Straight out of a Fast & Furious movie. You can(!) make this shit up.
But as a person in tech, where all my values are directed towards "making a better world"... this also goes against every ideal we have. Unless you count living in a world where we have the ability to exterminate a large amount of people without proportional retaliation as a "better world", in a non-nuclear way.
We don't use biological weapons, so why use seeing robots with rockets on them? Oh yeah I forgot, we can't "catch a disease" from these robots, and they have a "limited" damage capability, unlike bio-warfare that can go out of hand and can poison lands.
Coincidentally, the second point also means that we'll have to make a lot of them, and gosh darn it we'll have to build more factories and supply jobs to people. Wait a min...
I'm really happy that less marines will be put in harms way when they try to launch missiles from their shoulders (also crazy if you think about it too much), but they did sign up for it, and they're not facing an army that can comprehend what's coming towards them.
I've got competing opinions in my head, but one thing is for sure, autonomous warfare can either be a chess game that countries play (as a proxy for all the human lives), or the final game we'll play.
Ukraine using cardboard drones to blow up Russian tanks, Hamas using quads to hit targets. Eventually all warfare will be done this way, and every actor will have access to autonomous technologies.
I argue it is a good thing; the goal in warfare is to negate the enemy's ability to continue their campaign, strategically as well as economically. Historically, manpower was the source of economic production as well as strategic advantage, so warfare focused on killing people. In a world where the strategic and economic targets are machinery rather than people, the number of human casualties decreases. Target automated factories and caches of autonomous weapons, force surrender, less people die.
It also democratizes access to force, no more will the ability to establish sovereignty be limited to those will large populations. It levels the playing field, like firearms did, and reduces the ability for despots to concentrate power. It is the great equalizer 2.0.
Of course, during the process of normalization of fully mechanized warfare, there will be asymmetry and people will die. But I believe the end result of this is a more peaceful world.
There's always the old chestnut that if your country doesn't develop it, another country (or well-funded faction) with fewer scruples will, and if they think that their tech gives them a significant advantage over you, war is more likely (because they will have a much stronger belief they can win / win at a lower cost).
That's also why we see slick video reveals of stealth bombers and missiles nowadays. The best weapon is one you never have to use in anger.
Pretty neat story :)
What you're saying is lets send our soldiers (human beings) into a dangerous situation where they can get killed.
If warfare still exists I would rather have robots fighting robots and remove humans from the equation altogether. Second best is to minimize casualties from "our side". Yes, that's terrible but it's also more humane.
In war soldiers get killed, this typically escalates violence which increases to both sides. It makes the war more bloody and more personal. Drones are terrible but they significantly reduced US casualties in the war against ISIS. There's collateral damage, but that happens for human attacks as well.
In fact, with robots we don't need lethal weapons at all. A recent US drone strike killed a terrorist with flying knives to avoid hurting his family. If a soldier was physically there they would have to start shooting and blowing up the region so no one will shoot back at them. A robot/drone wouldn't have that problem.
Don't get me wrong, I'm scared of many aspects related to robots in these scenarios. Specifically the ability of a minority elite controlling the masses. But I also think that robots can help remove a lot of the value/incentive of wars. If countries only sacrifice robots during wars, why fight at all? Use economics policies instead. Maybe we can call it Pax Robota...
* The "no human in the loop" combat robot is deployed into an area with non-combatants, but wrongly classifies them as enemy combatants.
* The "no human in the loop" combat robot gets damaged while in active combat, forgetting the concept of "friendlies"
* The "no human in the loop" combat robot gets hacked. All sorts of ways this could go badly. If they're hacked en-masse that's potentially amplified dramatically.
Counterpoint: it’s an anti-tank rocket. Not a machine gun. (Obviously, they’ll also put a machine gun on it.)
Counterexample:
https://www.wjcl.com/article/officers-kill-man-who-killed-a-...
And there are countless other actual police dogs hurt or killed by violent offenders.
Sending actual dogs in to snoop out bad guys, who then shoot the police dog, sadly happens. Send in a robot with a rocket launcher, the bad guy is like oh fuck this bad guy nonsense, and the robot dog just has to recharge batteries.
If you kill a cop's dog, you will face the death penalty.
What would you expect them to do? Play fetch with it?
As for why the dog form factor, I'm betting it'll be because a dog form factor makes for a much cheaper swarm than a tank form factor. Less mass to move about so a smaller power pack, too
Still, I share your skepticism of these robot dogs. They seem like a solution looking for a problem.
Edit: Why would a robo dog necessarily fall over? They could take a wide stance and essentially become a tripod if they need stability.
That's just what they do. Several Youtubers have fired guns off the robot dogs and even firing straight ahead can knock them over. Non autonomous tanks have navigated stairs just fine for the FBI and SWAT teams they do it all the time.
Maybe four legs provides better all-terrain capabilities at lower parts cost than a treaded vehicle?
The special forces ideal is small packages with large firepower. I can not imagine anything that better meets that definition than quadracopter scouts and robot dogs with missile launchers.
Falling over after the shot is irrelevant. Basic marksmanship training teaches recruits to pull the trigger until the shot going off surprises them. We only care about what happens next if we want a quick follow up shot, which is not possible with single shot rocket launchers.
EDIT or, worse, ping your location every X seconds on this band, and let us look at the audio/video when Y command is received.
If its remotely activated with the same control channel as the trigger, that seems like less of a "safety" and more of a "shooty".
Another problem is agility of the robot. Armor in a well managed battlefield will have an infantry screen. That is why getting close enough for a kill is hard. To avoid getting shot by defending forces, the robot would need to race in, quickly changing direction, and pop up close enough for a kill. I've seen robot dogs going through their paces and they don't look nearly capable enough for this.
The article neglects to mention that shipping is $1000, according to the Unitree website.
And also for the exact opposite: the Ukrainian conflict sees similar tracked robots used to place landmines.
https://old.reddit.com/r/CombatFootage/comments/17ax9mx/russ... ("Russians watch Ukrainian WALL-E laying mines (subtitles)")
The owners were making behave like a playful puppy and holy hell was it agile and fun to play with.
it sat up and begged, it jumped back and forth like a puppy that wants to play would do... it rolled over and flipped itself back onto its feet.
amazing tech with a very short battery life.
