Comment by solidsnack9000
18 hours ago
It's been possible for a long time.
For antipersonnel use, guns are perfectly adequate and guns on tracking turrets have been widely deployed (for example, CIWS). The underlying technology is a ballistic calculator and a fast panning turret. Modern ballistic calculators, weather stations (a small device about the size of a cellphone), and good quality ammunition allows for incredible precision with small arms -- hitting something 25cm in diameter at 1000m is something people can do with these tools.
A weapon like this can't really "mass kill" -- it is for point targets -- but we have long had tools that can automatically track and kill. Why don't we employ them to shoot at people? We have the tagging technology, &c, as you mention.
One reason is that positive identification really does matter a lot when designing and developing weapon systems that automatically attack something.
The anti-missile use case is one of the most widespread uses for automatically targeted weapons in part because a missile is easily distinguished from other things that should not be killed: it is small, extremely hot, moves extremely fast, generally up in the air and moves towards the defense system. It is not a bird, a person, or even a friendly aircraft. The worst mistake the targeting system can make is shooting down a friendly missile. If a friendly missile is coming at you, maybe you need to shoot it down anyways...
Drones have a different signature from a missile and recognizing them in a way that doesn't confuse them with a bird, a balloon, &c, is different from recognizing missiles -- but here again, the worse thing that happens is you shoot down a friendly drone.
And note an advantage to lasers--when you fire ordinary stuff it falls back. C-RAM is specifically designed that misses detonate while still in the air, but no munition has a 100% fusing rate, you get duds. Nothing falls back from the laser.
CWIS is pretty massive, not that this isn't still big, but I think this is taking a miniaturization turn, is upping the accuracy and number of engagements it can handle significantly and potentially upping the range especially in urban environments. CWIS in an urban environment would cause chaos and a lot of collateral damage to buildings but you can now be very sure that only your intended target is being hit so people could die without all the optics of buildings crashing down. It is much easier to have a war when the cameras don't see the destruction. Positive ID is huge, if you really care about it, but even with perfect positive ID if a government is ok with genocide then everyone is a valid target. Are you a male older than 13? You are a combatant and will be killed once you are in sight. Did someone help you in any way (like your mother of family giving you food?) They are also combatants. It is unfortunately not a stretch with modern tools to see this happening in real time. This weapon is, unfortunately, on an inevitable path.
CIWS is big but this has nothing to do with it -- it's actually easier to make a small turret, and small arms precision has been well understood for a long time. Put a 6.5mm Creedmoor on a computer controlled turret -- 6.5mm Creedmoor is generally accepted to be usable to 1km or more.
Range is limited in urban environments because of obstructions -- even the range of CIWS is far too great to be useful.
There hasn't been a real possibility for a long time, I don't think -- it's just not an easy use case.
Are you a male older than 13? You are a combatant and will be killed once you are in sight.
This is exactly the kind of thing that is unworkable.
(A) You don't want to shoot all those people. It's rare if ever the case that even 10% of those males are actually combatants. Even in Germany at the end of the WW2, I doubt it was that high.
(B) What if your own people make a breakthrough and take control of an area, and have all these machines with wildly nonspecific rules shooting at them?
Range due to obstacles is greatly overcome with altitude. My point about the 13yo is that -you- think it is unworkable, but a country that doesn't mind the word 'genocide' thinks it is a fine definition. Camera tech quickly went this route right? 'you could mount that camera but we haven't done it and therefor won't' turned into multiple cameras covering every square inch of a city from multiple angles once the tech was easy enough. The 'easy enough' trend is clear here. Miniaturization, precision, ease of maintenance, etc make the reasons this hasn't been done rapidly fall away and make it clear that it will be done. There is a clear argument that is isn't, yet, realistic to be done but this is a clear step in that direction.