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Lethal Autonomous Weapons Exist; They Must Be Banned

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131–140 of 186 posts

Re: Lethal Autonomous Weapons Exist; They Must Be Banned

#131
post #84

How silly. How can such a ban be enforced? Will Al Qaeda and ISIS sign the treaty? Will Assad sign it? Will he respect it any more than he respected the ban on chemical weapons?

How about a change to how we choose to live as a world and make them illegal to build, enforce those laws strictly, etc. The fact we live in a world where arms is a hyper-profitable amoral (at best) industry doesn't mean we should or have to. >‘It seems to be easier for us today to imagine the thoroughgoing deterioration of the earth and of nature than the breakdown of late capitalism; perhaps that is due to some wea…

World is amoral. Welcome to reality

Re: Lethal Autonomous Weapons Exist; They Must Be Banned

#132
post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I kind of doubt drone vs drone will be all that effective. Have anti-missile systems ever been all that effective?

Simulation of course, but I'll submit this video for your consideration: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1K8LGTwy6Zw To sum up the conclusion of the several-hour video series: the Aegis Combat System is essentially impenetrable to all but the most overwhelming of forces.

I didnt watch it, but what about a supersonic cruise missile?

Re: Lethal Autonomous Weapons Exist; They Must Be Banned

#133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a rough explanation of the "generations of warfare" where our tactics are defined by the tools and weapons we have available. Unfortunately, we (humans, not just the US) tend to then treat those as the "right" tactics even as the underlying tools and weapons change so we're always fighting the last war. Cheap, autonomous, easily-deployed tools - weapons drones, sensors, etc - are a huge change that some are a…

Exactly. Machine guns invalidated cavalry charges, but we ended up in a trench war just trying to create a break in the trenches long enough to get the cavalry through. Tanks invalidated trench warfare, but the French built an impregnable defensive line along the border that would make them invincible in the next trench war. And it's fascinating seeing the comments here saying "nah, this won't change anything" when i…

I was at an SMS aggregator before joining Twilio back in the day.

At the SMS aggregator, it took $10k to get started, $1k/month for a short code, and $0.1/message.

When I discovered Twilio and found it took $0 to get started, $1/month for a long code, and $0.01/message, the world changed.

It became easy enough to build yourself, fast enough to experiment with, and cheap enough to fail. I see the same thing happening here but with lives on the line.

Re: Lethal Autonomous Weapons Exist; They Must Be Banned

#134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This makes no sense. If we're talking about an opponent that can field fighter aircraft and missiles that can destroy anti-drone defenses at 50-100km away, they could just use those missiles instead of drones to destroy the "real" target. Seems to me the likely scenario is some sort of cheap projectile automatic weapon mounted on a vehicle. It doesn't take much to take down a drone and they move incredibly slowly com…

iirc the "slaughterbot" concept is about tiny kamikaze drones. Enough explosive to crack open a skull in a drone about the size of a coin, and not much more expensive than that coin. Release hundreds of thousands of them for less than the cost of a single missile, and each of them will independently target and execute a single human. I don't think any kind of conventional gun is going to do anything against this.

That's still very much science fiction though. What kind of battery power density would you need to make it viable?

Also: Soldiers already wear armor designed to stop bullets. Not sure this is an obvious gamechanger.

Re: Lethal Autonomous Weapons Exist; They Must Be Banned

#135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This analysis is slightly off because WWI and WWII were great powers fighting each other. If the great powers were ever to directly fight this would still be nuclear war. Nothing about "swarming bots" has significantly changed this domain. Where bots and swarm bots would be used is likely in asymmetric warfare. "Aircraft carriers will be replaced with cheap drone swarm carriers" I would argue that Aircraft carriers a…

Swarm bots would also be useless against tanks or carriers. Too small to carry enough explosives to do much. As the drone becomes big enough to do more it approaches the size of a missile, which we already have.

A TOW anti-tank missile's warhead is about 10 lbs, and it penetrates tanks just fine. That's well within the carrying capacities of commodity carrying drones, which can carry about 20-100 lbs.

Shaped charges are remarkably effective at penetrating armor, penetrating up to 7x their diameter. A 4-inch wide charge will penetrate up to 28 inches of solid steel armor, more than a WW2 battleship's armor.

I don't know how much armor a modern aircraft carrier has, but they're designed for the era of not-very-maneuverable warheads. Send it through the aircraft lifts and blow up the hangar filled with munitions and jet fuel, or punch through the bridge windows and kill the command staff.

Same goes for common tank countermeasures against HEAT rounds, like composite or reactive armor. These are both designed on the assumption that the same exact spot is not going to be hit twice, but you can program a drone to invalidate that assumption pretty easily.

Re: Lethal Autonomous Weapons Exist; They Must Be Banned

#136

This feels like the same thing that happened with tanks. The end of WW1 saw tanks deployed effectively. WW2 was then fought using entirely new tactics and strategies enabled by tanks (not least "blitzkrieg"). Britain and France, notably, hadn't really worked out how to use them effectively and so were left fighting the last war, horribly disadvantaged until they worked out how to catch up (though air power being deve…

> And so we'll end up fighting battles mostly by destroying drones instead of people. This is one piece of possibly good news that it seems like everyone is overlooking. Automation/Remote control applies not just to drones, but tanks, boats, other aerial vehicles, and maybe troops(after seeing that Boston Dynamics dog robot) etc. Seems like it will be a small squad of highly advanced human troops to move in after the…

More likely it will cause a greater loss of life while invalidating previous military tactics. These weapons are more similar to land mines than guided missiles. They’ll be used primarily against troops and armour but also stationary targets like radar, command posts, barracks, depots, and in a bigger war probably against civilian targets. You could drop hundreds of these from a bomber or dozens from a large truck that an insurgent can park close to the target but outside the secured area or a single terrorist could deploy a single drone at a high value target. I’m hoping anti drone technology turns out to be easier and cheaper otherwise we’re seriously screwed.

Re: Lethal Autonomous Weapons Exist; They Must Be Banned

#137
post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And that's the problem, there is always the Western idea that someone far away must absolutely be killed. And magically, when that person is killed, someone else pops up in their place who needs to be killed even more than the first guy.

If you think that that's a uniquely Western idea, then I have a bridge to sell you.

No one said it's uniquely Western.

Re: Lethal Autonomous Weapons Exist; They Must Be Banned

#138

This feels like the same thing that happened with tanks. The end of WW1 saw tanks deployed effectively. WW2 was then fought using entirely new tactics and strategies enabled by tanks (not least "blitzkrieg"). Britain and France, notably, hadn't really worked out how to use them effectively and so were left fighting the last war, horribly disadvantaged until they worked out how to catch up (though air power being deve…

> Once you've knocked out all the enemy drones, they'll surrender because humans can't fight drones. Or will lead to blending in with civilians, more advanced camouflage, or “hugging the enemy” tactics (staying close enough that they risk harming their own people). Or more terrorism rather than open warfare. It might be that with these killer drones, we will look back on WW2 style armies in the field as equivalent to…

> It might be that with these killer drones, we will look back on WW2 style armies in the field as equivalent to 18th century musketeers lining up and firing volleys at each other in bright colored shirts.

When the guns were so inaccurate that getting more shots was more important than actually aiming, that's the natural tactic to employ.

Lining up was hugely important for other members of the army to know what you're doing. If you're 1st in line, you shoot. Back of the line you're loading gunpowder (with everyone else). Middle of the line, you're dropping the bullet into the musket. Etc. etc.

Like a choir performance: its more about having tons of other people doing the same thing you're supposed to be doing. So no one in the army ever "misses" a step in the ~1-minute reload process.

Even if you're not that good at singing, you get "better" in a choir because you just follow the crowd. Similarly, even if you've forgotten a few steps in the long reload process, you just mimic the actions of your neighbors.

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Note that the Redcoat beat the US rifles at pretty much every engagement. It was guerilla warfare that allowed George Washington to survive and last through the war.

Rifles took longer to load. Without precision machining, the bullets needed to be wadded up with paper to stick with the rifling, adding a laborious step in the shooting process. Muskets could fire more shots per minute due to the smooth (though inaccurate) barrels. In army vs army battles, aim doesn't matter, your bullet will hit somebody over there, so there's no advantage to the superior aim that rifles have. You've added 20-seconds to your reload process for almost no tactical advantage at all.

USA experimented with rifles / guerilla warfare, but it really wasn't that successful in the 1700s. (It got the job done but... George Washington lost far more battles than he won). Even in the mid 1800s, the British Square formations were doing decently.

Re: Lethal Autonomous Weapons Exist; They Must Be Banned

#140
post #46
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Drones can't beat nylon nets or other low tech countermeasures. I think anti drone water cannons will outpace drone assassinations. And more than both, regular bombs and guns will still do most of the killing.

A motorized sniper rifle with face detection to find targets and a high rate of fire seems like it could exist with current technology, require about the same effort to deploy as a sniper with a typical sniper rifle, require less training from the person in the field, and be a hell of a lot more deadly. Same with a machine gun for closer quarters. Regular bombs and guns probably still do most of the killing for quite…

It's not that easy. A startup tried to build a smart gun with aim assist, but couldn't keep it calibrated for more than a couple shots and eventually went under.
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