Drone Swarms Are Getting Too Fast for Humans to Fight, U.S. General Warns | Hacker News Reader

Drone Swarms Are Getting Too Fast for Humans to Fight, U.S. General Warns

forbes.com

38 pointshirundo21 comments

It’s a Science Fiction cliche, but automating lethal actions eliminates the psychological and political cost of eternal warfare.

Banning automated lethal systems never had anything to do with concerns over their efficacy or accuracy. It’s interesting the people quoted in the article have reframed the debate around technical goals, instead of around basic morality.

> reframed the debate around technical goals, instead of around basic morality.

So framed from the military intelligence perspective, where capability is prioritized over intent.

Anyone who has watched sumo robot fights has a picture of the velocity of future warfare.

I always wondered as a kid why the fights in SciFi shows involved so many misses. The future of battle is quick, accurate and unfeeling.

> sumo robot fights

Ah, another YouTube rabbit hole: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mS-L2fpV1Is

Fascinating. They should put the robot fights inside of a plexiglass. I’m surprised the judges haven’t been injured yet, even though they wear full leg shielding.

never heard of robot sumo before this, thanks for sharing! Super cool. I wish we had more robotic competition in real life. Imagine how crazy the car or plane races could be. Unfortunately the only time I've really appreciated the power and speed of computers in a directly relatable way is with Super Smash Bros Melee TAS videos or this kind of robotic exhibition

Real Steel is a great documentary on the subject.

US funds military drone development. US sells them around the world. US doesn't consider any international agreements against military drone use. US funds military AI. US argues that we need to let the military AI control the military drones in order to defend ourselves against military drones probably operated by military AI, that we were a main driver of developing and distributing in the first place.

the future is gonna be great.

tl;dr The military wants to build fully automated, lethal defense systems capable of destroying a large volume of targets. Sounds like plausible reasoning; a state like China could pump out a million drones per day if they wanted to. OTOH, what's good for the goose is good for the gander; with a tweak to the target identification AI, such systems could easily be used against humans.

It occurs to me that a simpler technology could be employed against drones: grapeshot. Also banned by the Geneva convention. Sounds like the lesser of two evils, but not nearly as profitable to the military industrial complex

> China could pump out a million drones per day if they wanted to.

The US too

> It occurs to me that a simpler technology could be employed against drones: grapeshot.

Terrorists are dropping mortar rounds on armored vehicles from relatively high altitude using commercially available drones in the middle east and it looks very effective. If the US or China start mass producing advanced autonomous drone swarms you can be 100% sure no amount of grapeshot will save you.

Think about kamikaze vs US ships back in ww2, but you have hundred times the number of drones, they're smaller, faster, quieter, more lethal and you can barely detect them before they're on you. The grapeshot might work if you have 100 soldiers vs 1 drone, not in 100 vs 100 or 100 vs 1000

Nobody likes my dental floss cannons idea…

Too cheap. Think nano filaments or something.

Perhaps an army of those inflatable flappy bois would be effective in defending a fixed position against an onslaught of low altitude drones?

The military wants to build fully automated, lethal defense systems capable of destroying a large volume of targets

These already exist. Current models just target more-expensive drones, i.e. guided missiles:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Counter_rocket,_artillery,_and...

This movie sums up how I imagine this tech will evolve. Maybe better than what is in this movie. These drones take too long to identify friend or foe. [1] Or maybe we will skip that step and just eliminate anything that moves or has a heat or electrical signature in a zone.

[1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rEby9OkePpg

The Geneva Conventions don't ban grapeshot (or canister). But even though it's legal to use, the military is focusing on other more effective technologies for short range air defense.

Wonder what it would be? Physical eg. flak or directional jamming/emp that would be neat. Or computer-vision tied with phased array lasers dang.

another one, atmosphere displacement so they can't fly

I know it is rather sensationalized, but how far off is this kind of technology? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HipTO_7mUOw "Slaughterbots" posted in 2017.

If I had to guess, I'd say that the tiny drones in this video still aren't capable of carrying the computational horsepower necessary for a lot of the activities portrayed.

But...isn't it really a matter of time?

2015 "Ghost Fleet" scifi novel elaborates on technology likely to rule the battlefield. I listened to the audiobook, twice. Its good.

All your infantries are meat popsicles, General Turgidson.

I, for one, welcome our new robot overlords.

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