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Comment by curiousgal | Hacker News Reader

I would be more impressed if their opponent were more technically sophisticated.

You have people pretending to build a tank on one hand and people with automated robots on the other? Seems a bit overkill and pointless IMHO.

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"Overkill" is the defining feature of Western military. We've got to the point where we consider a ratio of 1 (of ours) : 1000 (of theirs) unacceptable. It's very hard to present an argument that says we should accept more deaths on our own side in order to be "fairer" to the other side. However, the net effect is that we continue to minimize our risk in ways that de-humanize conflict and increase collateral damage.

I'm not sure we are really increasing collateral damage, relative to where we started 100 years ago. The days of firing 1-3 million heavy artillery shells in a day[1] are past, as are the days of dropping tens of thousands of tons of bombs indiscriminantly on a city[2]. Blowing up a single house with a drone-launched missile, or taking out a bridge with a single laser-guided bomb is far more surgical. One can imagine in the not-too-distant future bug-sized drones that could pick a target out of a crowd and inject a trace amount of some very deadly toxin or sedative.

[1] http://www.longlongtrail.co.uk/battles/battles-of-the-wester...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Hamburg_in_World_Wa...

It's true we are making less collateral damage then in the golden days, but the problem is that the more advanced one side becomes the less of a chance the other side has.

It's not just about fighting terrorists. We don't know who will be in command next. Giving this tech into the wrong hands will do some massive damages. There is always a chance to find ourselves on the wrong end of the drone.

Also the drone targets a single house, bombs it to oblivion and then someone says they are 80% sure, they bombed the right house with the right people in them. Not to mention a lot of times the people killed are civilians who were actually supportive, but because they are dead now, we just make the rest angry and make them side with the enemy.

We are a long way away making sure we are killing the right target.

" We don't know who will be in command next." Thats the real issue. Drone armies is every dictator's wet dream, an unstoppable mass-produced force.

In war, there is no such thing as overkill.

There may be inconvenient and/or political repercussions - but those can be worked around by further magnifying the power imbalance. (Yes, I'm a cynic.)

It's unfair, yes. But how is it unimpressive?

>more impressed.

Of course it's quite impressive! Israel's R&D efforts are nothing short of that.

> Israel's R&D efforts

are also not made in an vacuum. substantial assistance and sharing with the US has certainly accelerated their abilities.

Sorry. What I meant was, how is the opposing side's lack of technological innovation relevant to how impressive this is?

What's so impressive, technically, about a four wheel drive moving to a series of waypoints and shooting anything that moves and doesn't squawk friendly?

I'm surprised this hasnt been done sooner. Waypoint navigation is a consumer product, and we've had military grade target tracking for ages.

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