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[bobf <bobford79 AT yahoo.com>]

I almost didn't read this article in today's Washington Post.  I am not an 
enthusiast of military knowledge, and the title sounded a bit like Assimov.  
But, if the author has any credibilty, there is about to be an amzing 
transformation in the way power is applied in this world.  This is one of the 
most surprising articles I have read concerning 'anything' coming up in the 
near futre. It is absolutely fascinating. I wont try to give a summary, I'd 
probably explain it wrong.  But, this could indirectly affect everyone, and 
maybe in ways that aren't good for civil liberties; I know already I don't 
like the new applications of the unmanned aerial vehicles;  though; if 
someone has to have this technology, I'm glad we are to have it first.........

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Coming to the Battlefield: Stone-Cold Robot Killers
 
 
By John Pike
Sunday, January 4, 2009; Page B03 

Armed robotic aircraft soar in the skies above Pakistan, hurling death down 
on America's enemies in the war on terrorism. Soon -- years, not decades, 
from now -- American armed robots will patrol on the ground as well, 
fundamentally transforming the face of battle. Conventional war, even 
genocide, may be abolished by a robotic American Peace. 

The detachment with which the United States can inflict death upon our 
enemies is surely one reason why U.S. military involvement around the world 
has expanded over the past two decades. The excellence of American military 
technology makes it possible for U.S. forces to inflict vast damage upon the 
enemy while suffering comparatively modest harm in return. 

War is about the sacrifice of blood and treasure, and the American style of 
war is to substitute treasure for blood. From the early days of the republic, 
when Eli Whitney is said to have used interchangeable parts to manufacture 
superior muskets, to the invention of Gatling guns and Kevlar armor, American 
ingenuity has been devoted to devising ever more efficient ways of killing 
the enemy and preventing the enemy from killing us. 

One common factor in much of American military prowess is the surprisingly 
obscure fact of modern life known as Moore's Law. Gordon Moore, a co-founder 
of Intel, noticed nearly half a century ago that computing power seemed to be 
doubling about every two years. Laptops, cellphones, the Internet -- they're 
simply commentaries on Moore's Law. 


The rapid emergence of the armed unmanned air vehicles (UAVs) that roam over 
Pakistan is a sequel to Moore's Law. Onboard computers became far more 
powerful, so automatic pilots became far more competent. Signal processors 
became more sophisticated, facilitating collection and processing of more 
interesting intelligence. Global Positioning System receivers shrank and 
could be economically employed on small robotic aircraft. Precision-guided 
munitions could deliver lethal firepower. And so forth. 

The U.S. Navy has arguably moved farthest toward substituting treasure for 
blood. A generation ago the Reagan administration brought World War II-era 
battleships out of mothballs to provide gunfire support to onshore 
operations. With a crew of more than 1,500, these ships were designed to be 
manned by the low-paid draftees of the 1940s, not the more amply rewarded 
volunteers of the 1980s. The Navy couldn't afford them, and the ships were 
soon returned to mothballs. In their place, the Navy came up with the new 
DDG-1000 Zumwalt destroyer, an automated warship with a crew of only 150. 

The Air Force is also moving down this path. Long skeptical of UAVs, it has 
begun to embrace them as the future of air power. Piloted aircraft face 
fundamental limits of crew fatigue. Heavy bombers flying from the island base 
of Diego Garcia to Afghanistan would spend more than a dozen hours flying to 
and from the target area, leaving little time for loitering over it. In 
contrast, large bomber-size UAVs can spend days over the target. At some 
point in the next decade, the Air Force will begin replacing cockpits with 
robotic pilots. 

The Army has benefited far less than the Navy and the Air Force from the 
substitution of treasure for blood. In World War II, the Sherman tank had a 
crew of five. Sixty years later, the Abrams tank has a crew of four. In World 
War II, the M1 Garand rifle required one infantryman to pull the trigger, and 
today's M16 requires the same -- not exactly a testament to improved labor 
productivity. 

But now the Army stands on the threshold of one of the greatest 
transformations in war-fighting history, on the short list with steel and 
gunpowder. The Future Combat Systems program is aimed at developing an array 
of new vehicles and systems -- including armed robots. The robots of past 
science fiction were governed by Isaac Asimov's Three Laws, which precluded 
bringing harm to humans. But the real robots of the future will be different. 
Within a decade, the Army will field armed robots with intellects that 
possess, as H.G. Wells put it, "minds that are to our minds as ours are to 
those of the beasts that perish, intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic." 

Let us dwell on "unsympathetic." These killers will be utterly without 
remorse or pity when confronting the enemy. That's something new. In 1947, 
military historian S.L.A. Marshall published "Men Against Fire," which 
documented the fundamental difference between real soldiers and movie 
soldiers: Most real soldiers will not shoot at the enemy. Most won't even 
discharge their weapons, and most of the rest do no more than spray bullets 
in the enemy's general direction. These findings remain controversial, but 
the hundreds of thousands of bullets expended in Iraq for every enemy 
combatant killed suggests that it's not too far off the mark. 

Only a few troops, perhaps 1 percent, will actually direct aimed fire at the 
enemy with the intent to kill. These troops are treasured, and set apart, and 
called snipers. 

Armed robots will all be snipers. Stone-cold killers, every one of them. They 
will aim with inhuman precision and fire without human hesitation. They will 
not need bonuses to enlist or housing for their families or expensive 
training ranges or retirement payments. Commanders will order them onto 
battlefields that would mean certain death for humans, knowing that the worst 
to come is a trip to the shop for repairs. The writing of condolence letters 
would become a lost art. 




No human army could withstand such an onslaught. Such an adversary would 
present the enemy with the simple choice of martyrdom or flight. So equipped, 
America's military would be irresistible in battle. 

This would not be a panacea. Thugs would still rob pedestrians, organized 
crime would persist and so too would terrorists and other small bands of men 
of violence. But the large-scale organized killing that has characterized six 
millenniums of human history could be ended by the fiat of the American 
Peace. 

Genocide, and the failure of the outside word to intervene, could also become 
a thing of the past. The industrialized murder of the Holocaust could perhaps 
have been disrupted by Allied bombers, but subsequent genocides have been 
less institutionalized, and far less vulnerable to air power. Intervention 
would require infantry and a decision to accept casualties. Genocide 
prevention may be in the interest of our common humanity, but it has never 
been in the national interest. But with no body bags to explain to bewildered 
voters, America's leaders may be less hesitant in the future about imposing 
an end to atrocities in places such as Darfur. 

john AT globalsecurity.org 


John Pike is the director of the military information Web site 
GlobalSecurity.org. 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/01/02/AR2009010202191.html?hpid=opinionsbox1