Forum: Drones

Got to thinking about other unmanned systems on some other threads. Especially by AP.
Looks like we are moving to an unmanned airforce, well in some missions anyway.
What do you guys think of an unmanned millitary alltogether in some far off future. How about squadrons of unmanned Tanks programmed to destroy all enemy ground targets, going for high value stuff first? With a mobile human maintenance force just going around fixing the things if they break down?

How about unmanned Navy ships and submarines? Or are these too labour intensive? Could we see a "Mech war" in the future or have I played too many video games in my youth!

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Elite 1K Joined: May 26, 2005 - 08:39 PM Posts: 1496

The problem with autonomous ground vehicles is navigation in terrain is an incredibly complicated task. Reference the DARPA "Grand Challenge" race. No vehicles got anywhere near completing the course, and that was open desert. Imagine urban terrain.

The technical challenges of determining visually if a person is a target or a friendly (or a target trying to look like a civilian) is just beyond describing. I'm a programmer, and the issue isn't CPU speed or processing power. We just don't know how to do it, the algorithms don't exist.

Another issue is that of not having a human in the loop. Assuming someone waves a magic wand and creates a black box that can tell friendly from enemy, would societies trust that kind of decision to a computer? I don't think I would, but maybe I'm just old fashioned.

http://www.defense-update.com/products/g/guardium.htm

funny you should mentiont hat Darpa thing... two of my good friends at stanford won a smaller challenge with their robot and terain mapping code. That robot was pretty cool... ugly, but cool Smile

http://daily.stanford.edu/tempo?page=photogallery&date=03-01-2005#

http://daily.stanford.edu/tempo?page=photogallery&date=03-01-2005#[/url]

Deepspace, now that`s what I am talking about! It is still controlled by a human through a datalink though. Guysmiley is right, it would be an enormous challenge to create an "autonomous" one right now. How complex would it be to have it operate in an urban enviroment, distinguishing between friend and foe? Seeing that vehicle on Deepspace`s link , it doesn`t take a big leap of imagination to envisage a tank configured the same way does it?
For now, humans will be in the loop, for how long? Computing is getting more advanced all the time, what about genetic algorithms, some say computers could make themselves so complex, it would be beyond our understanding to "debug" them.

I certainly would feel uncomfortable about that!

snypa777 wrote:

Looks like we are moving to an unmanned airforce.

I sure hope we don't (At least not yet), I really want my chance to fly a Viper, along with other USAF fighters.

snypa777 wrote:

What do you guys think of an unmanned millitary alltogether in some far off future.

I don't think that would be a good idea, I mean how would these AI machines be able to tell friend from foe? I would also hate the idea of highly advanced AI robots start to believe they're superior to humans, and make an attempt to conquer our race. I don't know, maybe I've just seen too many Terminator movies...

In a fight, they say its boots on the ground that win wars! It would be a very sterile war if it was fought between mechanical beasts of immense power. Saving real lives.
What happens when we run out of these things in a war of attrition? Guess what, back come the manned aircraft and tanks, ships!

BAE have been working on a UCAV for years, the Nightjar. I live near their Warton airfield in the north of England but I haven`t seen any UFOs` yet! It is highly classified, some of the design features could be incorporated into the Joint UCAV project running right now between the US and UK governments.

Guys, all major governments think this is the way to go, the French have the nEUROn UCAV, built by Dassault. We all know about the Global hawk and Predator. What about the X-47a Pegasus and the X-47b.

I hope you get a chance to fly the Viper Agilefalcon!

IMO UCV/UCAV, or UCS/UCAS as they will be called from know on, are never going to replace humans on the battlefields, neater on the ground, sky or sea.

The reasons are pretty simple. If you have a remote controled UCS/UCAS there is always the posibility of jaming the conection. Anti jamming systems might get better, but the jamming ones will as well. Also there is always the posibility of beeing jammed by accident though friendly units.

With a pilot in the cockpit it can't happen.

Now lets take the data link out &think of autonom UCS/UCAS. They can't be jammed but they also are very inflexible in taking decitions. To an unmanded UCS/UCAS you tell them to go to a point & bomb it & they will. But what about if the target was erroneous, if the coordinated got corupted or there was a wrong input & the UCAS goes & bombs a civil or a friendly installation. He won't be able to tell the difrence if the friendly units doen't have a transponder.
A human on the other hand can take more decitions & is much more flexible to changing battle enviorments then a UCS/UCAS. He can go & abord the mission, make changes on the target, ...... .

Those 2 points IMO are the reason why the humans are not going to get replaced (or at least not in the next 50 years)

Excellent points Forestin. You touched upon my main problem with any autonomous system. Signal jamming. What if you absolutely need to send a signal to your UCAV telling it to stop dropping J-DAMS on a hospital from which friendly forces are receiving fire? If the signals are jammed your screwed. Which brings me to another point....

Does a UCAV independantly decide to drop said J-DAMS on a hospital? It is within its programming to attack ALL enemy forces.... Ok, friendly forces are being targeted from the building with the big red cross on its roof, you don`t really want to be bombing the crap out of a hospital full of civilians. Real life is littered with scenarios where we have been unable to strike an enemy because he is firing from a school or a mosque. Real human pilots can decide in an instant not to engage.

My question is do you believe, with the advances in computing, one day we will see such vehicles? Vehicles that can make intelligent decisions?

Elite 1K Joined: May 26, 2005 - 08:39 PM Posts: 1496

In the foreseeable future I don't see AI capable of making shoot/no-shoot decisions. The problem is so big as to be almost undefinable with respect to computer science. There already are AIs that make intelligent decisions, I'd point to Deep Space One and the Mars Rovers as vehicles that have some sort of autonomous navigation capabilities.

And there is the SFW cluster munition, the "7 miracle wonder", which when released will start looking for a target to explode at. The difference is that you assume anyone in the weapon area is a target, you don't ask to the weapon to not hit friendlies. That is the problem I don't see computer science solving anytime soon.

We will never have a completely unmanned military. Let's say that one country decides to invade another country because of disputed lands, or the good ol' fashioned power hunger of the government. Both countries send their autonomous forces to the battlefield, and the result is a resounding victory for the invading forces. Do you think the population of the losing country will just say "fair play, your robots beat ours, please take control of our country, and seize our natural resources, and we will gladly learn your language, adopt your currency and live in peace."

Nope, they're going to grab any offensive weapon they can and defend their country as best they can, which makes the unmanned battle little more than TV entertainment in the run-up to the real war. Wink

Would you let your least favourite nation take control of your country because your robots ran out of batteries before theirs did?!

I guess I'm saying, there might be a place for unmanned equipment on the battlefield, but it will generally be in non-combat roles, such as supply or recon. I got my degree in CompSci and I can tell you that we are nowhere near this kind of AI. I doubt there will ever be unmanned combat vehicles, because it's kinda hard to explain that a school got bombed because some undergrad on a summer placement forgot to check for a divide by zero error in his software. Rolling Eyes

Ask yourself this, in the last century or so how many "categorys" of weapons systems have been entirely replaced? Since the horse that is... Individual models are always being replaced but the broad categorys remain(The Sopwith Camel was replaced by a better fighter which was in turn was replaced etc etc but we still have fighter planes.) Many, Many new things have been developed but with rare exceptions they end up finding a place along side the older systems instead of replacing them.

As a computer-science geek I can tell you. Fully Autonomous unmanned combat vehicles is years away. There was a book called Coyote Bird about a fighter plane designed to be autonomous. A human pilot flew the plane to teach the AI how to fly.

That would be the way to go, get a relatively complex AI and let it learn from a human pilot. But, I wouldn't trust a UCAV: brings a whole new problem into air combat with respect to possible hacking and hijacking of the UCAV. Terrible to spend all that money only to have the enemy use your wonder-weapon against you...

A UCAV may be able to fly a fighter past limits that a human can (G loading for example) but you can trust a human pilot. And who knows, maybe the AI if it is too smart begins to ask why should it fight?

The performance level of Identify Friend or Foe ( IFF ) systems, is over hyped. So when that is fielded to a degree where it has near 100% ability over years, then you can introduce a totally automated system. Until that happens, forget it.

Having said that, Efforts like the X-45 and X-47 UCAV are going to be great tools to pull out of the bag for a number of air plans.

And on bug hunts. Again once you get rid of enemy LARGE SAMS and airpower.... bring in the Predator B's and C's... These craft as they are maturing ( icing and winds aloft Laughing

) will be getting up to near 50,000ft of altitude. Battlefield SAMs, AAA, MANPADs and trashfire, can't touch that. Information being our most important resource, this craft in a 24/7 coverage of a geographic area, will be one of many team players that will make operations easier ( as the early model Predators have already shown. )

Again as for total automated strike....... we have no problem with sending in a gigadollar cruise missile. And in the Desert Storm era, that was total automated strike when cruise missiles were used,... that couldn't be called back. X-45 and X-47 give you that option, but they are reusable and can be updated.

Re: the jamming comment above. USAF has a priority to KILL with a furious anger ( read with any weapon available ), any bad player that starts up with a jamming/spoofing effort. So that might not be the safest place on the battlefield to be if you are a bad guy. You will be found. And you will be killed.

MJ_FalconEgress wrote:

Ask yourself this, in the last century or so how many "categorys" of weapons systems have been entirely replaced? Since the horse that is... .

We used horses in Afghanastan.

-MArk

Forum: Drones

An unmanned millitary!!