Robot Warriors.....

[Mills75]

http://aolsvc.news.aol.com/news/article ... 1209990001

looks like the future for America's military is in our own brand of hardcore terminators lol.. I feel also of course there will always be a need for real soldiers and commanders to oversee operations but I love this step of placing vehicles on the front lines instead of our men and women.It may not be right where we want it at this point but i'm sure over the next few years this stuff will become a very viable solution to us losing the lives of our soldiers.I like this move into robotics plus Pittsburgh has a great reputation for robotics and i'm sure our boys and girls at Carnegie Mellon University will have more than a hand in all apsects of this journey in robotic soldiering..If i was an opposing soldier i would crap my tighty whities if i saw a mean and cold killing machine roll over the hill coming after me with one intention..it would be time to bend over and smooch the keister bye bye..lol

lol from the movie the predator.....there's no killing what can't be killed and no stopping what can't be stopped that is one bad arse lawnmower lol..

[Bill Glasheen]

Believe it or not, Jeff, this is evolutionary rather than revolutionary.

We already use these kinds of robots to enter buildings with bombs in them. The robots are used to retrieve, move, and sometimes disable the bombs. The worst case scenario is some megabucks blown to smitherines.

And when you think about it, a modern cruise missile behaves a whole lot like a single-use robot.

On election day in Iraq, a handful of insurgents outside the green zone fired a rocket and got a lucky hit. (They do it all the time, and generally miss badly) Well a drone (a model plane with a camera) was in the air, and caught the thing on video. The drone then followed the men jumping into their vehicle and escaping. It kept them in sight until our troops could apprehend and detain them. I presume they had a very bad night that night...

Helicopters were flying for years before someone thought to put some missile launchers on them. Now we have all kinds of nasties fluttering the skies. It'll only be a matter of time before someone takes existing robots and puts automatic weapons or maybe a few hellfire missiles on them. I believe we already have drones that fire missiles.

My guess is that another good use may be retrieving wounded in a battle zone. The enemies we face today don't care what color you wear, and wouldn't think twice of using medical personnel as hostages or boobytrapping their own wounded. Robots can deal with these situations quite nicely.

At the end of the day though you still need good intelligence. That - and not technology - is the biggest thing we lack in the war on terror. We have serious language and cultural barriers that need to be bridged before we understand the mind of those who would have us exterminated.

- Bill

[Mills75]

good stuff..I did see the drone with the missiles before in fact there was that big thing when the war in Afghanistan began about whether or not Tommy Franks was right when he didn't fire on what appeared to be Osama Bin Laden and some of his top boys..I heard that he was given the go ahead but chose not to fire the missile from the drone or something and it was debated back and forth like crazy for a while..so yeah there is alot of stuff out there that's for sure..I like the new thing they have on the jets it's like a big laser on the front of big jets that can knock down nuclear weapons when they're launched hopefully intercepting them in their own half of the world lol..
I heard we have a couple of those ready to go if needed..
I like the electromagnetic pulse too that's some nifty tool there isn't it like some kind of fiber dropped that whacks out all power..

[Bill Glasheen]

I like the electromagnetic pulse too that's some nifty tool there isn't it like some kind of fiber dropped that whacks out all power..

We already have all kinds of electronic warfare that is put to use when we do things like bomb a major city. It's been used in Bagdad many times.

The problem with emf (the electromagnetic pulses you spoke of) is that they don't discriminate. With enough power, you'll fry any silicon-based devices in the area - including jets in the sky. Oops...

A few survivalists out there (like one of my students) actually own tube ham radios in case of a massive emf attack. Virtually all electronics will be blown, but the tube-operated stuff will still work.

- Bill

[gmattson]

Stephen Coonts' Hong Kong

A Jake Grafton Novel.

A major segment of the novel involves the use of Robot Soldiers. Lots of detailed explanation on how these robots work will be of interest to many science fiction fans. However. . . I wouldn't be surprised if much of this technology is possible in near future.

[RACastanet]

"A few survivalists out there (like one of my students) actually own tube ham radios in case of a massive emf attack. Virtually all electronics will be blown, but the tube-operated stuff will still work."

That would be me. I am not actually a survivalist, more of a nostalgia-ist. Somestimes I go into my radio closet and turn them on just to smell the tubes heating up and some of the ozone created. Plus the whine in the signal from old style superhet receivers takes me back about 40 years.

Military and industrial electronics are hardened against EMT so the would likely survive an EMT pulse. However, the civilian world would be thrown back into the 19th century. All modern automobiles produced since the late 70s would die. By the way, my MGB has the traditional points and condenser ignition system so it would run.

GE was once a major supplier of vacuum tube technology. In a secret corner of the tube plant in Owensboro KY they made the military vacuum tubes. As late as 1985 they were producing ceramic tubes for military use... they were about the size of a garden variety pea. Because of the physical size and ruggedness they were EMT proof.

Here is where it gets interesting... These tubes were used in fighters and bombers for critical systems such as avionics, communications and radar. The Russian planes also had vacuum tube based electronics.

It would not surprise me if there were still some critical military or government systems that were tube based, at least as a back up.

Rich

[Bill Glasheen]

Thanks for correcting my electronics language (emf = electomotive force, and not the emt we are speaking of). And yes, survivalist isn't quite the right description for you.

But if anyone wanted to be a survivalist, my friend Rich knows all the right stuff. It's a kind of obsessive hobby with him. No matter what Rich does, he always has a Plan B, Plan C, and sometimes a Plan D. It's what floats his boat.

That's why we keep him around...

- Bill

[RACastanet]

As I think about it the proper term may be EMP not EMT. I'll need to look into that.

The pulse would be a product of a very high altitude burst by a thermonuclear device that produces minimum blast but maximum radio spectrum energy. Anything with an 'antenna' would fry. What makes it so hard to protect against is that the power cords, printer cables speaker wires, spark plug wires etc. would serve to pick up the pulse and deliver it to the guts of the electronics.

Yes, GE made this stuff (all sold off to Martin Marietta over 10 years ago). A plant in FL built the 'neutron' detonator and a plant near Philly made the 're-entry' system. The detonator looked like a D cell battery and most locals thought that is what they made. The re-entry system was made for survivability of multiple warhead drops (MIRV). If done incorrectly, the first blast would destroy the other bombs, thereby wasting nuclear warheads. Most of the locals thought the GE plant made stuff for Apollo or the shuttle.

The re-entry vehicles were so good they could drop a bomb within a 100 foot radius of the intended target, and that was before the GPS system existed.

The Russians could not get much closer than a mile or two so they built 50 megaton bombs capable of a destruction radius of 50 miles. Close was good enough. The US warheads were all under 10 megatons since we were confident in the precision of the delivery device. Neat huh?

Rich

Rich

[Mills75]

all very interesting stuff that I like to know about and I like how survivalists keep a host of plans and backups you really never know when something is going to go down so i don't balme them and think it's kind of smart to be at least somewhat prepared in an emergency.Another thing I saw that i thought was neat were these military combat uniforms that were almost invisible in the sun that was cool but I didn't get to see to much info on that one and also I saw they developed a system that tracks sniper bullets back to where the shot was fired from so you can easily locate a sniper..and speaking of snipers they fascinate me i love to hear their stories..

i watched a story about a guy named chuck mawhinny a marine sniper in vietnam who had a great number of kills and another guy named carlo's hathcock also from vietnam their guns are supposed to be in some kind of marine sniper hall of fame...there were others to but i can't recall the names one put a bullet through the other guys scope and into his eye killing him in vietnam.

my favorite sniper story of all time though is the one in world war two i think enemy at the gates which i have to see sometime is a movie about it. A guy named walter Koenig was a super sniper and head of the sniper's for germany and he went after and stalked a famous Russian sniper but the russian killed Koenig in a freak type event when koenig killed another guy with the russian and the russian saw his location and got the kill.I also learned how the gilly suits they made originated from Scotland something about scottish farmers i think..very cool and interesting stuff i think.. oh and i never knew until i watched that show about snipers that I loved and thought was very interesting that many women in russia during world war two were snipers and very good ones also..