Lieutenant General Rick Lynch, commander of the US Army’s 3rd Armor Corps, has repeated his request for robots to be added to the military operating in the Middle East. According to Lynch, of the 155 loses the 3rd Army Corps has suffered, 122 could have been prevented by the use of autonomous robots. That’s right, autonomous. He doesn’t believe drones like the Predator or Reaper or other unmanned but human controlled robotic systems will get the job done. He is a very fervent believer that a robotic army should add to or replace portions of the current military system, and he has 4 specific uses where he believes robots should be used.
1) Mine Clearing – Currently their are 2 vehicles being uses to clear a road of mines and IEDs, the Buffalo and the Husky. The problem with these vehicles is that they still have to have soldiers inside them, and the possibilities for casualties is very high. Lynch wants these vehicles to move to unmanned versions:
“So when they come across that [improvised explosive device] and the IED detonates, there is a real good chance that a soldier was killed or severely injured,” Lynch said. “We’ve got to get those kids out of those route clearance vehicles, and I know the technology today allows us to do that.”
Having autonomous mine/IED clearing vehicles seems the most logical of his demands, and with so much other drone technology being used today it seems plausible as well. A mine clearing vehicle should not pose a large risk against humans or supplies since it would be used away from a base and most, if not all, soldiers in the general vicinity.
2) Surveillance of IED Hotspots – If an area is known to be repeatedly hit with IED attacks, a small group of soldiers will be put in the area to report any activity; this is called ‘persistent stare’. This has lead to soldiers being killed and/or kidnapped, so Lynch is recommending a different approach
Robots can take the soldiers’ places, he said. They can continuously keep watch on an area, and if nefarious activity is spotted, “We can take appropriate action. … We can kill those bastards before they plant the IEDs,” he added.
Armed robots have been used in this capacity before, but generally they are stationary, mounted behind sandbags, and remotely operated – even though they were designed to actively patrol an area. Lynch wants these systems to autonomously acquire a target and fire on it if it decides it is hostile. This is more of a question mark. What happens if an innocent person, like a farmer or herder, wanders into the robot’s field of fire? If the area is programmed into the robot as a hostile place where terrorists plant IEDs, how is the robot supposed to know that what it sees far off in the distance is really an innocent person feeding a goat? There is a fine line that the robot would have balance upon, but since its decisions will be black and white without the human element involved, it may kill anybody that enters its zone of enforcement.
3) Convoys – A lot of IED attacks focus on a detonation on a moving convoy. Convoys are incredibly important to the military as a way to transport food, weapons, fuel and water. This has made them a favorite target for IED attacks, so Lynch wants to make vehicles in a convoy carrying supplies have the ability to drive themselves.
“Why in the world does every cab have to be occupied by a human being?” he asked. “Why can’t we just have the lead vehicle manned? I’ve seen that technology demonstrated many times over the last 20 years, but it’s still not fielded.”
A burning fuel tanker after an attack on a convoy
This is another smart idea. There have been many demonstrations of vehicles that are able to follow at a safe distance behind a lead vehicle, and this has the possibility to drastically drop the number of IED casualties. The only problem is that an autonomous vehicle would not have the ability to think on the fly and react like a human driver, so should a vehicle need to move quickly and react like a human would, a robotic convoy truck may not make the same decision. The fact that there are no soldiers involved, except the lead truck, could lead to an exploitation of the robotic convoys and large losses of supplies.
4) Robot Warmachines – Lynch’s final desire is also the most troubling. It is an amalgamation of his first three ideas, and it involves tanks.
It’s wrong to assume that major combat operations will never return and future battles will all mimic the Iraq insurgency, he said. Combat vehicles such as tanks can operate with autonomy alongside manned vehicles. “If you have four tanks in a platoon, and each has four kids in a tank, is that really necessary?”
While the logic of saving the lives of tank operators is strong, the idea of having an autonomous tank platoon is flat out terrifying. This takes the idea of the persistent stare robots to the next, horrifying level. A question of military muscle also arises – Aren’t tanks a military systems that terrorists would have problems attacking? While a RPG attack can be devastating to light and medium tanks, there are reactive armor and active protection systems that can prevent an RPG attack from killing the crew or stop it from even hitting a tank. Also, light tanks are able to be outfitted with the Hellfire Missile system, allowing tanks vulnerable to RPG attacks to sit behind the front lines.
Controlled by humans = good. Controlled by artificial intelligence = very very bad
Lynch’s idea is to have the autonomous tanks be ‘wingmen’ to human controlled tank platoons, with the reasoning that they would operate in exactly the same manner as their human counterparts. With dominant fire power and protection, a malfunction of a tank platoon controlled by artificial intelligence would be devastating. The damage caused, and more importantly lives lost, due to a glitched tank should prevent this part of Lynch’s plan from going into effect.
The main idea that Lynch has wrong in his arguments for change is that he wants these systems to be autonomous. Military machines should not think and make decisions for themselves. A human operator should always be involved in order to keep accountability in check. Large, dominant military systems should not become autonomous due to the possible risks involved, especially if it is going to be used in conjunction with humans soldiers.
::from National Defense Magazine via Wired’s Danger Room::
::images from Essam Al-Sudani/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images & g2mil::
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I cannot understand why people like this robot mechanism this much.I actually don’t like it personally. I think that man is creating himself the weapon against the human society. I may be wrong but this is my thinking and for sure i will not buy any robot mechanics software at least in my home.