Modern Warfare imitates Hollywood

Dr Rock

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Chuck64 said:
As for the limited abilities, that's all in the software really.
... and the fact that they can't run, crawl, crouch, jump, belly down, navigate significant obstacles, think outside their own programming, or react any faster than their motive components can move. it'll be a long, looong time - if ever - before any kind of artificial construct will approach the tactical utility of a human soldier.
 

ClaireTalon

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Chuck64 said:
Having never been in the military myself, I can't speak to the reaction of the enemy.

At some point, this things will be much cheaper than a soldier - if not already. Think of cheap, disposable, semi-intelligent psuedo-soldiers in huge numbers - hundreds, even thousands of these things. It's a war-mongering dictator's wet dream

As for the limited abilities, that's all in the software really. One robot is obviously much more limited in perception than a single human. But think about a little AI and data exchange within a swarm of these things. Think about the difference between knowing just what you see and hear vs. knowing the status of every other "soldier" on the battlefield, along with everything they "see" and "hear" in real-time. <.>

Think about the hardware that'd require, the technical staff to keep them in order, and what would happen if one of them has a system crash. Every software causes some problems now and then, even the most reliable can produce runtime errors, or nonsense results at the lowest level, in the binary storage of its processors. Nothing that can't be repaired, but you don't have the time to re-boot a robot when he's on the battle field and under fire from the enemy. He's really a sitting duck then.

I also see problems about the data exchange. Considering the amount of data that'd have to be moved and distributed, a lot of bandwidth and processor power would be needed. I assume it'd take a wireless network to transfer the data, which should be fine as long as the two communicating robots are in a line-of-sight environment, but placing them in a town environment, with houses, cars and other metal gadgets in between could interfere with the communications. Not block it, but slow the connection and cause a possible data loss.
 

ClaireTalon

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Dr Rock said:
assuming we're talking about professional soldiers here, while you're in combat you're getting paid to put your mission objectives and the overall safety of your unit before your own fear of injury or death. i can't speak for anyone else, but if i'd flunked out and dithered like a little bitch every time i was afraid of getting killed back in bosnia, i'd have wound up with a big fat court-martial very early on.


the more important flip-side of that is that it's severely limited in its responses. you already know what it's NOT gonna do, which makes it far easier to deal with than a human opponent in 95% of equivalent situations.

I was talking about the effect of causing a moment of freezing, and give the robot operators just a short span of time to open up with their weapons and kill a large number of enemies during the first seconds, or minutes of the battle, not spread a long-lasting fear, which wouldn't be possible anyways. I have just limited experience with land warfare (E&E training), but I'd surely be scared shitless at first if I saw ten armed-to-the-teeth robots coming at me.
 

D_Humper E Bogart

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Meh, those bots suck. One good RPG and they're toast. Problem is, can't use them in civilised countries because of the risk of reverse-engineering if captured..so there's the combat use in China outdone.

Also counter-insurgency? Damn, someone's been reading the thesaurus again, last time I checked, wars are designed to "kill the enemy" not discriminate on their political basis for disagreement of aforementioned millitary action.

I think someone's just trying to show off again, I mean, Japan produces robots that can play Football and the best the US makes is a remote-controlled TANK?

Figures.