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 @dr2chase @cstross @isaackuo You can do image recognition with insect hardware. It's why I don't expect we're going to see a "recognise faces" approach. Think "biting insect"; it's got several sorts of toxin and enough circuitry to go "is it warm?" and "does it have a heartbeat?" and some way to prefer stinging skin to armour. Add in a few simple eusocial rules and some return-for-reload capacity if you can, but even as a one-way munition, the cost per corpse is likely much lower this way.  @graydon @dr2chase @isaackuo Yup. Another thing: I think we're going to see the end of standardized uniforms/rank insignia, sooner rather than later. We've already seen the end of officers in braid and distinctive uniforms on the battlefield (snipers) but this is going to be orders of magnitude worse. I don't think we're going to get rid of uniforms. The potential benefits of trying to pretend to be local civilians are not going to be great when you've got a helmet, weapon, heavy backpack full of stuff, night-vision equipment, etc ... Well, it's certainly possible to try and visually break up the "standard" appearance of your helmet or service rifle. But a uniform already looks really different all the time just from the movement of limbs and different angles. Personally, I like to ponder audio sensing (with hidden ground based sensors). Disguising the clinking of your rifle isn't going to be so easy.  @isaackuo @cstross @graydon @dr2chase If you're an evil fucker then it depends on whose civilians you're trying to pretend to be: you'd be an irregular and thus not protected by most of the laws of warfare, but your opponent's false positives amongst their own population will be a thing. Plus the helmet's probably about to be a lot less useful and light, stowable weapons are still a thing when you're not on anti-armour duty. Given you're probably recon...  @pettter @dymaxion @cstross @graydon @dr2chase @isaackuo I don't think either party is fully adhering. I also do think there are glaring violation to them by Russia that are orders of magnitude worse than Ukraine's. Then there's also the Genocide Convention that is also clearly being violated by Russia and not by Ukraine. So this is a "Both sides are not equally bad" situation.    @dymaxion As if ruZZia cares much about conventions. They shell and bomb nuclear power plants, kindergardens, schools, hospitals! @wonka Shockingly, there are reasons for many of these laws and reasons why states signed them that don't have anything to do with human rights, too. @dymaxion @wonka @graydon @dr2chase @cstross Yeah, I didn't want to get into the legal and ethical considerations, since there are practical reasons to consider that I felt like diving into. Now, the thing is ... we don't have to just speculate on autonomous munition fratricide machines. We've had them for some time in the forms of mines and homing torpedoes. And these are still relevant as the heavy use in Ukraine shows. Basically, it's about defining a kill box. Mines are, of course 1/2 @dymaxion @wonka @graydon @dr2chase @cstross passively limited to an initially set kill box. Homing torpedoes, in contrast, need navigation capabilities to be able to use a kill box. But the idea is quintessentially the same as a mine field - the torpedo will try to kill anything it finds in the kill box (possibly with additional sensor profile parameters), but it will NOT try to kill something outside the kill box. This system isn't perfect, but it's a starting point. 2/2 @dymaxion @wonka @graydon @dr2chase @cstross Yeah, there's definitely limitations. It's like using artillery laid mines, although these could probably be reused so that alters the logistical calculations. I'm just pointing out that it IS possible to employ fully autonomous killbots, in a manner that is already familiar to military users, even without IFF systems. @dymaxion @wonka @graydon @dr2chase @cstross There's this vision that many are fascinated by, of locust swarms of drones sweeping the enemy off the battlefield. I can understand the appeal to Raytheons and Raytheon wannabes. Selling millions of expensive drones to the US military sounds like a pretty sweet way to rake in megabucks, right? But I'm more puzzled by how much this idea dazzles ordinary folks. Without full autonomy, massive drone swarms are a C3 non-starter. With it ... ehh ... @isaackuo @dymaxion @wonka @dr2chase @cstross The problem is incredibly hard. Rested, trained humans aren't good at it. (and in a conflict like Ukraine, with similar troops, uniforms, and equipment, it's even worse.) The capability to do "artificial biting insect" is near-term, if it's not poorly-distributed-present. I expect someone is going to go for what they can build. It's how we got chemical warfare in the Great War; it's at least a chunk of how we got napalm and cluster munitions. @graydon @dymaxion @wonka @dr2chase @cstross I don't really know precisely what you mean by an "artificial biting insect", but Ukraine is already using pretty much the least expensive FPV drones practical. If you want something smaller, it'll be more expensive and have much less range and endurance. @isaackuo @isaackuo Ukraine's adapting commercial hardware, like early Great War aircraft using rotary engines originally designed for motorcycles. A state-equivalent actor starting today and setting out to make an invader's costs unbearable isn't going to start there. There's work going into "looks like a bird", "smallest practical flying robot", and so on. "How small and cheap can something be and have a 5% PK against human targets for a day?" isn't a quadcopter. @graydon @dymaxion @wonka @dr2chase @cstross How do you know it's not a quadcopter? A quadcopter is extremely simple and cheap. The monospinner is even simpler and cheaper, but it's much slower and less maneuverable. There are a lot of cheap RC toy drones, including drones with only two props and motors. But these aren't maneuverable enough to attack a target. The quadcopter seems to be the cheapest option that's also maneuverable enough to be used as a guided weapon. @vatine @graydon @dr2chase @cstross @isaackuo Unfortunately, Russia doesn't agree with western conventions on which wounds are disabling, or which require care, evacuation or hospital treatment. Certainly autonomous tracking in case of communications loss is already a thing. But so is wired communications - an easier brute force solution, even if it obviously comes at the expense of payload and range. Both of these are in _current_ use in the war in Ukraine (not a few years from now - today). The thing is, they make the drones more expensive, and it's a tough balancing act both sides have to deal with - balancing drone expense vs capability. |
@cstross @isaackuo @graydon and also, image recognition is nothing like the LLM stuff, it trains fast and cheap and runs on tiny hardware (source: niece's friend's boyfriend who worked in that industry, also looking for a job; and TinyGo-powered flying drone demos, that recognize human faces, now).