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Fully autonomous weapons are going to come, and the squeamishness around it is going to disappear when its necessity becomes apparent in a shooting war. We alr
by jonathankoren 10y ago
Fully autonomous weapons are going to come, and the squeamishness around it is going to disappear when its necessity becomes apparent in a shooting war.
We already have autonomous weapons, their called mines. Even these can be somewhat targetable, in particular with antivehicle mines.
The most immediately plausible development in autonomous weapons I've read is in anti-shipping and anti-radiation missles. Israeli Areospace new anti-radiation weapon is a loitering drone than can autonomously target fire control radars.[0] Lockheed's new LRASM[1] is designed to loiter in an area and automatically identify and target enemy ships within an area. However, it right now asks for permission to conduct the attack. So we're just a firmware upgrade from fully autonomous with that weapon.
In both these cases, autonomous weapons aren't really troublesome. Fire control radars send out a very different signal than civilian radars, and so are explicitly a military target. Furthermore even civilian radar could be considered a legitimate target if you don't want to be observed at all, as opposed to be seen but impossible to shoot down.
Antishipping historically has explicitly allowed targeting of both military and civilian ships. So just as long as you can identify the vessel as not being yours using an electrolytically sensors, it's permissible to sink it.
The real problem with autonomous weapons tend to be when their deployed on land, especially when civilians are around. In the sea, and in the air even, there's no one around.
[0] http://defense-update.com/20160215_loitering-weapons.html http://defense-update.com/20160215_loitering-weapons.html
[1] http://www.scout.com/military/warrior/story/1634058-navy-weapon-destroys-target-semi-autonomously http://www.scout.com/military/warrior/story/1634058-navy-wea...
- enraged_camel 10y ago>>We already have autonomous weapons, their called mines. By this logic, our ancestors were using autonomous weapons too, since they invented various traps.
- jonathankoren 10y agoYup. They don't have to be smart. Just independent.
- msl 10y ago> We already have autonomous weapons, their called mines. And those autonomous weapons keep on killing and maiming people for a long time, whether the orignial conflict continues or not. The squeamishness does not seem to have quite disappeared either, judging from the fact that much of the world has comdended and opted to forgo their use. [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ottawa_Treaty https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ottawa_Treaty
- varjag 10y ago> So just as long as you can identify the vessel as not being yours using an electrolytically sensors, it's permissible to sink it. No, you have to positively identify it as your enemy's.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- semi-extrinsic 10y agoIf by "historically" you mean "WW2 and earlier", then firebombing enemy cities with civilian casualties in the hundreds of thousands is also OK.
- TeMPOraL 10y agos/cities/villages/ and you get Vietnam.
- jonathankoren 10y agoI honestly don't know what to make of this comment. There hasn't been large scale naval combat, or challenged transoceanic supply lines since World War II. So... what's your point? Also, you seem to be implying that targeting supply lines is somehow illegitimate. It is legitimate. It's been a tactic of war since war evolved beyond cattle raids on neighboring villages. The fact that you're comparing this to a war crime, shows you don't know what you're talking about. Next you'll being saying false flags[0] and arming civilian[1] ships are war crimes. Again, they're not. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_flag#Use_in_warfare https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_flag#Use_in_warfare [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Q-ship https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Q-ship
- EliRivers 10y ago"Fully autonomous weapons are going to come, and the squeamishness around it is going to disappear when its necessity becomes apparent in a shooting war." The squeamishness around chemical, biological, nuclear weapons and expanding bullets didn't disappear. How do we know that fully autonomous weapons won't be categorised alongside them?