THE PHANTOM MENACE

K

Kodiac

New member
In the trailer - which you can see at www.starwars.com you see some droid tanks sliding silently down a hill across a field on the way to attack a sleepy little city. In another forum that I lurked in on - it was mentioned that robotic fighting vehicles are too far fetched even for Star Wars.
This is untrue.
The US ARMY HAS robotic fighting vehicles. They may not be front line units currently - but they certainly will be in a "Third Wave Form" war (Read a book titled WAR AND ANTIWAR - very good).
Robotics is advancing at a very fast pace - I saw a report on CNN about Robotic Comuter Aircraft privatly owned for the price of a high end german luxowagon... (Merc). taking a AI equiped vehicle and adding a gun should not be too much of a problem.

Or is it just me?

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One Planet.
One Internet. Transportation by Cisco.
 
No, Kodiac, it ain't just you. What with GPS, TV, pre-programmed routes PLUS (eventually) AI, I reckon there'll be a lot of this sort of thing. Notice how often the Administration and Congress worry about "shedding the blood of just one GI", and you see the impetus and the reason for funding.

Ta, ta...Art
 
In _The War in 2020_, Ralph Peters describes robotic scout vehicles in use as decoys: a rebel army unit deploys them, trying to get a pushed-to-the-wall regular unit to waste ammo. The deception doesn't work, but the possibility of robots on the battlefield is not a new concept.


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"Quemadmoeum gladius neminem occidit, occidentis telum est." --Lucius Annaeus Seneca "the Younger" (ca. 4 BC-65 AD)
 
Sounds like a cruise missile to me. FWIW, we are using RPV (Remote Piloted Vehicles) today for battlefield recon (r/c model plane with tv camera), arty fire control (r/c model plane with tv camera and laser illuminator). They're small, quiet, and stealthy. You're right one way or another, the battle droid vehicle isn't far off. Throw in micr-miniaturization, and it gets real interesting. Did that last roach you crushed have a funny metalic crunch to it? The Shadow knows . . . .M2
 
I saw a show on TLC, The History Channel, or The Discovery Channel where they showed a converted 4-wheeler that was remote controlled, and was armed with a TOW Missle. From what I remember, it was able to right itself if over turned, and the demonstration the gave of it was to have it drive itself deep into enemy territory, and park next to a road and wait. Enemy vehicle comes by, and BOOM, goes bye bye. They also showed a hovercraft-scout vehicle that once launched, requires no input, it just flies its scout mission, and comes home, the whole time sending video back to it's base. It's about the size of a suitcase and is loaded with all the latest bells & whistles (GPS, Infared ). The also had another type of hovercraft that can navigate around buildings & other urban environments, you know, to keep an eye on things. It was an interresting show, but a little spooky.

I believe the show was on The Learning Channel,but don't know for sure.
 
Well, they were talking ground attack vehicles - not single target cruise missiles.
the Army HAS a FORM of AI (depending on your definition - general or strict.)
In ground vehicles - there is a slick little robot called THE FIRE ANT, built off QUAD ATVs... they are still pretty BETA, but a little tweeking will make them nasty. Removing the AT MINE it is armed with and adding a 7.62MM GAT would make this thing just plain EVIL. Especially if you got like a platton of these things rolling through the woods hosing stuff!


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One Planet.
One Internet. Transportation by Cisco.
 
This would be great for a mission like taking out aircraft on a runway and your needing plausable deniabilty - send in a bunch of robots with all serial numbers removed - the ATVs can race in - light them up, and go "Critical Mass" for a final blow. Targets are hit hard - and with such high speed as to overwhelm the defenses - unless the defenders are robots as well...

Or think of this - what if the Bots were REALLY small, say, just about the size as a brick of C-4, filled with said, and there were lots of them... like 100+, wicked little smart robotic rc carbombs.
Heck, did I just make the comparison to Tom Selleks movie RUNAWAY... Ouch.

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"I got a bad feeling about this..."
 
It would be like soujerner, the little guy that drove off the lander on mars. The is programmed to go back to the lander if it doesn't receive any input for like 3 days. Make it a little bigger, put a gun on top and your ready to go. as it is, the USMC has a like an M2 mounted on top of a HUMVEE that will automatically respond to enemy fire. if heres where the shot/shots come from and then sends a couple round back to the send. I don't know how well it works though. They used in the urban assualt last week
 
Jeff, AI = Artificial Intelligence does it not? What emits from the White House is neither artificial nor natural intelligence. May Al catch him "talking" to Tipper in the Oval Office hall way.

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Ne Conjuge Nobiscum
 
The software controlling those robots is going to have to be smarter than a dog, at least. I seem to recall that the Russians in WWII tried training dogs to run underneath German tanks with anti-tank mines strapped to their backs. Trouble was, the dogs couldn't tell the difference between a German and a Russian tank...
 
Tom,
There's already IFF (Identify Friend or Foe) electronic countermeasures in aircraft to protect them from errant heat seekers and the like, so it's not a big stretch to see transponders integrated into the GPS or laser guidance black box systems in Bradleys or M1 Abrams. Heck, aren't they already integrating the tracking of ground fighting vehicles into the AWACS systems? Not sure about this one, but I wouldn't doubt it.

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Don LeHue

The surest sign of poor craftsmanship is wrinkles in the duct tape.
 
Along the more primitive side, I've seen a remote semi-auto rifle platform which had two video cameras hooked up to it. One gave you a wide field of view to locate your target. The other allowed you to peer through the rifle scope. Once you've sighted the target, you throw a couple of switches and "Boom!" Even a 7 year old skilled at GameBoy can snipe now. He won't even need earmuffs.

Take that same unit and mount it on a remote control mobile platform and now you've got a mobile sniper. Not quite StarWars, but both are available today.
 
I read somewhere that the US had considered using Bats with attached incendiary devices to attack Tokyo near the end of WW2. Fat Man and Little boy ended that project.

This would take advantage of the Bats tendency to seek out dark hiding places during daylight. Most of Tokyo's buildings were very flammable and the bats would have hidden under roofs of homes and set the homes on fire.Imagine flights of B29's releasing hordes of bats!

[This message has been edited by K80Geoff (edited March 25, 1999).]
 
DonL: You're right...the Armor/Mech Infantry and Army Material Command have been working on an IFF system for our tanks, SP Arty and IFVs/CFVs. Its called the Battle Command Identification System and is being tested as part of Force XXI initiative. It works on a millimeter wave (MMV) system that gives a gunner feedback as to whether target is friend or foe.
AWACS tracks the situation in the air...JSTARS tracks the situation on the ground. I'm not sure if the systems can differentiate between enemy and friendly forces, but I assume that if an object is able to squawk the correct IFF code, they can tell who's who.
 
Mike, thanks for the clarification and additional info. I was trying to remember an article I saw on DefenseLink, or maybe in one of the Jane's books, but it looks like you nailed it for me.

Chink, I'm glad I'm not the only person who heard about the specially equipped HUMVEEs (or, I think, Bradley's as well). I seem to recall that the system you refer to was able to trace the track of incoming rounds, extrapolate the point of origin (perhaps via doppler sensing the sonic disturbance of the incoming ordinance), and basically, target and "return to sender". It was intended for urban environments and counter-sniper operation. Maybe Mike or someone else here can jog my/our memory on this one as well.

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Don LeHue

The surest sign of poor craftsmanship is wrinkles in the duct tape.
 
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