with the success of the Talon s.w.o.r.d.s. robot are the combat soldiers days numbered
will machines replace humans on the battlefield of the future?
Share your thoughts and pics if you find them.

Robots will be used for "cannon fodder".

It is inevitable that when two sides with robots war, one will lose and then it will come down to the humans fighting. So it may be that one side would lose no humans. One side will always still lose humans though.

I think the Robot army consept is dangerous because people are always more willing to war when the risk to themselves is lessened, and if you robots to do your fighting, war will be more appealing.

Like I say though, in the end it would still come down to humans.

cheers

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Humans, a renewable resource?
Bumble Bees Die to sting you

I think robots on the battlefield will reduce human losses by a bit We should send them out when we can to destroy the enemy at hand. Get those scientists working harder to create real "Battle Droids".
tell me what you think of my idea.
Bye.

The taliban will fall due to a weakness.

i think the idea is a load of ****e
what if some ragheads ''programme'' it into changing sides or anything like that

also (some mad scientist said this in the paper) if we continue to enhance robots brain technology and advance it to the level of our own brain then they might just realise that they are slaves or something stupid like that and rebel
probably not gonna happen but just want to say things against it

and what is the point of infantry if you are going to have some robots do the work
you might aswell demolish the infantry altogether, but definitely not SF

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what manner of men are these maroon berets

I have three words, electro-magnetic pulse (EMP). If you rely on robot technology, they can be wiped out simply by setting off an EMP. 'Hardening' electronics is very expensive.

Robots will never be able to soldier as well as a human being. They can't push that extra mile, only what they are programmed to do. They don't have the spirit of of human soldier. They will never be able to match the intricacy of the human mind, something that is a proven fact. They cannot possibly think outside of the box. They are predictable. They are unreliable because they cannot addapt like a human soldier. They cannot lead. The way of the future of warfare is and always has been man to man. Robots simply cannot compare to the extraordinary complexity of our bodily design.

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War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature, and has no chance of being free unless made or kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.
- John Stuart Mill

i agree clive... mostly about the EMP thing... it would ruin a country's economy to use robot soldiers

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http://www.army-sykess.com/Video.htm
my way of supporting!!!

There's been a lot of things that we've been told weren't possible. Most people are open minded enough now to accept that with enough time and dedication we can advance to achieve almost anything via technology.

I'm confident that an effective non human soldier can be produced. Not tommorrow but it can be. Regarding the expence of electronics that can stand an emp....find me some high end military tech. that isn't abhorently expensive.

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Humans, a renewable resource?
Bumble Bees Die to sting you

True about the EMP but if the military would want robots on the battlefield they would also cough up the money for the EMP shielding. And I would guess that robots would be able to push that extra mile....they shouldn´t ever get tired......and why would they need the spirit? They would be 100% efficient killers with no feelings of remorse, no shell shock, no psychological problems whatsoever. And that is true that at the current technology level they cannot match the human brain, but at the speed technology advances I wouldn´t be too surprised if a machine would pass the Turing test in the next 10-20 years.

Anyway, now after this rambling I do have to agree that robots are not the future of the battlefield in my opinion too.....just had to ramble a bit first.... My bad.

There are 2 reasons I can think of and they are both at least partially covered in Clives comments. One reason is that if you make them to dumb they cannot function independently on the field. And the second is that if you make them too smart then they will most certainly also get a sense of selfpreservation and wouldn´t fight. So robots might not be the future. One option could be remote controlled devices. I think the US military already uses remotes for recon ops. This might be possible to extend to drones armed and armored(Have a nagging feeling that those already are also used). But remote control could be improved with VR environments for the controller and some kind of direct neural interface. Yes, this sounds like scifi but I think some grafting between electronics and living tissue/nerves has been done already. I think that case was about a blind person getting black&white sight by electronical means. But I agree with some of the previous posts that in the end its down to the humans. Anyway there wouldn´t be any wars if it wasn´t for us

Nice post Ando.

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Humans, a renewable resource?
Bumble Bees Die to sting you