the future War Robot's in Harpers

[aka_tom_w]

I have not seen this yet but:

I thought it might be of interest here.

There does not appear to be an online web page for the article, so I guess they want you to buy the magazine.

link here:

Harper's Online link, but no actual article.

read up

Blog entry and interesting review here, posted 11:10 AM Feb 5 2007

Blog review of Harper's robot article

Two articles caught my interest. The first, by Edward Luttwak of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, on counterinsurgency, and the other by freelance writer Steve Featherstone, on "the coming robot army".

The counterinsurgency article was more interesting, so I'll deal with it second. Featherstone's piece on robots describes in scary detail the operation of the next generation of remote-control military equipment.

There are already unmanned drones of all kinds, but the next generation has more power: robots that can climb walls, coordinate with other camera-carrying, intelligence-gathering robots to create a complete picture of the battlefield. The robots are part of a "kill chain" that will enable the US military (which is the only one I think could afford such things) to inflict more casualties and do more damage with reduced casualties. The generation of robots after this one will be able to make decisions and operate quite independently of remote control.

Featherstone extrapolates ethical issues that I don't think are the right ones. He raises a hypothetical: suppose a drone, following orders, kills a family in the home of an insurgent. Who is responsible? I don't think this is such a complex issue: it has never been the case that soldiers who commit war crimes are solely culpable. It has always been the case that militaries (and bureaucracies) are organized specifically to diffuse responsibility away from individuals. So people who make the decision to go to war are culpable just as soldiers are. And to the degree that a society is democratic, we're all culpable to the degree that we have the power to change a policy and don't.

What I wonder though is whether the robotification of the army has limits. Does the complexity and expense of the organization of an army that uses robots heavily create vulnerabilities? Is such an organization good at some things and not others? And, leading into Luttwak's article, given that no military can stand against the US military and we're talking about an army that will be fighting relatively defenceless populations, what are the effects of using such an army on a population?

Luttwak's argument is as follows. Counterinsurgency is a political and not a military problem and so the astounding and increasing firepower the US brings to bear in Iraq (or Afghanistan), and its ability to kill without taking casualties (which the US population is sensitive to) becomes irrelevant in the face of insurgents who will hide among the population, passively protected by the population, rather than fight against vastly superior firepower. Why does the population support insurgents, Luttwak asks? Because the insurgents are willing to out-terrorize the occupier. Cooperation with the occupier is punished with terrible reprisals. The political solution to this, used by the Romans, the Ottomans, the Nazis, is to be willing to out-terrorize the insurgents. Some high profile massacres will do the job, but the US, because of principled opposition to massacres, won't do so. The only thing that might help the US if it is unwilling to out-terrorize, is to be willing to govern. But since the US wants to leave governance to the locals, its counterinsurgency program is doomed.

Interesting observations, and the blog entry goes on to point out issues and problems.

I posted it because I found it was a blog entry with reference to the robot army, but it was also a review of the counter insurgency piece. I am not sure I can comment on the main point.

-tom w

[ February 05, 2007, 09:22 AM: Message edited by: aka_tom_w ]

[John Kettler]

aka_tom_w,

Offhand, one of the biggest vulnerabilities I see for a robot force is acute vulnerability to EMP and its nonnuclear cousin NNEMP. I say this having worked such issues years ago professionally,having raised a bunch of them early on in the development process for CM:SF, and having studied and wrtten about them for many years off and on. Not only are such devices already out there, and testing has confirmed that they work well, but just the other day on Future Weapons an expert was being interviewed, and he said that the Russians had them in sizes clear down to that of a beer can, with the location and status of hundreds of these unknown.

Given these facts, and even without invoking such exotica as scalar weapons (see Bearden at www.cheniere.org Fer De Lance briefing) for in depth or here for a easier to grok overview,

http://www.prahlad.org/pub/bearden/scalar_wars.htm

it is easy to envision any number of scenarios in which even a heavily cybernetic force, let alone a robotic one, would be highly vulnerable to defeat in detail. An alternate attack method would use the new compounds being developed which do things like dissolve materials, attack surfaces, etc. Just recently, we've been seeing reports of special coatings intended to make ground too slippery for men and vehicles alike. Seems to me that something like that would run a robot's day just as easily as ice did in a Belgian village for that 30+ ton Sherman seen sliding downhill in village streets during Bulge fighting. In short, not only are robots no panacea, but they create a series of exploitable vulnerabilities.

Regards,

John Kettler

[ February 05, 2007, 01:00 PM: Message edited by: John Kettler ]