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When the cost of these kinds of robot drops by another factor of ten, they're going to have the biggest impact on military security since the invention of nucle
by Estragon 16y ago
When the cost of these kinds of robot drops by another factor of ten, they're going to have the biggest impact on military security since the invention of nuclear weapons.
- frisco 16y agoWhy? They're already so cheap the military could buy an unlimited number of them. Or because people will use them to remove military security? I don't follow your logic.
- Estragon 16y agoOr because people will use them to remove military security? Exactly. Unless some kind of corresponding defense evolves, they're going to democratize sanitary application of force, which has largely been a privilege of governments until now. (Sanitary to the people ordering it, not to the people directly involved, obviously.) Can you imagine what ethnic cleansing would have looked like in the Balkans if the Serbs had been able to afford thousands of predator-style drones? It won't be long before the cost comes down to the point where they could have.
- krschultz 16y agoNot really, some of the tech on the predator is not cheap. The easy part is making the plane, I'm sure you could rig up a cessna like Hollywood rigs up stunt cars for remote control and you'd have a "UAV" (didn't Iran do that already?). The guided missiles, the communications, the optics and sensors, those are the hard parts. I honestly think a bunch of boots on the ground with rifles is the scariest way to do ethnic cleansing, if you just want to level houses you have artillery and tanks too. The predator is good for surgical strikes and intelligence, which a lot of enemies really don't care about.
- trunnell 16y agoI don't think it's the cost of the plane that is the limiting factor here. You might be underestimating the difference between this type of R/C plane and a military-class drone like a Predator. One of the more difficult challenges to overcome is the range of the communication link between the pilot and the plane. This guy demonstrated a range of mile or so. For many of the kinds of military uses that would have the "big impact" you're talking about, the plane would need over-the-horizon range-- which as a practical matter would mean satellite-based comm. So basically you need satellite launch capability to support this kind of project. The cost of that would be a limiting factor.
- danparsonson 16y agoI wonder how technically difficult it would be to utilise 3G mobile phone networks for cheaper remote control?
- rthomas6 16y agoProbably not TOO hard, but the main issue there is the communication would not be reliable enough for something real time that had a low failure tolerance, like controlling a plane. If some packets got dropped and had to be re-sent, it could mean that the plane crashes if the communication was some sort of emergency time-critical maneuver.
- aaronblohowiak 16y ago"it could mean that the plane crashes if the communication was some sort of emergency time-critical maneuver." You don't need a very quickly-responding plane to have a large impact on military tactics.
- wmf 16y agoThat's where the autopilot comes in.
- rdtsc 16y agoThe plane would have to be programmable and would have to support a semi-automated flying mode. Then there won't be a need for a high-capacity realtime data stream. But then the plane would have to have obstable avoidance, auto-pilot, and it must return back to within radio range if it flies too far.
- yummyfajitas 16y agoFar more difficult than deactivating/destroying the cell network.
- tibbon 16y agoDeactivating AT&T's 3G network just requires more than 10 iPhones in one room :)