Gregory's Server@graydon
The Geneva convention is pretty damn firm on the requirement to positively identify a target as a combatant, notwithstanding the massive criminal negligence we've seen from the US and Israel there, and even the Israelis are still meticulously faking a paper trail. I think there will be a lot of hesitancy to implement something that dumb, and even if you did, you'd need to implement serious IFF systems in them, which adds cost and attack surface. IFF hardware is usually pretty heavily protected with self-destroy-on-tamper devices etc, which is hard to do when you need it on munitions you're buying by the 100k, not to mention key distribution, etc. It's not that this is impossible, but it's neither cheap nor easy. Yes, folks outside of conventional militaries may do this stuff anyway, but it's not a straightforward set of choices even there — human in the loop solves a ton.
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@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. |
@dymaxion As if ruZZia cares much about conventions. They shell and bomb nuclear power plants, kindergardens, schools, hospitals!
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