I kind of wonder what would happen if everyone's armies could just be replaced with robot armies.

And then we just abstracted it a level further and said, "Okay, just keep putting money into this whole. Whoever puts the most money in the hole wins."

@braak: or, we could set up seperate sides in a video game, like The Superbowl/Madden thing, and the winner of the virtual war is the winner of the real one, without spending trillions.

One well placed armor piercing shot into that ammo feed belt and the worst it could do is run over you.

@Epaminondas: Yeah, but I'll bet it weighs, like, a million pounds. I woudln't want to get run over by that.

@braak: Crap, I don't run very fast.

I wonder what makes this one an improvement... "You there! Yes, you in the turban. I was curious, are you a terrorist?... well if you were I would shoot you.... You aren't then.. well, on your way. doo doo do doo doooo"

@Garrison Dean: "I'm not the terrorist you're looking for."

"You're not the terrorist I'm looking for!"

"I can go on about my business."

"You can go on about your business. Move along!"

@braak: doesn't that kind discount the whole tactics thing? assuming you can buy a victory is what gave most world powers bloated military budgets in the first place.

Robot Deth Masheens are the wurst!

This will get even better. Imagine the unholy bastard offspring of this, surveillance cameras, and the DARPA urban challenge. We will, at some point, get pulled over by an autonomous cruiser and cited for some sort of revenue-producing infraction. This stuff isn't cheap, surely.

How can you conduct a guerrilla war with robots? Doesnt that defeat the purpose of clandestine warfare? How inconspicuous can something be if its gun metal gray and drives on tracks? Im wondering if someone watched the Gray Ghost episode of Batman TAS when they said this...

@Mecharine: i think the real question is how inconspicuous can a fighter be carrying a bunch of innocuous gun metal grey parts around and how inconspicuous can they remain after assembling said parts and leaving the immediate vacinity. i would argue that the answer is, 'extreamly inconspicuous.'

@Frozen-Tex: Terrorist please put down your weapon... you have 20 seconds to comply.

But I'm a 9 year old girl! This is a loaf of bread! But ok putting it down.

20...19..18..

Something on NPR today about robots at war, and dude noted that the Saudi's are now using robot camel jockeys in their national sport of camel racing. (you thought i was going to get nasty, dint ya.

Robots are cheap. And if you don't care what you kill, they will work really well.

I have heard that the Russians put bombs on the backs of dogs. They had raised the dogs on captured German rations, so when they let the dogs loose...

And i know that the USAF tried to put incindiaries on bats, to be released over Japanese cities in WWII.
But the bats got loose in America and burned down a hanger.

Robots are a lot more reliable, at least to the extent of having off/on switches.

A full out robot on robot war would never work. Human life still has to be threatened for war to be effective.
Otherwise its a glorified episode of American gladiators

The history of asymmetric warfare suggests to me that the insurgents, guerillas and terrorists, when faced with a multi-billion dollar investment in robotics on the part of the post-industial countries, will just wisely spend their money on grit and sand to cast into robot joints, cheap EMP generators to fry chips, radio jamming to block control signals and axes to cut control cables. Or good old fashioned anti-tank rockets.

I think the only way this will succeed is when the robot weapons grow so cheap that we can throw them into battles by the tens of thousands, like ants taking huge losses, and still win through.

Until then, I predict the home front, even though fewer of their kids are dying, will continue to complain about the expense of policing their commercial interests in the developing world.

What's really scary to me is if two countries with high-tech military forces decide to war. That's where the robots will REALLY get smart.

@corpore-metal: You're comment about how robotic warfare will only succeed when robots become cheap made me think of some stuff I've read on 19th century imperialism and technology. Specifically, Hendrick's "Tools of Empire" which asserts that the imperial impulse from about 1815 - 1914 (or the long 19th century, as historians term it) was driven by technical innovation that made colonization not just possible, but profitable. The introduction of the steam ship, rapid advances in firearms (culminating in the gatling and maxim), and communications technology made the exploitation of India, China, and Africa possible. Of course, by the end of WWII advances in technology and tactics in the colonized regions made asymmetrical warfare possible, and successful, which was just as big a reason for decolonization than the rise of liberal democracy.

Cheap robotics and GPS assisted C3 may be the next big military innovation that makes something like global imperialism profitable again. The failures in Iraq and Afghanistan obviously point out the weakness in today's methods of force projection.

Robots, until AI significantly advances, won't suffer from Post-traumatic stress disorder and are immune to terror as a weapon. Though, whatever positive gains one achieves by avoiding human fraility and stress induced breakdowns like Haditha, buggy software will probably make up for.

FYI there are Autonomous robot "weapons" in Iraq but they have not fired a shot since they were deployed..... The fact that they are a big ass unmanned rolling gun intimidates the enemy really well

@toopersent: plus you have to have somebody to loot..

You guys don't seem to get the point of the current crop of remotely-controlled robot weapons - you send them someplace dangerous, and if they get killed, at least it wasn't a person. Meanwhile you can look through them, use them as remote weapons stations, etc.

Basically they're just a way to get a look around or shoot at the enemy w/o exposing soldiers to fire.

For some reason these things freak people out way more than Predator drones, and they're the same thing. They also freak people out more than fire-and-forget missiles, which actually are autonomous killing machines.
-Kle.

@braak:

That works until someone actually bothers to fight, instead of pretending.

Last time that happened, it was Napoleon.
-Kle.