3 ms·

Assymetric warfare is such that you are mainly trying to not kill civilians. A teleoperated bot that doesn't fear for its life is better suited to storm a city

Assymetric warfare is such that you are mainly trying to not kill civilians. A teleoperated bot that doesn't fear for its life is better suited to storm a city building by building. Symmetric warfare will always include nukes. There is a huge risk, regardless of the boots/bots ratio on the ground.

gaius 18y ago
Technically asymmetric warfare is such that you are only trying to kill civilians.
- hugh 18y ago
  Well no, asymmetric warfare is any warfare where the two parties differ substantially in strength. In Iraq at the moment, for instance, we're trying to kill the enemy while the enemy doesn't seem to care whether they kill our soldiers or random civilians, but it would remain asymmetric even if the enemy would be so kind as to restrict themselves to trying to kill our soldiers. Unless you're saying that the enemy in Iraq counts as "civilians" because they're not part of any proper and recognized army, but that's a rather point-missing definition of "civilian", since the defining characteristic of a civilian is whether they're engaging in combat.
  - logjam 18y ago
    "The enemy?" You mean the people whose country we invaded?
    - hugh 18y ago
      In the interests of keeping extremely boring politically-charged semantic arguments away I'll resist the temptation to reply to that one.
      - logjam 18y ago
        In other words, in the interests of not showing you are able to support your argument, you choose not to try to support your argument. Gotcha. Next time, please don't inject politically charged arguments into this kind of discussin.
  - gaius 18y ago
    It is not such a stretch to envision a world in which we have flocks of these circling endlessly over "enemy" population centres waiting targets of opportunity. Our own people barely even need to be aware that we're doing it, no body bags coming home, no loved-ones overseas for years, it will no more make it to the news than when a Tomahawk is fired now. That is a terror weapon, in the most literal sense.
    - breck 18y ago
      Well put. That being said, I'd prefer this scenario to the present one with body bags coming home. That is, as long as I'm still living in the U.S., away from the perpetually aloft drones.
- ivankirigin 18y ago
  "Technically asymmetric warfare is such that you are only trying to kill civilians." People that make car bombs are not civilians. But I doubt we want to have a terrorists-are-freedom-fighters--no-they're-not thread on HackerNews.

gaius 18y ago

Technically asymmetric warfare is such that you are only trying to kill civilians.

hugh 18y ago
Well no, asymmetric warfare is any warfare where the two parties differ substantially in strength. In Iraq at the moment, for instance, we're trying to kill the enemy while the enemy doesn't seem to care whether they kill our soldiers or random civilians, but it would remain asymmetric even if the enemy would be so kind as to restrict themselves to trying to kill our soldiers. Unless you're saying that the enemy in Iraq counts as "civilians" because they're not part of any proper and recognized army, but that's a rather point-missing definition of "civilian", since the defining characteristic of a civilian is whether they're engaging in combat.
- logjam 18y ago
  "The enemy?" You mean the people whose country we invaded?
  - hugh 18y ago
    In the interests of keeping extremely boring politically-charged semantic arguments away I'll resist the temptation to reply to that one.
    - logjam 18y ago
      In other words, in the interests of not showing you are able to support your argument, you choose not to try to support your argument. Gotcha. Next time, please don't inject politically charged arguments into this kind of discussin.
- gaius 18y ago
  It is not such a stretch to envision a world in which we have flocks of these circling endlessly over "enemy" population centres waiting targets of opportunity. Our own people barely even need to be aware that we're doing it, no body bags coming home, no loved-ones overseas for years, it will no more make it to the news than when a Tomahawk is fired now. That is a terror weapon, in the most literal sense.
  - breck 18y ago
    Well put. That being said, I'd prefer this scenario to the present one with body bags coming home. That is, as long as I'm still living in the U.S., away from the perpetually aloft drones.
ivankirigin 18y ago
"Technically asymmetric warfare is such that you are only trying to kill civilians." People that make car bombs are not civilians. But I doubt we want to have a terrorists-are-freedom-fighters--no-they're-not thread on HackerNews.