Undoubtedly, the most advanced systems in the world are being devised in laboratories in the US and China. A Pentagon programme known as Replicator 1 is due to deliver “multiple thousands” of all-domain autonomous systems by August 2025.
Why is this undoubtedly? Fact is, most other countries right now are lagging behind in this field and without extensive field testing whatever these labs will produce will be years behind state of the art. You can’t design these things blind and both US and China actually lack people that have experience in drone warfare or it’s years outdated so design decisions beyound basics will be worse, then those that were made with consultations and input from people that actually using the drones.
There is no doubt that both US and China can pour a lot of money into it, and make great machines from engineering standpoint and they won’t perform as expected. Drone warfare in current form is pretty new and ideas iterate very fast, and army procurement is anything but fast.
The article gives a good overview of the situation. I have only a few things to add.
war is a match of game theory (finding moves that harm the opponent) and accelerated evolution of the technology and methods for doing so
if a weapon works, choosing not to use it typically increases chance of defeat
there is no doubt that autonomous weapons work
about the only thing which seems to prevent some weapons (e.g. of mass destruction) from being used in some wars, is threat of being targeted with the same kind, or a large coalition of opponents forming and intervening
so, only continued development of international law (collective agreement on behalf of a large coalition of states, representing most of human population) has any chance of restraining use of autonomous weapons
sadly, I don’t see states wanting continued development of international law
restraining production of autonomous weapons is probably hopeless, a reasonably good competition robot can be weaponized with some success
So, future will have states threatening each other with swarms of autonomous weapons, and terrorist entitities using them at a smaller scale. Weapons that destroy electronics (EMP, microwave, lasers for frying cameras) will be highly sought after for defense. Air defense and antidrone systems will be much more common than today. At some point in history, there will be a war where a large swarm of autonomous weapons is used for mass destruction (maybe against civilians too). Quite possibly, a response will be given with a different weapon of mass destruction (e.g. nuclear EMP used to disable the swarm). Regulation is unlikely to succceed since states are nowhere near agreement (in fact, fighting new and avoidable wars among each other).
threaded - newest
AI taking notes…
Cyberdyne Systems approves
<img alt="" src="https://lemmy.ml/pictrs/image/df8002de-5906-4845-a4d2-38b1d7b1ccac.jpeg">
US already has AEGIS - that’s figuratively skynet.
Navy even gave it control of some guns. (Phalanx CIWS, basically an M61 Vulcan minigun as a drone gun)
<img alt="" src="https://lemmy.ml/pictrs/image/cd176527-bd1c-4a58-93cf-6bb7fbecdf2d.jpeg">
Let’s hope this Westworld deep cut isn’t prophetic.
At least I’ll have made it to 30… 15 years ago I didn’t expect to make it this far
Congratulations on finishing Chapter 2 - “Youth”.
Why is this undoubtedly? Fact is, most other countries right now are lagging behind in this field and without extensive field testing whatever these labs will produce will be years behind state of the art. You can’t design these things blind and both US and China actually lack people that have experience in drone warfare or it’s years outdated so design decisions beyound basics will be worse, then those that were made with consultations and input from people that actually using the drones. There is no doubt that both US and China can pour a lot of money into it, and make great machines from engineering standpoint and they won’t perform as expected. Drone warfare in current form is pretty new and ideas iterate very fast, and army procurement is anything but fast.
The article gives a good overview of the situation. I have only a few things to add.
war is a match of game theory (finding moves that harm the opponent) and accelerated evolution of the technology and methods for doing so
if a weapon works, choosing not to use it typically increases chance of defeat
there is no doubt that autonomous weapons work
about the only thing which seems to prevent some weapons (e.g. of mass destruction) from being used in some wars, is threat of being targeted with the same kind, or a large coalition of opponents forming and intervening
so, only continued development of international law (collective agreement on behalf of a large coalition of states, representing most of human population) has any chance of restraining use of autonomous weapons
sadly, I don’t see states wanting continued development of international law
restraining production of autonomous weapons is probably hopeless, a reasonably good competition robot can be weaponized with some success
So, future will have states threatening each other with swarms of autonomous weapons, and terrorist entitities using them at a smaller scale. Weapons that destroy electronics (EMP, microwave, lasers for frying cameras) will be highly sought after for defense. Air defense and antidrone systems will be much more common than today. At some point in history, there will be a war where a large swarm of autonomous weapons is used for mass destruction (maybe against civilians too). Quite possibly, a response will be given with a different weapon of mass destruction (e.g. nuclear EMP used to disable the swarm). Regulation is unlikely to succceed since states are nowhere near agreement (in fact, fighting new and avoidable wars among each other).