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08-04-11, 12:29 AM
In the latest installment of the Butterfly Effect: Predator drones are just the start of unmanned, autonomous warfare technology. But as the tech becomes more democratized and more deadly, what happens when anyone can assemble an army of killing machines?
http://images.fastcompany.com/upload/drone-story-1.jpg
1. Attack Of The Drones
Last month, NATO’s commanders in Libya went with caps-in-hand to the Pentagon to ask for reconnaissance help in the form of more Predator drones. “It’s getting more difficult to find stuff to blow up,” a senior NATO officer complained (http://articles.latimes.com/2011/jul/21/world/la-fg-drones-libya-20110722) to The Los Angeles Times. The Libyan rebels’ envoy in Washington had already made a similar request. “We can't get rid of [Qaddafi] by throwing eggs at him,” the envoy told the newspaper.
2. Flattening The Battlespace
Since the Predator first appeared above Afghanistan nearly a decade ago, the Pentagon’s inventory of drones has risen from less than 50 devices to more than 7,000. But the gap between the U.S. and its closest competitors may actually be shrinking. China, for example, has pinned its military ambitions (http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/07/china-plan-to-beat-u-s) on 2,000 missiles guided by target data from some two-dozen models of surveillance drones.
3. Peak Arms In 2004, French troops arrived in Cote d’Ivoire to help police a cease-fire in the country’s simmering civil war. Not expecting trouble, they left their air defenses at home. But on November 4, 2004, a pair of Israeli-made Aerostar drones circled their base, reconnoitering targets for the Russian-made jets which bombed them a few hours later, killing nine soldiers and a U.S. aid worker. The drones belonged to an Israeli private military firm hired by Ivoirian president Laurent Gbagbo, who claimed (unconvincingly) that the whole thing was an accident.
http://images.fastcompany.com/upload/drone-story-2.jpg
4. The Robot Wars
The trajectory of drones and warbots is the same as computing in general--smaller, cheaper, more ubiquitous. In February, AeroVironment unveiled the prototype (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/20/world/20drones.html) of a hummingbird-sized drone that can perch on a windowsill can peer in. Insect-size is next.
But the shift from a single pair of eyes in the sky to a swarm of bots would create havoc with U.S. military doctrine, which requires having a human operator at all times, or a “man in the loop.” This is one reason why the Air Force is training more remote pilots this year (some 350) than bomber and fighter pilots combined. Then again, that’s not nearly enough for 7,000 drones, let alone 7 million, all of which would have the intelligence to fight or fly on their own, with faster-than-human response times.
Releasing increasingly autonomous warbots into the wild will demand new algorithms to command them, raising the specter of a “flash crash” on the battlefield as opposing algorithms clash and chase each other’s tails. Or what if hackers were to assemble a botnet for real: an army of machines ready to do their bidding? Perhaps a decade from now, there will be no “cyber-war (http://www.businessweek.com/printer/magazine/cyber-weapons-the-new-arms-race-07212011.html).” There will only be war.
SOURCE (http://www.fastcompany.com/1769673/the-diy-terminator-drones-robots-and-the-crowdsourced-future-of-war)
http://images.fastcompany.com/upload/drone-story-1.jpg
1. Attack Of The Drones
Last month, NATO’s commanders in Libya went with caps-in-hand to the Pentagon to ask for reconnaissance help in the form of more Predator drones. “It’s getting more difficult to find stuff to blow up,” a senior NATO officer complained (http://articles.latimes.com/2011/jul/21/world/la-fg-drones-libya-20110722) to The Los Angeles Times. The Libyan rebels’ envoy in Washington had already made a similar request. “We can't get rid of [Qaddafi] by throwing eggs at him,” the envoy told the newspaper.
2. Flattening The Battlespace
Since the Predator first appeared above Afghanistan nearly a decade ago, the Pentagon’s inventory of drones has risen from less than 50 devices to more than 7,000. But the gap between the U.S. and its closest competitors may actually be shrinking. China, for example, has pinned its military ambitions (http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/07/china-plan-to-beat-u-s) on 2,000 missiles guided by target data from some two-dozen models of surveillance drones.
3. Peak Arms In 2004, French troops arrived in Cote d’Ivoire to help police a cease-fire in the country’s simmering civil war. Not expecting trouble, they left their air defenses at home. But on November 4, 2004, a pair of Israeli-made Aerostar drones circled their base, reconnoitering targets for the Russian-made jets which bombed them a few hours later, killing nine soldiers and a U.S. aid worker. The drones belonged to an Israeli private military firm hired by Ivoirian president Laurent Gbagbo, who claimed (unconvincingly) that the whole thing was an accident.
http://images.fastcompany.com/upload/drone-story-2.jpg
4. The Robot Wars
The trajectory of drones and warbots is the same as computing in general--smaller, cheaper, more ubiquitous. In February, AeroVironment unveiled the prototype (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/20/world/20drones.html) of a hummingbird-sized drone that can perch on a windowsill can peer in. Insect-size is next.
But the shift from a single pair of eyes in the sky to a swarm of bots would create havoc with U.S. military doctrine, which requires having a human operator at all times, or a “man in the loop.” This is one reason why the Air Force is training more remote pilots this year (some 350) than bomber and fighter pilots combined. Then again, that’s not nearly enough for 7,000 drones, let alone 7 million, all of which would have the intelligence to fight or fly on their own, with faster-than-human response times.
Releasing increasingly autonomous warbots into the wild will demand new algorithms to command them, raising the specter of a “flash crash” on the battlefield as opposing algorithms clash and chase each other’s tails. Or what if hackers were to assemble a botnet for real: an army of machines ready to do their bidding? Perhaps a decade from now, there will be no “cyber-war (http://www.businessweek.com/printer/magazine/cyber-weapons-the-new-arms-race-07212011.html).” There will only be war.
SOURCE (http://www.fastcompany.com/1769673/the-diy-terminator-drones-robots-and-the-crowdsourced-future-of-war)