully autonomous drones have killed human soldiers for the first time

#218

Post by joe_mamba »

nozzlegear wrote: post #171
joe_mamba wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Who on earth would you expect to have been unbiased about World War II and the holocaust in 1961? > written, directed and produced by jews Really weird thing to look for and point out.

>Who on earth would you expect to have been unbiased about World War II and the holocaust in 1961?

My grandparents

>Really weird thing to look for and point out.

Why is it weird? Why do you think the friends and family of the plaintiffs are not allowed to be on the jury? Would you trust them to be objective about their in-group? Just use your brain for once in your life.

Re: Fully autonomous drones have killed human soldiers for the first time

#219

Post by machomaster »

dieortin wrote: post #205
machomaster wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only the USA has enough war experience and drones for us to have high confidence stats on the performance of human drone operators (military vs. civilian targets) vs. AI.

Ukraine and Russia have infinitely more experience with drone warfare than the US.

Stats from Russia/Ukraine are not good. And the ones that exist, could be dismissed for various reasons ("Russians are savages so it doesn't count", "Ukraine is defending itself in existential war so it doesn't count").

With the USA the stats are available and no valid excuses exist to throw the data away. The US military is not defending itself and is supposed to be the most powerful, advanced (tech and policy) and professional military in the world. They are the best case scenario for the human drone operators' performance one has. And yet:

https://worldmetrics.org/obama-drone-strikes-statistics/

Re: Fully autonomous drones have killed human soldiers for the first time

#220

Post by TomasBM »

sarchertech wrote: post #56
TomasBM wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference is in "active"/intelligent versus "passive"/dumb targetting that's performed by the machine. The missile, once fired, has the general vicinity (if not the exact position) of the target and is armed by the operator. Therefore, the operator is fully accountable for the targetting. Same goes for the landmines, once placed. Hitting civilians is reckless at best, and negligent at worst. An autonomous weapon…

> Same goes for the landmines, once placed. Landmines can be dropped from the air by the thousands and many land mines can survive for decades. Placing a landmine anywhere is essentially the same as firing a bullet blindly through time. And no individual soldier has ever been held accountable for a landmine that killed a civilian years down the road. Which doesn’t make what you said about drones any less awful. Just…

No disagreement there.

I would even argue that anything that enables broad-area targetting since the invention of the Maxim machine gun and artillery would qualify as a weapon of mass destruction. In an ideal world, the first machine gun or dynamite would've made everyone see war as a very bad resolution mechanism since the 19th century.

But here we are, so the game is to not make war much worse than it already is.

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