SWORDS combat robot

www.defenselink.mil...
Awesome robot. I also saw it fire an anti tank rocket launcher on futureweapons!!!!

What do you think?

I think it reminds me of Johnny Five too much. We have a discussion on these combat robots some where else on ATS. Not exactly a new topic.

Sorry, just figured I should inform you before it gets locked and redirected.

Originally posted by urmomma158

What do you think?

I think its sick. Killing is sick and we do not need to participate in killing and murder.

I bet the long term for robotic hardware is to finally make them fully autonomous. This would be perfect in the future America when the dumbed-down public accepts microchips implanted in everyone for the publics safety.

Then when you want to get rid of politcal deccent, you send out the robots that will hunt that particular micro-chip. That way you dont have to worry about troops not wanting to kill Americans, the robots would be happy to do it.

Save life, dont take it. War is a racket for the rich, dont be a fool.

If you don't like it, speak out. We all have the right to say what's on our mind.

If the government at any point does anything to compromise our safety, we have the right to revolt.

Why would the government risk that?

I think the Robot is a neat idea for those fire squads who are searching housing and stuff, for actual front-line combat, maybe not so much.

Shattered OUT...

It ultimately saves many lives and reuces casualties. Not to mention they're sneakier.

I'd think that it would take more lives that it would save. Does it have a first aid kit? Is it a medical robot? Do those guns shoot penicilin darts?

Maybe you mean it saves more American Soldiers lives, while disassociating them with reality. We already have soldiers who think killing unarmed civilians is enough of a video game. When the only contact that the soldier has with his victim is an LCD screen how much more fun will that game be?

THis is just another fun way to kill children.

Urmomma158,

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What do you think?
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Unfortunately, future weapons highlighted a lot of vulnerabilities of the system to me.

1. The mounting of existing weapons in the M240/249/60 class highlights the relative inefficiency of volumetric design inherent to conventional stocks and sights and receiver block locations among others. You should be able to halve the length, double the caliber and feed from opposed sides and use controlled electric ignition among other things (rendering the weapon unexploitable on a battlefield pickup basis) by designing to-type rather than assuming that the robot will always be armed 'at the convenience of the local infantry'.

2. Despite what Mister SEAL Guy said about it being a 'rock steady firing platform' the sighting video blurred to nearly unusable everytime the weapon fired, especially in-burst. It doesn't matter how straight a line a locked-down weapon fires if it cannot rapidly reengage or adjust fires on targets _independent_ of a look-shoot-look basis (i.e. faster than a man can), it's worthless. With vehicular carriage, and vibration isolated optics, you should in fact be able to convert the machine gun from a linear fire to a box or area fire system simply by either designating a volume saturation coverage zone in which bullets will be put through on a given rounds-per-foot density. Or by individual contrast snap-engagement.
This requires very high precision T&E and totally isolation-blocked sight mounts.

3. The video systems and indeed the entire unit seem poorly designed for coverage at anything but a fixed elevation which was entirely too high for the target vulnerability and detection area created. I would expect to lose 90% of the silouhette by removing the various 'cylinders and domes' type bumps and depressing the weapon on a powered elevation trunnion and _masted_ optics. This would let you make better judgment/use of local cover while bringing to bear the (larger) weapon over them only when necessary to engage (90% of the infantry F2 mission is the 'find' not 'fix'). While driving, I would _most definitely_ prefer to buy some of the 'anti motion blur' technology of the latest cellphone and digital camera systems and apply it to a set of spinning optics to generate a WFOV 'horizon strip' (like tank vision slits) to improve SA through peripheral vision on-monitor.

4. In maneuver, the units don't hold tactical spacing and fail to bound with what I would call good coordination. This is particularly revolting given they have _individual human operators_. A basic AI system, tied to a laser unit tracking spacing system (little more complex than the IR diodes of a TV/Remote Control combination), would let you dictate formation presets and engage in automated tactical leapfrog with or without suppressing fire. If you upgrade to an MMW or LIDAR based 'bump modeling' terrain feature system, you can even see a point where these systems could flow around obstacles and LOS-blockers, much like regular foot soldiers. Similarly, the integration of several units video would let you control one or more 'point men' from a third-person (virtual, eyes in the rear guy, motor control of the lead unit) perspective giving a much better sense of fine positioning and rates of advance in more complicated terrains. Ask anyone who's ever played a 'first person shooter' how much simpler basic navigation and awareness (spatial memory) of the environment is when you switch to 3P navigation. Sighting wouldn't suck so long as you had a separate portaled (Window In Window) option to show a magnified target area image, possibly cued-laid by an acoustic or IR muzzle sourcing system.

5. The SWORDS are slow and unagile. If I were designing a system like this, I would want not merely a 25-35mph sustained pursuit mode but also the ability to 'dodge' with random lateral movements using globe tires on extended outboard mounts with either a boost-coast principle off a central drive unit (idleable/liftable tire or tread central unit in the middle, powered directional 'outriggers' on the corners), or coordinated individual on-rim motors inside the steering wheels themselvs. Imagine a grocery cart with all four corners steering and driving down an icey ski slope and you're there. It is the ability to adjust rate of travel _independently_ of lateral motion which fools lead prediction in counterfire and the since you can't really prevent detection during infantry combat, especially in advance through predictable kill zones, you MUST do the next best thing which is dodge so quickly and randomly that you force the other guy to begin firing sooner and remain firing longer, as a discrete signature, to bag all enemies before they overrun him. Which means that he is now the one at disadvantage because he has to expend his base load much more quickly while exposing his position and thus having to displace or risk being engaged by remote systems more often. Such drawn-fire and move-or-die dislocation of an enemy line is a key element of battlefield fire and maneuver doctrine. Also notable here is that with a wider footprint and more tires in contact, you get a better stability on uneven surfaces and possibly the option of crossing ditches or other vertical obstacles as well.

6. I frankly don't see enough protective systems. Smoke generators or mortars and plexiplate bullet shields to be integral, not addon specific. Remember, THIS IS A ROBOT which means it doesn't have to pay an apriori weight penalty for a biologic engine and all the associated, (useless in combat) 'secondary systems' supported by it. As such, it's baseline payload fraction should be higher, at least over a short duration. Yet to guarantee it's value on the battlefield (as an effective replacement for a long-obsolescent man) you MUST make it sufficiently hard to kill as to keep soldiers from being (literally) mass-casualty cheaper to saturate a threat with. If the bad guys take to plinking these systems in deliberate traps that /avoid/ direct engagement with infantry, the robots are not going to be cost effective.


KPl.

We should invest in shield technology, making the strongest shields magnetic, microwave or otherwise would be better. of course then you cant make to much money from building shields, but ammunition and damaged vehicles make a lot more.

I swear to all that's holy if that James Cameron Terminator crap turns out to be prophetic we're all in a lot of trouble.

His ego is big enough as it is.

Spiderj

LOL, it probably will someday ! Instead of getting mad at immigrants, we will get mad at all the cyborgs, probably jealous that we arnt as strong or fast as they are.

what about the illegal alien cyborgs (damn you NAFTA) who will be willing to do the jobs we wont like plutonium juggling for 6.50 an hour.

Spiderj

I think that all those jobs are going to robots soon anyways. Man we are getting cold !
What I really think is that we should ditch all technology except those for health.

Originally posted by imbalanced
I think that all those jobs are going to robots soon anyways. Man we are getting cold !
What I really think is that we should ditch all technology except those for health.

The fact of the matter is that 'all technology' includes that which keeps us fed and producing water and electricity far beyond what the environment could otherwise naturally provide.

Which in turn leads to skyrocketing birth rates, especially among the 'poor immigrants' which is the leading cause of all the worlds problems. Remove this and as much as half the worlds population would starve inside a decade. Which might or might not be a 'good thing' except that it would spawn horrific wars for basic sustenance across ALL borders, everywhere.

More to the point, when the U.S. passes the half billion population point and the Chinese /pass us/ (heading the other way up the economic ladder) with 800 million slave ants operating at half the labor support costs, the only way we will be able to compete (in a world controlled by 'currency of the week' free market oil price gouging at the basic transport-of-goods level) will be if we have a 'no cost' equivalent manufacturing option.

Which, so long as we maintain even a fragment of our Constitution ('All Men Created Equal' yaddadeyaddayadda), will have to be robots.

OTOH, if you denied ALL health care except for that which the customer could pay cash for, the combination of lifestyle and increasingly unsafe foods would rapidly bring median age back down to around 50-60 and we would no longer suffer a host of other problems associated with 'medical technology' such as people waiting 30 years to die. Too weak to really 'live' the myth of the Golden Years, too poor from having not saved to contribute financially, and to dissociatively isolated by a youth-culture to even fulfill a traditional caregiver role to children themselves increasingly able to operate completely independently (as a potent market group). Unable to support themselves without a faltering social security structure which currently consumes ENORMOUS percentages of our budget, 'medical technology' that doesn't involve a Hemlock Society solution will be nightmare of Living Dead.

Robots are the way forward. What we have to decide is what we will do when they get here. The notion of working 40-60 hours a week, with both parents in couple 'gainfully employed' (to the point of destroying the family base) and fewer and fewer children among the middle-upper classes is probably NOT what Cromagnon man had in mind when he spent perhaps 3-4 days a week out hunting and another 5-10hrs painting shamanic symbols on the wall before settling back with his mate in one hand and a haunch of deer in the other, watching his kids play and the sun set.

In this, the notion of capitialism is imbalanced because it creates more work than can be _efficiently_ done by a given population, just to sustain it's own momentum. Until not only the societal fabric but also the environmental one is so stressed that it self depletes on an intra-generational level of exhaustive degradation.

In this scenario, the ultimate problem is going to be one of contributing to an ever more automated, ever more exclusive (only so many specific, non-manual, high-paying, job classes available, even if you have the brains to play the field, which 70% of -todays- population does not) as an alternative to accepting 'distraction as an occupation' worth living for for the majority of the fed-and-housed-but-unfulfilled populace. THIS, more than anything may begin to shrink the population size back from the unholy 10 billion we are headed for towards a more living-Earth manageable sub-billion level. Because man finds peace in 'just experiencing' life when otherwise bored or without function and being locked, hip-by-jowl with your neighbor will inhibit that even as the greatest expression of wealth will come to be, not possession, but emptiness of space around you.

The question is whether we will wait to start the process until we are all one color, one society, homogenic species wherein economics are determined by 'NWO' global decree. Or if we will have the sense to back off of war and begin to transfer the money wasted on that 'fine sport' to raise people to a level where they don't feel it necessary to come across borders to find wealth. Or breed like rats to deplete the frustration of not getting what they came looking for.

In this, the SWORDS is a rather primitive, specialist, device. Because killing is ultimately a rather simplistic, non-interactive, manipulation of the environment. But it may (MAY mind you, I don't ascribe to the notion of military tech advancing civillian equivalents anymore) represent a _change in thinking_ by one of the most traditionally labor intensive social bodies whereby thousands of young men and women with strong HK genes are taken out of the civilized labor pool and thus paid off to not pose a threat to peacetime existence.

We'll see.


KPl.

I just had a brilliant thought , - well to me at least .

Instead of fighting stupid, senseless wars, each nation should be allocated a certain number of fighting robots, instead of armed forces.

Each country could then develope them [the robot] in any way they saw fit and, at the appointed time, could meet on a battlefield in a neutral country, henceforth called The Umpire, and do battle.

The winner would be determined by points for: a) appearance, b) weaponry, c) survivability, d) operator skill, e) total kills, f) knockdowns, or whatever.

Real 'inhuman' killing along the lines of Robot Wars and a lot more fun

Of course we could just demand our Leaders or Politicians should fight the wars they want fought and, hey presto! No more wars!

Fritz,

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Instead of fighting stupid, senseless wars, each nation should be allocated a certain number of fighting robots, instead of armed forces.
>>

The U.S. needs Iraqi oil to guarantee 'sovereignity' of it's Oil Fiat currency which is the principal (banking) means by which our economy remains strong if essentially hollow.

The Iraqis (among /many/ others) don't like us. They lack the means or the control of sufficiently deep terrain matrix to declare an open war.

Therefore, each side snipes at the other in OOTW. With escalation across nominal military as much as international boundaries now the preferred means to spoil a resource which neither side wants to lose dominance over.

This is the essence of what is wrong with war today.

We are not HONESTLY told by our government and our media what is at stake and so we tend to make 'moral' choices rather than ones which reflect a real awareness of what is stood to be lost.

Did we have such complete data we would likely have no problems with treating the Arabs as Indians when it came to a them-or-U.S. decision.

Not least for two reasons:

1. If the majority of Iraqi's 'just want to live their lives' then an enforced pacification would get them there faster than a contested battle. Because they could ALL benefit from a system akin to that in Alaska whereby every native gets something like 6-10 grande a year from the Oil Revenues.

2. If Osama only wanted freedom for HIS lands, only had grievances with U.S. over our imposing ourselves and our way of life on HIS people, he should have had the cajones to attack The House of Saud directly. THAT is patriotism. This is an economic spoiling attack.

Unfortunately, we are now fighting a desultory conflict by which only the 'unacknowledgement' of the costs-at-present allows both sides to continue making petty attacks until the VALUE of the future resource is destroyed altogether. And it is into that environment that robots will still have the greatest effect because they effectively detach the targetable coup factor (hurt YOU not 'it' back) from the 'sporting act' of warfare itself.

Warfare, like vengeance is an action with full validity IF it is served coldly, analytically, without heart or compassion for an enemy. Because it tends to amalamate resources under a single regulatory dispensation policy which is ultimately better for ALL parties than this petty constant conflict.

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Each country could then develope them [the robot] in any way they saw fit and, at the appointed time, could meet on a battlefield in a neutral country, henceforth called The Umpire, and do battle.
>>

I don't agree with the Patton Theory ("Rommel in his tank, me in mine...") for other than sounding like bad science fiction movie-

www.imdb.com...

It supports the notion of elitist entrustment of conflict to 'personal' (singular at any rate) engagement. If you must FIGHT over something of value to your entire people, then by all means _your entire nation's efforts_ should be put towards victory that no man can say "There but for I..." was defeats jaws pried open.

The sadness, under the present conditions, is that you can engender greater violence by showing restraint than by stepping on someone's neck and making it CLEAR that "Whether the fight is over is up to you, but I _will_ hold you responsible for your brother's actions if he doesn't agree." Which is again where cheerleader voyeurism as insurgent X kills a patrol vehicle or a civillian contractor gets to be more inciteful than can be allowed.

Ultimately, war will always come down to the ratio of the haves to the have nots in a given population base and particularly whether the _haves_ are entertained by spectator blood sport of an incompetent conqueror. Or are so dominated that they choose not to risk losing it all to the actions of those that engage 'freely' because they truly have nothing to lose.

I know this: If only the dead have seen the end of war. Then we are all truly, as an advanced society, _dead_.

We cannot deal with an ever escalating population and resource crises while continuing to expend great sums on efforts to raise barbarians up as bipeds.

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The winner would be determined by points for: a) appearance, b) weaponry, c) survivability, d) operator skill, e) total kills, f) knockdowns, or whatever.
>>

I have always included, in each and every one of my 'go robotic!' endorsements, the belief that non-lethal weapons and the ability to close with targets showing VIDEO PROOF of their 'hostility' (madness really, trying to kill that which was never alive) would be a very 'humane' consequence of COE tactics with these systems. I pity and understand the feelings of Marines who simply lose control in a sea of smiling faces whose children laugh and adults dance and single like monkeys in the street at the sight of an IED obliterating a comrade.

The sad reality being that if you cannot make sure your buddy _did not die for NOTHING_ by catching the man who emplaced and/or detonated that explosive, then your only hope of survival as much as victory is to impart Such Terror of the consequences of any attack on your person as to FORCE the 'neutral' civillian populace to take a side with you. Against extinction.

Again, did we make this _clear_ (you are NOT our 'equals', you are a conquered enemy population whose only guarantee of survival is NOT to go guerilla-combatant), with numbers of men on the ground and a very strict interpretation of the rules and allowances of military governance, Iraq would be, by now, well on it's way to being another FRG.

We didn't and we're paying the price.

What most people don't understand is that 'the price', just on the face of it (100,000 dollar death benefit atop 60,000 dollars in basic infantry skills) can be comparitively shopped down by going to a mass production robot. Whose MANY advantages include precision, recorded, kills in the face of direct fire. The ability to be cannibalized for at least partial investment recovery. And the _certainty_ that it was never alive to begin with. Thus any fool who plays Don Quixote with one is no more intelligent than some idiot sticking his hand inside a bear cage at the zoo.

>>
Real 'inhuman' killing along the lines of Robot Wars and a lot more fun
>>

The more un-human it becomes, the more efficient it will be. And it will take the shaming of our last 'elite' humanist _organization_ (the inverse of a Paul Bunyon and Babe or John Henry: join up and we will give you priveleges and position beyond those of any 'normal' person) to deprive war of it's necessary cannon fodder AND leadership resources.

Because frankly, any ten year old can be taught enough strategic gaming and statistics to be a good robot commander. And no 'soldier' (hunter killer) personality is going to want to face a threat which lets geeks destroy him, without ever being on the same battlefield.

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Of course we could just demand our Leaders or Politicians should fight the wars they want fought and, hey presto! No more wars!
>>

No. The way to hold our leaders responsible for their actions is to make the act of war illegal outside any but own-borders. To explicitly include the acts of training, arms export OR combat. With a World Court acknowledged Death Penalty for any and all in the chain of command who make the ultimate mistake of resorting to the most base of foreign diplomacy ploys to gain political currency or distraction from the direct problems and responsibilities of leadership.

Obviously there would have to be a highly competent, militant, branch of the _UN_ and _Interpol_ to ensure that idiots like Osama Bin Laden truly /could not/ run and hide in a country without fear of immediate and unending pursuit. This might itself require the institution of a followon organization whose membership would be based on the certainty of economic investment as well as military safety in trade for an open-borders policy. Yet the fact remains that we are using a sledghammer to squash a mosquito and we are NOT EVEN IN THE RIGHT DAMN COUNTRY TO SWING. Which means that all of Iraq comes down to being a wasted effort. Which proves the incompetency of a force which cannot find and extract ONE MAN from a penny ante dictators passive protection in Pakistan.

Again, if you are not going to make the nature of our devil's bargain over oil and economic strength an open factor for public debate, you MUST at least show your survival-selective superiority in going after the NAMED threat (UBL) which you are not so afraid of as to refuse to pursue across borders. This is no Pancho Villa. The technology is different even as THE MOTIVATION should be the same. Not martial but criminal. So as not to aggrandize a man beyond the cowering animal he has descended to being.

Again, maybe robots are the answer. If you can send a catlike automaton to each and every barbarian village to get eyes-on-target at a much reduced risk (see what you expect to) of detection and politically compromising capture, then the notion that the SOF are 'all that' as black ops warriors could also die a little death.

What bothers me most is the seeming belief that if we don't do such 'inhuman' warfare systems development, nobody else will either. A fact I find strangely unlikely in a global market where increasingly the industrial leadership is all across the Pacific. We WILL FACE robots on the battlefield. Whether they be an VBIED mounted in a Tamiya RC car. Or a remote operated lethal insect that crawls into someone's bed. Or a full up MBT replacement that kills Abrams like sheep. The only questions are whether we will lead the field with enough margin of early-to-operate TIME as to gain useful dominance before like systems begin to be fielded. As well as whether the presence of highly automated Armed Forces will save sufficient of our bloated 'discretionary budget' (return to sacrificial tactic = longer obsolescence cycles than for baby-onboard manned systems) as to allow us to recapitalize our societal infrastructure before the Chinese steal economic dominance away and suddenly our money means half of what it once did.


KPl.

Originally posted by fritz

The winner would be determined by points for: a) appearance, b) weaponry, c) survivability, d) operator skill, e) total kills, f) knockdowns, or whatever.

Real 'inhuman' killing along the lines of Robot Wars and a lot more fun

Of course we could just demand our Leaders or Politicians should fight the wars they want fought and, hey presto! No more wars!

I love this idea! bring warfare back into napoleonic style and grandeur! but with robots.

There's a bunch of threards on the robot that is the platform for this SWORDS system. Very intersting, I wonder when we'll see large scale usage of them? They're supposed to be in the field in Iraq right now.

Bomb disposal squads have been using something similar like this to assess situations and detonate explosives for years.. they're pretty handy pieces of equipment... I dont see the problem in using something like.. especially in a hostage situation or something along those lines.. attach a taser to it.. Definately could be a great too to have

I beleive that the military is using them as an addendum to small group tactics. As in, your squad is pinned down, but are under good cover, you send this robot out to scope out the building that the enemy is possibly shooting from. Maybe its able to give them enough fire so as to provide cover for the troopers to move into new positions and respond to the enemy.

Definitly not on the level of '2 thousand of the robot-soldiers screamed into Fallujah today, in all their metallic menacing might!"

One day maybe!