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There have been robots patrolling the sunny sands of Iraq since the initial invasion, but until now, they've merely been there to scope stuff out. That was then, this is now. According to Noah over at the always-awesome Danger Room blog, the military has just deployed their new "special weapons observation remote reconnaissance direct action system" (SWORDS) that has been in development for the past few years. What are the SWORDS, exactly? Oh, just some bomb-disposal robots armed with M249 machine guns. Holy shit, robots with machine guns.
This is a pretty huge step forward for robotics in warfare. Never before have armed robots been deployed in a war. There are only three of them deployed at the moment, and none of them have fired any rounds yet, but Michael Zecca, the SWORDS program manager, says "that'll be happening soon." Yikes.
In addition to the machine guns, the SWORDS can be loaded up with the optional X-ray kit to check out suspicious packages or to make sure the guy it just apprehended didn't swallow a bomb. That's all well and good, but just keep them over there rather than back home; I've seen the Itchy and Scratchy Land episode of The Simpsons. I know how this party is gonna end.
What do you think? Do they have "Made in Chine" written on the bottokm of them...? haha, or ever heard of a BSOD... literally
Let me be the first to reassure all of you: there is absolutely no way these could ever, ever, in one bajillion years, be hacked and turned against the U.S. army. Ever. It's absolutely impossible*.
(*Unless you send it a specially crafted .ZIP attachment in an email. swords2@army.mil )
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They seem to using an M249 Squad weapon. This weapon must be in the cocked back position to begin operation. What happens when this vehicle hits a slight bump in the terrain and it's starts to fire?
The M249 is notorious for mis-firing/miss feeding since it's belt fed. I speak from personal experience.
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Great. A multi-hundred thousand dollar armed robot that can be disabled by an 80 year old woman with a blanket (throw over robot = no vision). Unless you want to gun down the "dangerous" blanket-carrying woman. And, if you do, film to air on Al Jezera at 5. Or perhaps send out an 8 year old child with a baseball bat. Soldier-controller's choice: gun down 8 year old, or let him beat the crap out of your $X00,000 robot and then pull off the weapon?
So much R&D. So much money. So easy to defeat.
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Next France or Germany will start manufacturing advanced versions of these bots, and they'll become available on the open world market, and within years I foresee a war fought between machines with humans at the controls, just like in video games we've all played :^))
And then, eventually, their AI will tweak (likely 2/2 virus/trojan) and they'll form their own faction and then it'll just be missing the aliens and the predators, and heck, they could show up just 'bout any time, right?
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