8 ms·

Drones Used to Find Toy-Like “Butterfly” Land Mines

52 points by prostoalex 8y ago

d357r0y3r 8y ago
I understand there are many tech workers that flatly refuse to work on drone technology, especially if it may have military applications. Is there any affordance given for the possibility that some of this military technology will actually be used for good?
- nostrademons 8y ago
  Most of the good things in the modern world come from repurposed military technology - microwaves, computers, space exploration, satellites, GPS, modern mining & construction techniques, jet travel, interstate highways, antibiotics, synthetic rubber, encryption, the Internet. While I get why some people don't want to work on things that could potentially be used for evil, the dividing line between good and evil is often a lot blurrier in hindsight than it seems in the moment. Many of the most valuable technologies (see above) have come from the desire to kill people and not be killed in return, while many of the ideas that have killed the most people (communism, Nazism, eugenics, manifest destiny, crusades) have come from the desire to make a more perfect world.
  - miemo 8y ago
    (communism, Nazism, eugenics, manifest destiny, crusades) None of these are tech products, so it's apples to oranges. Additionally, just because most good things have come from military in the past doesn't mean that's the best way to produce good things, now or in general.
    - gmueckl 8y ago
      It is an especially bitter irony of history that only the necessities of wars and conflicts provided the resources to make certain leaps in tevhnological progress. Wartime economy allocates resources where they would never be directed in peaceful times. We all look back at the Apollo program with a kind of a nostalgic sorrow because many of its achievements have not been surpassed yet. We would be capable if we put the resources into a worthy successor project. But the truth is that Apollo was a cold war project intended as a propaganda campaign against the Soviets. It would never have happened without that conflict (including the Korea, Vietnam and Afghanistan wars).
      - yourapostasy 8y ago
        > ...Apollo was a cold war project intended as a propaganda campaign against the Soviets. I've also read the hypothesis that the Apollo project also served as a peaceful demonstration of ICBM capabilities without expending (and revealing actual capabilities of) real ICBMs. Kind of like applying an added layer of assurance in MAD, by demonstrating through technological affinity the missiles aren't duds and the claims of performance not fabrications. If so, then that's one helluva diplomatic gesture for the history books to cover in the future.
      - scotty79 8y ago
        > It is an especially bitter irony of history that only the necessities of wars and conflicts provided the resources to make certain leaps in tevhnological progress. I think this continues in US in some degree. US military gets as much money as it wants. Military spends how much money it wants on whatever research it wants. For me that's the secret weapon of US science. Other countries struggle to allocate any significant portion of the budget to research while in US it's easy because it goes through army under the guise of protecting the country.
        sitkack 8y ago
        And when DARPA was ARPA (name has switched a couple times), the Pentagon funded lots of pure research and research that would prevent wars. Afaik, DARPA projects have to a lethality metric for all research.
- golergka 8y ago
  It's only a thing inside a Silicon Valley bubble. There are plenty of people who are proud to make the world a better and safer place working for the military.
- gmueckl 8y ago
  Military technology is a wide and pretty vague term. A lot of technology is implicitly dual use. A nice example of an unexpected military use case for a completely innocent looking technology was a work that explored potential weak spots in a proposed tank design by using real time 3d graphics and order independent transparency in particular to estimate armor strength against attacks from different directions. Originally, OIT was developed for games and 3d data visualizations. I think that technology that can be used to protect people, especially civilians, should be developed. I know that I personally draw the line at weapoms platforms and weapon systems. You may develop and build them with the best intentions in mind ("we're at peace and this system is only a necessary deterrent"), but recent history tells me that once these systems are built and sold, they will be used by someone, somewhere to shoot at other people. Even the oh so pacifist Germany sells a lot of weapons and I think every type of weapon system sold to another country by Germany since the second world war has seen some action.
  - NotAnEconomist 8y ago
    I think you've killed less people working on literal sniper rifles for the military than working on the addictive feed dynamics of Facebook, given the Rohingya massacre and other social ills they've supported. I think a lot of people in tech work on really questionable projects that create huge social ills, then talk about "Well, at least we don't build weapons!" -- ignoring that when measuring human suffering, their unrestrained manipulation and exploitation causes much more than weapons of war do, in practice. So when unqualified, I tend to hear your argument as simply trying to hide the messiness of what you do, rather than than it's inherently more ethical than building weapons would be. tl;dr: I don't believe the military is less ethical, I think they're just more honest about what they do.
    - gmueckl 8y ago
      I never worked on social media; this does not interest me. I will agree that it has caused a lot of change and may have contributed to outbreaks of violence in the recent past. I could compare these conflicts to others in the past that were massively more devastating, but I wom't. I am not sure of this discussion of social media is framed correctly. At its core, all this social tech tries to satisfy the very basic human need for communication in novel ways. There is nothing bad about trying to achieve that. But somewhere along the way something unintended and bad happened. We need to find out what it is and how to fix it as a society. The underlying tech and concepts will never go away again. It can be used for good. We realized too late that we failed to use it properly.
- Pristina 8y ago
  if killing is self defense is morally permissible, then i can hardly see any reason why constructions of tools that can be used to effectively kill won't be also morally permissible.
Waterluvian 8y ago
What is the design process like for landmines? Do they consider if they look like toys? Do they put duds in a toy chest and see what a sample of children will pick out? This whole concept really upsets me to think about.
- chris1993 8y ago
  It's as if the post-conflict civilian deaths are a useful side-effect. Monstrous
- darkpuma 8y ago
  Years ago during the Soviet-Afghan War there was a lot of American media asserting that the Soviets had very evilly designed the mines specifically to look like toys with the design intent being to maim children. Few if any ever mentioned that the Soviets had stolen an American mine design (which the American media rarely if ever leveled criticism against.) >"In stark contrast to the lack of public commentary on the Dragontooth system, the subsequent Soviet analogue, the PFM-1, spurred a lot of controversy after being used in Afghanistan during the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan, being a key element leading to the International Campaign to Ban Landmines.[citation needed]" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BLU-43_Dragontooth#Overview https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BLU-43_Dragontooth#Overview To answer your question more directly, the (official) design intent for the BLU-43 was to create an antipersonnel mine that could be deployed from aircraft without requiring parachutes. To that end, they designed it to be similar to maple seeds (the sort that flutter through the air when falling.) It's doubtful that they considered the possibility that the mines would be perceived as toys, although it should probably be noted that children also like to play with maple seeds...
  - toufiqbarhamov 8y ago
    Yeah, but the issue is that the Soviet mines were bright green and being deployed in Afghanistan which is notably short on the greenery. By contrast America also had green mines, which they deployed in the jungles of Vietnam. I think the reality is that the Soviets had stocks of green mines and they used them before switching to regionally appropriate camo, but the PR damage had already been done. In addition America tended to use their mines in low population density areas as area denial weapons, while the soviets were a bit more... profligate in their spreading of these mines. About 40 people still die each year in Afghanistan from Soviet mines, and they’ve done fuck all to remedy the situation. In addition, the US involvement in Vietnam is still a national shame, but it tends to be focused on the broader picture of village massacres, Agent Orange, Daisy Cutters and death squads, as well as the sheer stupidity and cruelty of our intervention. Finally, the US invaded during an existing civil war, whereas the Soviets just straight-up invaded to conquer another region. I grant these are fine distinctions when we’re talking about mining civilians, but I think it goes to explain the perception of each country’s activities.
aaron695 8y ago
> In recent years children have made up the majority of victims killed or wounded by such weapons in Afghanistan. This is common in many landmined countries as time progresses, but it's boys not children, boys will be boys, they actively seek out unexploded ordnances and don't handle them correctly despite education campaigns. If only it was girls, we'd probably stop all landmines.
darkpuma 8y ago
> "More than a million Russian-made PFM-1 land mines—the most common butterfly type, possibly inspired by similar U.S. weapons deployed during the Vietnam War" Possibly? Why is this article softballing? The Russian version of the mine is a DIRECT ripoff of the American version. They look EXACTLY the same. Here is a BLU-43, the American version: http://www.big-ordnance.com/subs/BLU43OD.jpg http://www.big-ordnance.com/subs/BLU43OD.jpg Here is a PFM-1, the Russian version: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PFM-1#/media/File:Russische_Schmetterlingsmine_PFM-1.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PFM-1#/media/File:Russische_Sc... It's the same damn mine! There is no "possibly" about this. The author didn't lie but he's damn sure being dishonest. The article never even mentions the BLU-43 by name, which would allow more readers to look it up and decide for themselves.
- paradoxparalax 8y ago
  The author maybe being dishonesty, but his dishonesty would be, in contrary to what your comment appears to imply, Beneficial for the U.S. reputation, because creating a damn nice human-leg's unnecessary amputation machine is not something to be proud of, last time I checked. But then, you know...humans...
  - darkpuma 8y ago
    > "his dishonesty would be, in contrary to what your comment appears to imply, Beneficial for the U.S. reputation" I must have expressed myself poorly, I meant to suggest exactly such a bias. The 'American Exceptionalism' bias in American media continues decades after the fact.
    - paradoxparalax 8y ago
      Oh sorry, in this case, I have misunderstood your reasoning, and Yes, I agree entirely with your point. I have never heard about the term "exceptionalism" in this context before, but it is a true fact, and I myself usually just call it 'American Hipocrisy'. Not that other countries' don't do that too, but the americans can be really good at keeping a straight wooden hard face.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
basicplus2 8y ago
Seems odd to me to waste so much time and money and risk to lives when one can simply drive a mine flail through any given area to clear it of mines. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mine_flail https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mine_flail
- InclinedPlane 8y ago
  How expensive do you think it is to operate a mine flail? Especially factoring in transport to remote areas?
  - basicplus2 8y ago
    what price do you put on a life?
    - InclinedPlane 8y ago
      How much money are you spending on mine clearance globally? Because not everyone who is affected by mines has infinite money available.

52 points by prostoalex 8y ago

I understand there are many tech workers that flatly refuse to work on drone technology, especially if it may have military applications. Is there any affordance given for the possibility that some of this military technology will actually be used for good?

nostrademons 8y ago
Most of the good things in the modern world come from repurposed military technology - microwaves, computers, space exploration, satellites, GPS, modern mining & construction techniques, jet travel, interstate highways, antibiotics, synthetic rubber, encryption, the Internet. While I get why some people don't want to work on things that could potentially be used for evil, the dividing line between good and evil is often a lot blurrier in hindsight than it seems in the moment. Many of the most valuable technologies (see above) have come from the desire to kill people and not be killed in return, while many of the ideas that have killed the most people (communism, Nazism, eugenics, manifest destiny, crusades) have come from the desire to make a more perfect world.
- miemo 8y ago
  (communism, Nazism, eugenics, manifest destiny, crusades) None of these are tech products, so it's apples to oranges. Additionally, just because most good things have come from military in the past doesn't mean that's the best way to produce good things, now or in general.
  - gmueckl 8y ago
    It is an especially bitter irony of history that only the necessities of wars and conflicts provided the resources to make certain leaps in tevhnological progress. Wartime economy allocates resources where they would never be directed in peaceful times. We all look back at the Apollo program with a kind of a nostalgic sorrow because many of its achievements have not been surpassed yet. We would be capable if we put the resources into a worthy successor project. But the truth is that Apollo was a cold war project intended as a propaganda campaign against the Soviets. It would never have happened without that conflict (including the Korea, Vietnam and Afghanistan wars).
    - yourapostasy 8y ago
      > ...Apollo was a cold war project intended as a propaganda campaign against the Soviets. I've also read the hypothesis that the Apollo project also served as a peaceful demonstration of ICBM capabilities without expending (and revealing actual capabilities of) real ICBMs. Kind of like applying an added layer of assurance in MAD, by demonstrating through technological affinity the missiles aren't duds and the claims of performance not fabrications. If so, then that's one helluva diplomatic gesture for the history books to cover in the future.
    - scotty79 8y ago
      > It is an especially bitter irony of history that only the necessities of wars and conflicts provided the resources to make certain leaps in tevhnological progress. I think this continues in US in some degree. US military gets as much money as it wants. Military spends how much money it wants on whatever research it wants. For me that's the secret weapon of US science. Other countries struggle to allocate any significant portion of the budget to research while in US it's easy because it goes through army under the guise of protecting the country.
      - sitkack 8y ago
        And when DARPA was ARPA (name has switched a couple times), the Pentagon funded lots of pure research and research that would prevent wars. Afaik, DARPA projects have to a lethality metric for all research.
golergka 8y ago
It's only a thing inside a Silicon Valley bubble. There are plenty of people who are proud to make the world a better and safer place working for the military.
gmueckl 8y ago
Military technology is a wide and pretty vague term. A lot of technology is implicitly dual use. A nice example of an unexpected military use case for a completely innocent looking technology was a work that explored potential weak spots in a proposed tank design by using real time 3d graphics and order independent transparency in particular to estimate armor strength against attacks from different directions. Originally, OIT was developed for games and 3d data visualizations. I think that technology that can be used to protect people, especially civilians, should be developed. I know that I personally draw the line at weapoms platforms and weapon systems. You may develop and build them with the best intentions in mind ("we're at peace and this system is only a necessary deterrent"), but recent history tells me that once these systems are built and sold, they will be used by someone, somewhere to shoot at other people. Even the oh so pacifist Germany sells a lot of weapons and I think every type of weapon system sold to another country by Germany since the second world war has seen some action.
- NotAnEconomist 8y ago
  I think you've killed less people working on literal sniper rifles for the military than working on the addictive feed dynamics of Facebook, given the Rohingya massacre and other social ills they've supported. I think a lot of people in tech work on really questionable projects that create huge social ills, then talk about "Well, at least we don't build weapons!" -- ignoring that when measuring human suffering, their unrestrained manipulation and exploitation causes much more than weapons of war do, in practice. So when unqualified, I tend to hear your argument as simply trying to hide the messiness of what you do, rather than than it's inherently more ethical than building weapons would be. tl;dr: I don't believe the military is less ethical, I think they're just more honest about what they do.
  - gmueckl 8y ago
    I never worked on social media; this does not interest me. I will agree that it has caused a lot of change and may have contributed to outbreaks of violence in the recent past. I could compare these conflicts to others in the past that were massively more devastating, but I wom't. I am not sure of this discussion of social media is framed correctly. At its core, all this social tech tries to satisfy the very basic human need for communication in novel ways. There is nothing bad about trying to achieve that. But somewhere along the way something unintended and bad happened. We need to find out what it is and how to fix it as a society. The underlying tech and concepts will never go away again. It can be used for good. We realized too late that we failed to use it properly.
Pristina 8y ago
if killing is self defense is morally permissible, then i can hardly see any reason why constructions of tools that can be used to effectively kill won't be also morally permissible.

Waterluvian 8y ago

What is the design process like for landmines? Do they consider if they look like toys? Do they put duds in a toy chest and see what a sample of children will pick out? This whole concept really upsets me to think about.

chris1993 8y ago
It's as if the post-conflict civilian deaths are a useful side-effect. Monstrous
darkpuma 8y ago
Years ago during the Soviet-Afghan War there was a lot of American media asserting that the Soviets had very evilly designed the mines specifically to look like toys with the design intent being to maim children. Few if any ever mentioned that the Soviets had stolen an American mine design (which the American media rarely if ever leveled criticism against.) >"In stark contrast to the lack of public commentary on the Dragontooth system, the subsequent Soviet analogue, the PFM-1, spurred a lot of controversy after being used in Afghanistan during the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan, being a key element leading to the International Campaign to Ban Landmines.[citation needed]" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BLU-43_Dragontooth#Overview https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BLU-43_Dragontooth#Overview To answer your question more directly, the (official) design intent for the BLU-43 was to create an antipersonnel mine that could be deployed from aircraft without requiring parachutes. To that end, they designed it to be similar to maple seeds (the sort that flutter through the air when falling.) It's doubtful that they considered the possibility that the mines would be perceived as toys, although it should probably be noted that children also like to play with maple seeds...
- toufiqbarhamov 8y ago
  Yeah, but the issue is that the Soviet mines were bright green and being deployed in Afghanistan which is notably short on the greenery. By contrast America also had green mines, which they deployed in the jungles of Vietnam. I think the reality is that the Soviets had stocks of green mines and they used them before switching to regionally appropriate camo, but the PR damage had already been done. In addition America tended to use their mines in low population density areas as area denial weapons, while the soviets were a bit more... profligate in their spreading of these mines. About 40 people still die each year in Afghanistan from Soviet mines, and they’ve done fuck all to remedy the situation. In addition, the US involvement in Vietnam is still a national shame, but it tends to be focused on the broader picture of village massacres, Agent Orange, Daisy Cutters and death squads, as well as the sheer stupidity and cruelty of our intervention. Finally, the US invaded during an existing civil war, whereas the Soviets just straight-up invaded to conquer another region. I grant these are fine distinctions when we’re talking about mining civilians, but I think it goes to explain the perception of each country’s activities.

aaron695 8y ago

> In recent years children have made up the majority of victims killed or wounded by such weapons in Afghanistan. This is common in many landmined countries as time progresses, but it's boys not children, boys will be boys, they actively seek out unexploded ordnances and don't handle them correctly despite education campaigns. If only it was girls, we'd probably stop all landmines.

darkpuma 8y ago

> "More than a million Russian-made PFM-1 land mines—the most common butterfly type, possibly inspired by similar U.S. weapons deployed during the Vietnam War" Possibly? Why is this article softballing? The Russian version of the mine is a DIRECT ripoff of the American version. They look EXACTLY the same. Here is a BLU-43, the American version: http://www.big-ordnance.com/subs/BLU43OD.jpg http://www.big-ordnance.com/subs/BLU43OD.jpg Here is a PFM-1, the Russian version: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PFM-1#/media/File:Russische_Schmetterlingsmine_PFM-1.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PFM-1#/media/File:Russische_Sc... It's the same damn mine! There is no "possibly" about this. The author didn't lie but he's damn sure being dishonest. The article never even mentions the BLU-43 by name, which would allow more readers to look it up and decide for themselves.

paradoxparalax 8y ago
The author maybe being dishonesty, but his dishonesty would be, in contrary to what your comment appears to imply, Beneficial for the U.S. reputation, because creating a damn nice human-leg's unnecessary amputation machine is not something to be proud of, last time I checked. But then, you know...humans...
- darkpuma 8y ago
  > "his dishonesty would be, in contrary to what your comment appears to imply, Beneficial for the U.S. reputation" I must have expressed myself poorly, I meant to suggest exactly such a bias. The 'American Exceptionalism' bias in American media continues decades after the fact.
  - paradoxparalax 8y ago
    Oh sorry, in this case, I have misunderstood your reasoning, and Yes, I agree entirely with your point. I have never heard about the term "exceptionalism" in this context before, but it is a true fact, and I myself usually just call it 'American Hipocrisy'. Not that other countries' don't do that too, but the americans can be really good at keeping a straight wooden hard face.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

basicplus2 8y ago

Seems odd to me to waste so much time and money and risk to lives when one can simply drive a mine flail through any given area to clear it of mines. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mine_flail https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mine_flail

InclinedPlane 8y ago
How expensive do you think it is to operate a mine flail? Especially factoring in transport to remote areas?
- basicplus2 8y ago
  what price do you put on a life?
  - InclinedPlane 8y ago
    How much money are you spending on mine clearance globally? Because not everyone who is affected by mines has infinite money available.