Will the U.S. Have a Droid Army?

Originally posted by ice1300
if we could get that under control we would have the money for R&D. Then who knows what we could have.

The US military budget for R&D alone is over $70 billion. I do not see where you are trying to get at.

One must consider if we go to robots in the military by 2020, in 2030 will the robots decide they don't need humans. Just an old war horse with 30 years thinking about where we are headed.

The military has had a driod army for many years now. They are meat droids and they keep reenlisting no matter how stupid this job of the US military becomes for real humanoid soldiers.

reply to post by Agit8dChop


Considering the technological singularity is due to take place within the next 30-50 years, your sir, are wrong.

[edit on 6-9-2008 by West Coast]

Originally posted by bodrul
reply to post by ice1300

 

by 2020 will the US even have the money to
keep the state of the art weapons systems up and running let alone build new ones.

you guys spend enough on maintaining them already.

since when has the US government gave a crap how much money they spend? the federal reserve will give them endless funds. so long as they can cover their tracks. which they do.

Originally posted by mhc_70
Thats what the media has been telling you.

July '08
Army: Recruited 10,141 out of a goal of 10,000 (101 percent)
Navy: Recruited 4,200 out of a goal of 4,200 (100 percent)
Marine Corps: Recruited 4,783 out of a goal of 4,094 (117 percent)
Air Force: Recruited 2,555 out of a goal of 2,541 (101 percent)

As to the original question, yes, eventually it will become politically expedient to fight aggressive imperialistic wars with droids and robots as people wont be 'affordable' and aren't nearly as efficient. As to the recruitment goals ,yes, they are meeting them because the US economy is going to hell with unemployment levels exceeding 10 percent. Despite the fact that they can't really find jobs the US armed forces still have to pay rather large 'sign up bonuses' ( 20 000) to meet targets.

www.washingtonpost.com...

Should it really surprise anyone that people don't want to go to war and need a lot of negative and positive incentives?

Stellar

Whats wrong with havin a droid army? Nobody questioned about machines heading towards their target and blowing up. Telling robots to dig up IEDs because the troops are not stupid enough to pick it up themselves and have jihaists recording, laughing and yelling Allah Akbar. Not to mention other countries have interest of robotic weaponry, so we have to stay ahead, unless you prefer the other countries to be ahead of the U.S.

Originally posted by truth_seeker3
It would be totally amazing if they took the star wars design!!. Yes, but agreed, if we give robots weapons+intelligence, it can't amount to anything too good.

Apparently the military has never heard of SKYNET.

...The system went online on August 4, 1997. On August 29, 1997 ("Judgment Day"), Skynet became self-aware. In a panic, humans attempted to shut it down, and Skynet retaliated by launching a nuclear attack.... The battle pitted humans against machines.....

Just watch out for the silver robots with the glowing red eyes !

[edit on 6-9-2008 by jfj123]

forgive me if this link has already been posted but this is a great droid example !

Big Dog
www.youtube.com...

It actually looks oddly alive....

a Robot army would be a waste of money, and their risking a lot because if the wrong person was in charge how easily could they make the robots turn on their own superiors. More or less they'd probaly start making modified human soldiers with robotic parts before making an all out robot army.

3 pages of text, and only a handfull concerned with the moral dillema..

In my humble opinion, it does not really matter wether or not the machines would become smart enough to 'rise up' against their creators.

The ones who ultimately have their hands on the buttons have even less of a conscience then these machines anyway! People like Cheney, GWB, Rice and other hardlie (no spelling error) nutters.

If you don't want people to die, there is a rather neat, somple solution.. don't start the war in the first place!

besides, I'm certain some regions in the USA are entirely based on the proximity of an army base with real live soldiers with real live needs.

take those away to be replaced by Robosoldier and you condemn those regions to poverty and unemployment.

Originally posted by ice1300

Will the U.S. Have a Droid Army?

www.livescience.com

The U.S. military may be 30 percent robotic by the year 2020, according to Doug Few and Bill Smart of Washington University in St. Louis.

"When the military says 'robot' they mean everything from self-driving trucks up to what you would conventionally think of as a robot. You would more accurately call them autonomous systems rather than robots," says Smart, assistant professor of computer science and engineering.

(visit the link for the full news article)

Yeah the warbots have already been field tested in Iraq, its coming:

SWORDS war bots

Originally posted by tyranny22
What I want to know is will these droids or robots also take the Oath to protect and uphold the Constitution of the United States of America as the men and women of our armed services do?

Not that it really matters ... the people calling the shots incriminate themselves every time they vote for more war funding ... or to allow more wiretaps on citizens.

[edit on 5-9-2008 by tyranny22]

Wiretaps on more citizens ?

That is impossible.

We are all wiretapped at the source and that is what the
FISA immunity was all about.

You need to read this:

All phones, chat, email, net usage monitored

As far as Internet surveillance goes, I've always maintained that the Internet was monitored from day one. No way they would let the public on this network without proper monitoring capability. Interestingly, with regard to the 60 Minutes piece and the NSA monitoring room, there was no mention of a room 641A setup by the NSA for any of the other major Internet providers. Places like Level 3, Time Warner, Verizon, and several other large ISPs and phone companies were missing from the list. Perhaps those rooms have not yet been exposed.

The video of the CGI robot soldier (Tetra Vaal) from page 2 of this thread is quite amazing as far as the concept goes. The Big Dog Darpa robot is an amazing feat of engineering the way it can balance itself over rough terrain and even recover after being pushed (kicked) like that. The exosuit seems promising. Even if many of these concept robots and devices had the right programming and abilities, how are they to be powered? Big Dog sounds like it uses a chain saw engine. An enemy would hear that a mile away. Unless they are working on some amazing power source, many of these concept robots will remain tethered to power cables in the lab.

Edit: correction, Tetra Vaal video was on page 2

[edit on 9/6/2008 by synchro]

reply to post by synchro

Even if many of these concept robots and devices had the right programming and abilities, how are they to be powered?

I'm not sure how the Big Dog and the Sacros are powered; likely by batteries and eventually Solar Power. The Berkeley Exoskeleton definitely runs on batteries. However, as said, it's far more light-weight than the Sarcos model. It doesn't have the arm modules the Sarcos has, and has a somewhat lower payload capacity. So it's operation is far less power consuming. I believe I read somewhere that they were looking into supplementing it's battery packs with kinetic energy so that it can charge even when stowed on a backback, and reduce the drain on the batteries when in use.



I'm not sure what newer generations now in testing are capable of.

As for Big Dog's chainsaw imitation, remember that the Big Dog is just a test model. If they were put into production for military/civilian applications, I'm sure they'd find a method to quiet it down. They're not polishing it as a finished product just yet, only validating the concept model.

[edit on 7-9-2008 by Lasheic]