Comment by isx726552
6 months ago
Put weapons on it (as already seen in current conflicts) and it becomes a seek-and-assassinate tool. Drones are cheap enough it could even be done en masse. It is a scary future, and it’s not far away at all.
6 months ago
Put weapons on it (as already seen in current conflicts) and it becomes a seek-and-assassinate tool. Drones are cheap enough it could even be done en masse. It is a scary future, and it’s not far away at all.
S&R has always been a front for weaponized robotics, IMHO.
The last DARPA grand challenge (Subterrainean) had automated drone networks that could find and identify humans in caves and tunnels. They were at least up front about the military challenges in these environments. (https://www.darpa.mil/program/darpa-subterranean-challenge), but the nod at civilian first-responders doesn't seem fair. Honestly, is cave-in such a big civilian problem that we need to prioritize it as a talking point at all levels?
> Honestly, is cave-in such a big civilian problem that we need to prioritize it as a talking point at all levels?
Considering (1) the number of people who are employed in mining occupations, (2) the frequency of serious accidents in mines, yes. Particularly in developed countries, societies expect that great lengths will be gone to rescue or recover the victims, and mine rescue is incredibly dangerous work.
(1) BLS says ~200K in the US in 2024, although only a minority of them work underground.
(2) BLS says "underground mining machine operators" is the 9th deadliest job in the US, and that is with a large and well-equipped mine rescue system (MSRA says 250 teams across the country).
Are the other 8 BLS most dangerous professions being heavily automated and augmented with robots?
Roofers, fishing and hunting workers, construction "helpers", etc?
There's a case to be made that some of them are, I guess.
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It's generally hard to say what's a "front" for what, unless you mean "what can you get someone to grant you research money for when you really expect to parlay the learnings into another topic."
Everything about the rocketry needed to get to orbit started from warfare purposes, for example. And ARPANET was a foray into how to build a disruption-resistant network for military purposes.
Science and knowledge are a bit of a soup.
A read a comment here a while ago about "search and rescue" being a euphemism for military applications and that's the first thing I thought of when I saw this story.
Guess what happens in Ukraine.
The future is already here – it's just not very evenly distributed
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/William_Gibson
It exists in Estonia ("thanks" to Googley Eric Schmidt!), it's a company that had codename White Stork.
It looks like they may have changed their name. White Stork is the name of a charity that provides first aid kits and other aid in Ukraine.
https://whitestork.us/
https://x.com/WilliamMcNulty/status/1798855191858712929
Ironic name.
National bird of Ukraine
This system would not work against camouflage.
I mean it would you just have to put different optics on it thermal, near infrared and normal, and have three different detection neural nets
I've been saying that any armistace on drones won't come until the US starts being hit by drone warfare. Especially by a foreign militia or nation state
> armistace on drones won't come
Drones are useful. There have been zero useful technologies in war that have ever been successfully banned. (No [1].)
Every weapon that has been banned brought asymmetric advantage, i.e. disadvantaged the powerful, or has had its ban flouted, e.g. cluster munitions.
[1] https://acoup.blog/2020/03/20/collections-why-dont-we-use-ch...
What do you think UFOs are?
they need to cause collateral damage, not busy work for FOIA respondents in Ohio
The US is the biggest user of drones. What are you talking about?
I would not be so sure - a mind boggling number of drones and drone types are used in the Ukraine war, from small observation drones, over supply drones, drop drones, fast one way FPV kill drones up to almost regular drone swarm exchanges with 100+ drones going one way (indigenous Ukrainian drones one way, clones of Iranian Shaheds from the Russian side).
An oil terminal in Feodosia is still burning after the latest Ukrainina strike.
There was even a few cases of re-purposed ultra light aircraft serving as one way drones for ultra long range strikes on the Ukrainian side.
In another region Israel has to shoot down various terrorist launched one way UAVs almost regularly by this point & uses UAVs heavily by itself.
So while US certainly did pioneer UAV use, it seems to be it is getting eclipsed by other states in this area.
It's not unless you consider Ukraine part of the US. Russia and Ukraine are using 10k+ drones per month each.
US civilians aren't subjected to them though.
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