10 year old Soldiers

Wouldn't it be a great idea to have children as young as ten fighting our enemies?

Think about it, children have great imaginations and they can persevere.

How good would it be to have a few million children conscripted into the Armies of the Coalition forces?

They won't REALLY need any training.

What I propose is that somewhere down the track, the Government builds a whole heap of bots. They should be cheap, yet efficient. Each bot is loaded with as much ammunition as it can carry.

Then we can let the kids control it.

Each child has a computer console linked to the internet. On the console is a great new game that just SCREAMS "mummy please buy me!".

The kid logs on to the game and internet, and away he or she goes. Each time the game is played, it is different. This is because each bot is always in a different location, among different enemies. In the battlefield, the enemies look like people. On the computer screen, the enemies look like aliens, or monsters, or whatever.

The kid thinks that he or she is zapping aliens, but in the real world is really slaughtering the NME.

The only problem I can see is when the kid has to go to bed, and turns off the console. What happens to the robot then? I guess it could just fly back to base and be re-loaded and checked over.

Just a thought.
I think there might have even been a movie about it once.

Yeah, kids would make good soldiers.

Why settle for kids when you could recruit college-aged and middle-aged gamers for the same project? Pay them per-kill and you'd have millions of them waiting in line for a piece of the action.

Seriously, have you got any experience dealing with hardcore gamers? Some of them don't eat, don't sleep, don't blink..they're hardcore. You couldn't wish for more dedicated soldiers.

I don't know if they ever made a movie about this concept, but there was a book, entitled Ender's Game.

And as far as the problem of what to do when the controller leaves, just patch it over to the next person entering the game from wherever - so what if Timmy from Fort Worth is going to bed, Hui in Shanghai is just logging on.

I think there's merit in the idea, honestly. It costs a lot to recruit, train, outfit, deploy, and maintain a human soldier at war. I don't know how the costs would compare, but I doubt very much that they'd be too much higher for machines than for humans.

One major problem that I can think of, off the top of my head, is how to ensure that the communications link was secure, and that the other side couldn't commandeer your forces. So, it would have to be something very secure. If there's one thing the movies have taught me, robot armies are great, until they turn against you.

Cool.

Let's hope this happens. I can see what you mean by costs and such. No food for soldiers to worry about. No uniforms. No stress leave and no tiredness.

It basically is win-win.

As for security, well, I'm no computer code geek, but there are some brainiacs out there who, I'm sure, could handle that problem no hassles.

Another problem is ethics.

Imagine if the public found out that their kids were responsible for the robotic-death of hundreds, maybe thousands of NME troops?

You wouldn't hear the end of it.

As for the pay-per-kill Idea, I think it's perfect. The gamers will think it's just some cool incentive to play the game. He he heeeeee!

Now, what happens when the gamers get bored?

Release Kill-Bot 2.

This was the major plotline of the horrendously bad Robin William film, Toys.

However, I would not recommend it to anyone.

The price of simulators will eventually get cheaper, and programs such as Microsoft Flight Simulator will only get better. I know a couple of gamers, and as described above they are truly dedicated to their cause. However, any serious adult gamer would have no problem kicking a 10 year old’s butt. Experience always counts, even in gaming.


[edit on 26/12/06 by ConspiracyNut23]

Ten year-olders would definitely work more cheaply than older gamers. I guess it's a question of which group has the better hand-eye sync.

The lines of volunteers would be out the door and down the block. The draft would be a thing of the past.

Originally posted by ConspiracyNut23
This was the major plotline of the horrendously bad Robin William film, Toys.

Yep, That was my first thought!

With nothing else to add to this thread I bid farewell.

Yep. Got it. I read up on "Toys" HERE and it brought back memories from when I was about 10 or so.

Mind you, I'm sure that alot of people have forgotten the movie just like I have (up until now) and this idea could be seen with new light.

The potential for using an online-based computer game to wage war in real-time is out there.

These days it is even more so, given that our tech has grown alot in the last 10 or 15 years.

I still forget though, did the kids in the movie remote control the war machines via a game or not?


[edit on 26-12-2006 by Unrealised]

[edit on 26-12-2006 by Unrealised]

[edit on 26-12-2006 by Unrealised]

[edit on 26-12-2006 by Unrealised]

Yep. It was remote control, but they didn't know that what they were doing was 'real.'

Far out.

Thanks for the clarification. Right, so it seems that a childs movie has beaten us to the punch. Never mind.

Still, the required real-time rendering of the battlezone is what worries me. Especially where the Gamer is concerned.

Obviously the Gamer isn't going to settle for second-best graphics, so the speed with which the killbot sends the information via sattelites and back to the gamer should be instantaneous, without compromising graphics.

Afterall, without instantaneous or close-to-instantaneous communication between the gamer and the bot, the war could be lost.

That is, of course, the computer program has a sort of 'compensating' procedure. For instance, if an enemy soldier was travelling west on foot at 4.7km a second, and it takes 1.3 seconds to send the signal from the killbot to the gamer, the program would sort of 'guess' the location of the soldier in 1.3 seconds.

RIGHT!

It has to be instantaneous, or it won't work.

I hate it when you have to factor in modern tech.

That is, of course, the computer program has a sort of 'compensating' procedure. For instance, if an enemy soldier was travelling west on foot at 4.7km a second, and it takes 1.3 seconds to send the signal from the killbot to the gamer, the program would sort of 'guess' the location of the soldier in 1.3 seconds.

RIGHT!

It has to be instantaneous, or it won't work.

Modern cpu's can use that 1.3 seconds to perform several billion calculations and make excellent predictions about the enemy's next step. It doesn't have to be instantaneous. After the initial time lag upon startup, things would smooth out pretty quickly.

As a hardcore gamer I can personaly say I would love this idea and fighting a real war from my PC would be the poo lol. I fly the attack heli and high performance jets in online combat daily and I think my combat skills would spell disaster for the enemy!

Mod Edit: Profanity/Circumvention Of Censors – Please Review This Link.

[edit on 26/12/2006 by Mirthful Me]

Slickinfinity, you've got the job.

It would be good fun.

So, just say if the Government paid the gamer 15 cents a kill, what would the cover-up story be?

Do the gamers get told that the software company gives it to them as a big 'thankyou'?

Now, do the 'real' commanders instructions come up on the screen or through the speakers? On screen would be best, only because if there weren't any real missions going on, the game could still be played.

If the military were to make this game as part/most of the war effort, it better be a DAMN good game, because people would HAVE to play it.

Now, should it be 3rd person? 1st person? Both have advantages. 3rd person would be good for top down viweing via sattelite.

How about this. We don't even bother with 3D graphics. We can just wait for a console to become powerful enough graphics wise that people will think it's just life-like graphics, and yet it'll be direct camera-feed totally unchanged.

Mwuhahaha!

You seem to be under the impression that we'd(as gamers) need to be lied to, but letting me know that it was real would only add to the intensity of the experience. I am pretty hardcore, and to get the opportunity to serve my country and get paid for gaming would be truly awesome.

Alright then, MasterJedi.

You and alot of other gamers may REVEL in the fact that your gaming is killing real people in a warzone. I can fully dig that. I mean, that's a HARDCORE game. Imagine it coming up in conversation:

Joe: "So, have you heard about that new game, the one where you kill REAL people? What's it called?"

John: "Killbot."

Joe: "Yeah, that's the one. Can you believe how wrong that is?"

John: "I'm a registered player with over 1500 kills."

Joe: "Are you serious? That's so wrong! How can you play that so-called game and sleep at night?! Sally, can you believe what you're hearing?"

Sally: "Actually Joe, I racked up 17 kills last night before bed."

Joe: "YOU GUYS ARE INSANE!!!"

That would be a funny conversation.

People like Joe NEED to be lied to, simply because the game would get banned and John and Sally wouldn't get their buzz.



[edit on 26-12-2006 by Unrealised]

Bloodthirsty bunch posting tonight. Here you revel in the thought of children fighting remote control wars and there is a mob cheering for the exection of Sodom - as George Bush Senior was wont to call him.

Remote is control in the theatre of war.

It really wouldn't work.
You need teams of diciplined soldiers to carry out an objective, the game would just be a group of Mountain Dewed up teenagers running around shooting the first thing they saw.
Also, what's to stop Mr Alan Qaeda signing up and going on a mass civilian killing spree and destroying friendlies?

who says that the little kid going to fight the enemy...heck if it was all on computer i would be shoting down all the other bots around me...lets play last man standing!!!

And there would be many innocent lives taken away on the other side of the battle field from such an idea, especially if you have a 10 year making life and death decissions

Child Soldiers are not unheard of in these current times.

Hezbollah Youth

Originally posted by WyrdeOne
I don't know if they ever made a movie about this concept, but there was a book, entitled Ender's Game.

One the best books I've ever read. It's also on the USMC Commandant's Reading List. Yeah, it's a sci-fi book, but it digs deep into leadership, military structure, etc... even dabs a bit into politics.

There's also two more books...all three make up the Ender's Saga or something like that.

Easy way around the friendly fire thing ... make it so that your own teammates (soldier bots) are invisible. Granted you couldn't have massive tactical operations, but if you are directed what to do via gameplay (ie be foreced to go around to a bunker by the gameplay in order to complete some objective) then, theoretically, complex actions can be carried out.

I can still think of way too many kinks though that would cause problems.