8 ms·

The ultra-lethal drones of the future

41 points by spking 12y ago

walshemj 12y ago
So ultra lethal is dead 2.0 kills you even deader than the pervious shooty /stabity technology.
- coldtea 12y ago
  Or you know, it's ultra-leathal in that it kills a larger percentage of targets more efficiently (e.g they are not talking about it being "more lethal" for a single person).
  - walshemj 12y ago
    or I could have been being sarcastic
    - coldtea 12y ago
      Sure, but sarcasm requires a specific target, and from your phrasing it was their (perceived by you) misuse of the term lethal. Being sarcastic is not a free pass.
- pavel_lishin 12y ago
  Could be wordplay. Ultra, as in above.
nonce42 12y ago
Whatever happens, we have got The Maxim gun, and they have not. -- Hilaire Belloc A basic assumption with drones is they are great because the US has them, but that's not always going to be the case. What worries me is what will happen when drones become widespread. Sooner or later someone will make the AK-47 of drones, and there will be millions of lethal drones around. I don't know what that will do for warfare, but it can't be good. World War I showed the difficulty of adapting to widespread machine guns, and the adjustment to widespread drones could be just as bad.
- throwaway5752 12y ago
  "A basic assumption with drones is they are great" I don't think this is a widely shared view.
  - jal278 12y ago
    It's interesting -- I would imagine a minority of Americans would support developing killer drones, because it is a terrible slope for the world as a whole to go down, yet our military -- largely because of game theory, will continue to develop them, likely to a poor outcome for the world. Perhaps our belief in game theory is a pretty miserable self-fulfilling promise
    - PavlovsCat 12y ago
      But "your" military is yours mostly in name, and in paying taxes. The profits of offensive wars do not go to you, and I would expect that overall, war destroys more wealth than it creates. Of course, for a robber this doesn't matter, but in the long run it means cutting off the branch one sits on, killing the host one feeds off. "If the totalitarian conqueror conducts himself everywhere as though he were at home, by the same token he must treat his own population as though he were a foreign conqueror." -- Hannah Arendt Was there ever an empire which exploited foreigners, but respected its own populace? Among any and all of them you will find classes of the population that profit, but the country as a whole? Can you have injustice on the outside and justice on the inside? While these are not rhetorical questions, you can guess what "my answer so far" is.. I think the poorer the outcome for the rest of the world, the poorer the outcome for inhabitants of the US, too. Including the elites, who are just feeding addictions to gain additional insecurities, if you ask me; "power" is just code for "I am scared and unable to create".
      - jal278 12y ago
        I'm no fan of imperialism or the military, but I think it is possible for a self-interested nation to treat its own citizens well while acting immorally abroad. However, I don't think such differential treatment is desirable, and it increasingly makes little sense as technology more deeply interconnects us over the trivial lines we draw in the sand to create discrete countries. I think we think along the same lines in terms of power, although I'd phrase it more in that power is self-perpetuating -- something that (like bureaucracy) ratchets up but is hard to prune. For example, even if most citizens of the world wanted more cooperation between their respective countries, and to dial back military developments such as drone warfare, the self-interested power accumulated in the government institutions of countries would likely resist.
stretchwithme 12y ago
How about those drones on Star Gate Universe? Relentless enough to drive you from the galaxy.
pokstad 12y ago
No mention of the super secret space drone??? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_X-37 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_X-37

41 points by spking 12y ago

walshemj 12y ago

So ultra lethal is dead 2.0 kills you even deader than the pervious shooty /stabity technology.

coldtea 12y ago
Or you know, it's ultra-leathal in that it kills a larger percentage of targets more efficiently (e.g they are not talking about it being "more lethal" for a single person).
- walshemj 12y ago
  or I could have been being sarcastic
  - coldtea 12y ago
    Sure, but sarcasm requires a specific target, and from your phrasing it was their (perceived by you) misuse of the term lethal. Being sarcastic is not a free pass.
pavel_lishin 12y ago
Could be wordplay. Ultra, as in above.

nonce42 12y ago

Whatever happens, we have got The Maxim gun, and they have not. -- Hilaire Belloc A basic assumption with drones is they are great because the US has them, but that's not always going to be the case. What worries me is what will happen when drones become widespread. Sooner or later someone will make the AK-47 of drones, and there will be millions of lethal drones around. I don't know what that will do for warfare, but it can't be good. World War I showed the difficulty of adapting to widespread machine guns, and the adjustment to widespread drones could be just as bad.

throwaway5752 12y ago
"A basic assumption with drones is they are great" I don't think this is a widely shared view.
- jal278 12y ago
  It's interesting -- I would imagine a minority of Americans would support developing killer drones, because it is a terrible slope for the world as a whole to go down, yet our military -- largely because of game theory, will continue to develop them, likely to a poor outcome for the world. Perhaps our belief in game theory is a pretty miserable self-fulfilling promise
  - PavlovsCat 12y ago
    But "your" military is yours mostly in name, and in paying taxes. The profits of offensive wars do not go to you, and I would expect that overall, war destroys more wealth than it creates. Of course, for a robber this doesn't matter, but in the long run it means cutting off the branch one sits on, killing the host one feeds off. "If the totalitarian conqueror conducts himself everywhere as though he were at home, by the same token he must treat his own population as though he were a foreign conqueror." -- Hannah Arendt Was there ever an empire which exploited foreigners, but respected its own populace? Among any and all of them you will find classes of the population that profit, but the country as a whole? Can you have injustice on the outside and justice on the inside? While these are not rhetorical questions, you can guess what "my answer so far" is.. I think the poorer the outcome for the rest of the world, the poorer the outcome for inhabitants of the US, too. Including the elites, who are just feeding addictions to gain additional insecurities, if you ask me; "power" is just code for "I am scared and unable to create".
    - jal278 12y ago
      I'm no fan of imperialism or the military, but I think it is possible for a self-interested nation to treat its own citizens well while acting immorally abroad. However, I don't think such differential treatment is desirable, and it increasingly makes little sense as technology more deeply interconnects us over the trivial lines we draw in the sand to create discrete countries. I think we think along the same lines in terms of power, although I'd phrase it more in that power is self-perpetuating -- something that (like bureaucracy) ratchets up but is hard to prune. For example, even if most citizens of the world wanted more cooperation between their respective countries, and to dial back military developments such as drone warfare, the self-interested power accumulated in the government institutions of countries would likely resist.

stretchwithme 12y ago

How about those drones on Star Gate Universe? Relentless enough to drive you from the galaxy.

pokstad 12y ago

No mention of the super secret space drone??? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_X-37 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_X-37