Article

2009-01-04 Science & Technology

Coming to the Battlefield: Stone-Cold Robot Killers

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Posted by ryuge 2009-01-04 07:16|| || Front Page|| [3 views ] Top

#1 He sounds like he can not reconcile a good like stopping genocide with the fact that it is the USA that will be doing it. I wish this knuckle-head would make up his mind.

Then again, we are talking about John Pike, who was too lefty (and full of himself) for even the FAS

Most real soldiers will not shoot at the enemy. Most won't even discharge their weapons, and most of the rest do no more than spray bullets in the enemy's general direction.

Sir, your ignorace is showing. These little pseudo-factoids has not been true for 40 odd years now.

All soldeirs are extensively (and expensively) trained and indoctrinated to shoot to kill human targets. Even the S-1 Clerks. The reason for high ammo consumption in theater is the regular and frequent in country range time all soldiers see. We don't use "death blossom" react to contact drills, or high volume suppressive fire tactics anymore. Partly because of loudmouth, fith-columnist, useful idiots like yourself.

Posted by N guard 2009-01-04 08:40|| 2009-01-04 08:40|| Front Page Top

#2 And partly because this is a professional army, not the massive draftee-based one that got Marshall put together in virtually no time for WWII.

Posted by lotp 2009-01-04 08:51|| 2009-01-04 08:51|| Front Page Top

#3 Armed robotic aircraft

Actually, they are are waldoes, (simple) John.
And you haven't seen yet magic inc.

Posted by g(r)omgoru 2009-01-04 08:53|| 2009-01-04 08:53|| Front Page Top

#4 What an exercise in histrionics. First of all, his assertion that most soldiers don't willingly shoot at the enemy is nonsense, for the simple reason that by a 15 to 1 ratio, it's not the job of most soldiers to shoot at the enemy, but support those who do.

However, all soldiers are given more than adequate amounts of *training* ammunition to fire, which is included in the total amount of ammo used to inflict casualties.

Finally, nobody has suggested that robots are autonomous in identifying and targeting enemy to fire at. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that this would be a very bad idea for any number of reasons. So they will still be operated remotely.

Posted by Anonymoose 2009-01-04 09:05|| 2009-01-04 09:05|| Front Page Top

#5 He obviously hasn't seen a US combat arms unit in action. They kill. Very efficiently.

As for robots, as long as they don't start looking for Sarah Conner, I'm happy.

Posted by DarthVader 2009-01-04 09:34|| 2009-01-04 09:34|| Front Page Top

Too bad for terror symps that this guy isn't real, and wouldn't be on their side if he were.

Posted by Atomic Conspiracy 2009-01-04 10:56|| 2009-01-04 10:56|| Front Page Top

#7 I remember the Daleks on Dr. Who. They kept repeating the phrase, "Exterminate, exterminate...". Kind of a evil ancestor of R2D2.

All you had to do to defeat them was have stairs but no one ever seemed to do that.

Posted by mhw 2009-01-04 14:50|| 2009-01-04 14:50|| Front Page Top

#8 Right now it would seem that a narrow, straight sided ditch would stop most of the robots we have now. Vertical 3' walls, 2-3' bottom (ie small canal or irrigation ditch). Automate a tank? Perhaps.

Posted by tipover 2009-01-04 15:00|| 2009-01-04 15:00|| Front Page Top

#9 A generation ago the Reagan administration brought World War II-era battleships out of mothballs to provide gunfire support to onshore operations.

Uh, John, don't you ever do any real research? It was LBJ that brought the battleships out of mothballs. I was in Panama when the New Jersey (IIRC) came through. I have photos of it. Manpower was just one of several things that doomed the battleships, including the lack of trained personnel, over-aged powder sacks, the lack of a manufacturing support capability for 16-inch shells and powder sacks, and a dozen other things. As much as I'd love to see a few US battleships in the Navy, it's just not feasible with current budget, training, and manpower restrictions.

John Pike is (I believe) the current head of the Union of Concerned Scientists, and a left-wing moonbat. The factual errors in tis article (and there are far more than the one I covered) show that this leopard hasn't changed his spots.

Posted by Old Patriot">Old Patriot 2009-01-04 15:08|| http://oldpatriot.blogspot.com/]">[http://oldpatriot.blogspot.com/] 2009-01-04 15:08|| Front Page Top

#10 Right now it would seem that a narrow, straight sided ditch would stop most of the robots we have now.

The Army's future combat systems program includes a number of 6-wheeled, articulated robotic vehicles plus several airborne variants.

Posted by lotp 2009-01-04 17:55|| 2009-01-04 17:55|| Front Page Top

#11 "Stone Cold" STEVE AUSTIN as LEE MAJORS???

Posted by JosephMendiola 2009-01-04 18:30|| 2009-01-04 18:30|| Front Page Top

#12 As for UAVS, during the recent New Year's eve celebs here on Guam, I'd observed two objects flying abnormally over Agana bay, ostensibly whilst fireworks were occuring o'er Maite + Tamuning/Hotel Row areas - one had only a single RED RUNNING LIGHT, the other a single GREEN RUNNING LIGHT.

My first thoughts were MIL HELOS OR NIGHT GLIDERS, BUT THE ANGLES OF MANEUVER, LIFT AND DOWNLIFT, ETC. WERE TOO SHARP = CONCISE TO BE "NORMAL" AIRCRAFT OR GLIDERS. While the "GREEN" object finally stopped maneuvering and held stationary, the "RED" one eventually came next to it and BOTH MOVED OFF LINEARLY TOWARDS NORTHERN GUAM [Andersen AFB].

I'm inclined now to think UAVS = UAV TESTING > reminded me of Reagan-Bush 1 era SADARM [Search-And-Destroy-Armor], AIR-SPACE MINES, AIR TANKS, etc. COLD WAR PROPOSED PROJECTS.

Perhaps somebody up at Andersen AFB wanted to attend/see the fireworks but couldn't get off base shift, HENCE USE THE UAV???

Posted by JosephMendiola 2009-01-04 18:47|| 2009-01-04 18:47|| Front Page Top

#13 The largest of the UAVs in the FCS suite is a robotic helicopter, Joe.

Posted by lotp 2009-01-04 19:00|| 2009-01-04 19:00|| Front Page Top

#14 By the way, great Heinlein references Grom!

Posted by Scooter McGruder 2009-01-04 19:11|| 2009-01-04 19:11|| Front Page Top

#15 I know how to push John Pike right over the edge...

Cluster bombs full of Stone-Cold Robot Killers that when their ammunition runs low and batteries ebb... seek out warm bodies to suicide against.

Posted by 3dc 2009-01-04 20:42|| 2009-01-04 20:42|| Front Page Top

#16 I read a review of Marshall's Men Against Fire. Seems, according to the reviewer, that the voluminous notes SLAM had did not include any at all referring to the reluctance to shoot at the enemy.
My father, an Infantry platoon leader with six months in contact in the ETO, also disagrees with Marshall.
One factor not acknowledged is that the Germans--the enemies in SLAM's book, were on the defensive. Which means they were in defensive positions. Hard to see. As my father said, they could advance a mile and see no Germans but dead ones, the living having retreated to the next defensive line. The dead having been killed by one or another piece of ordnance directed in their general directionk but without the firer actually having a serious idea of which German was where.

Posted by Richard Aubrey">Richard Aubrey 2009-01-04 22:20|| 2009-01-04 22:20|| Front Page Top

#17 ..., according to the reviewer

The critic also avoided reading Marshall's book done subsequently in and on Korea, in which he wrote that the fire issue he had seen in WWII had disappeared and that fire rates had increase.

Part of the whole issue about Marshall work is that the standards of today's data collection and techniques was applied against his haphazard methods which were literally the starting point of modern analysis on the battlefield. It's like comparing modern coding standards with the first generation code written in machine language or job control language.

Posted by Procopius2k 2009-01-04 22:59|| 2009-01-04 22:59|| Front Page Top