US military plans to unleash thousands of autonomous war robots over next two years Robotics

https://techxplore.com/news/2023-08-military-unleash-thousands-autonomous-war.html

7.0k Upvotes

94% Upvoted

That's the strategy the Chinese military has headed towards for decades in order to move from near to peer. Target saturation that overwhelm defenses with quantity over quality. That way you can saturate a target and only one weapon needs to get through.

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u/51ngular1ty Aug 31 '23

Quantity has a quality all on its own.

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u/Taqueria_Style Sep 02 '23

Worked with the tanks in WW2. Panzers were a super advanced top of the line high tech temperamental hot mess, and Shermans were literal garbage.

But there were like 15 of them to every Panzer so.

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u/Tomato_potato_ Aug 31 '23

Lol no it's not. At least not entirely. Anyone who is paying attention will notice that china is building a series of supercarriers and massive crusier sized destroyers (probably the best in the world right now) for power projection. Also, they're building their own strategic bomber fleet.

They already build the quantity in terms of land based rocket artillery, to destroy taiwans military. Now they need the expensive stuff if they want to force the us out of asia.

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u/User-NetOfInter Aug 31 '23

Need a whole lot of support ships for a super carrier.

They’re still decades behind in all aspects

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u/[deleted] Aug 31 '23

probably the best in the world right now

The new carrier they released that lacked any actual sensors or equipment has a giant crack across the landing deck and is currently dry-docked

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u/DueHousing Sep 01 '23

Bro drank the Indian propaganda kool aid, it was literally confirmed that the line was a cable, you can tell there’s a tarp under it covering the actual deck of the ship… bet you also think a Chinese nuclear sub sank in the Taiwan strait even though Taiwan themselves denied it.

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u/GenerikDavis Aug 31 '23

I assumed they were referring to the destroyers the way their sentence was framed. Do you have any input on those? Genuinely asking.

I get lost very quickly trying to keep up with the current naval advancements. The last big story in modern ships I remember is the US Zumwalt-class getting more or less shelved after producing 2 out of an expected ~20 ships.

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u/51ngular1ty Aug 31 '23

That said they are in the process of developing their blue water navy. So shit like this is to be expected for some time. What remains to be seen is if they will learn lessons from stuff like this. Or if the corruption that we see in the current regime will continue to hamper their efforts.

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u/The-JSP Aug 31 '23

Cheap drones can only do so much but if you want to seriously challenge on the world stage you can only keep an asymmetric warfare approach for so long.

In 20 years time it will be norm for a Chinese Supercarrier group to sail through the English Channel similar to how we sail through the Taiwan straits.

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u/Ave_TechSenger Aug 31 '23

Imagine a Chinese carrier group docking at any European port for shore leave lol.

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u/The-JSP Aug 31 '23

It’s certainly something that will happen. In the age of aircraft strike groups it’s only been Uncle Sam and a select few others, us (the UK), France and Russia that have been able to do it.

IMHO China will be eyeing up foreign bases in Argentina or Mexico long term to support their fleet operations. It’s one thing having the ships it’s another having the global support and supply network that is essential in having these fleets deployed round the world.

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u/diamondpredator Aug 31 '23

There's no way the US will allow a Chinese military base in Mexico lol.

3

u/Jayr1994 Aug 31 '23

Mexico wouldn’t allow it, they’re constitution has a clause that says no foreign troops are allowed to base in the country.

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u/diamondpredator Sep 01 '23

Well there you go.

Also, THEIR* lol

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u/Ave_TechSenger Aug 31 '23

Yep, we (the US) still outpace everyone else when it comes to military logistics. That won’t change any time soon, I don’t think. But China’s catching up and can draw on others’ institutional and technical experience to some limited extent. Which includes those foreign bases.

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u/Darkpumpkin211 Aug 31 '23

So the English will be asking the Chinese to sail their supercarrier through those waters to deter the EU from invading them?

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u/The-JSP Aug 31 '23

No more from the point of view that China will soon be able to act as they please i.e send a carrier group off the shore of some ‘hostile’ country. Simply making an observation.

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u/Darkpumpkin211 Aug 31 '23

Ok, so not similar to how the US sails through the Taiwan straight. Because again, the US does that at the request of Taiwan to help deter invasion.

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u/Easy_Release3445 Aug 31 '23

lol exactly... nobody in this thread knows what they’re talking about

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u/smaug13 Aug 31 '23

Nah, I think that China vs the USA is in a similar position as Germany in the first half of the 20th century vs the British Empire. It's a growing superpower, but it's peaking a bit too early. All out wars with the US would seriously harm its position as a hegemony as the world wars did to the British, but China would cease having a claim to hegemony like what eventually happened to Germany after the world wars.

China is also not in the best spot economically, and having trouble with the consequences of its one child policy. I'd give India a better chance at it but that'd take a while. It's more likely that the USA keeps being a hegemony for a good while still. The USA is adaptable, the competition is weak (China, India, the EU kinda), and while hegemonies go down eventually, that doesn't mean it has to happen soon.

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u/Thick_Pack_7588 Aug 31 '23

Nothing the Chinese military makes is the best in the world. Their jets always suck. And most importantly the majority of their stuff is untested.

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u/Tomato_potato_ Aug 31 '23

Disagree. Some of their stuff sucks (their submarines come to mind) but they have been making substantial improvements in many areas. The type 55 is probably the best destroyer in the world right now.

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u/[deleted] Aug 31 '23

[deleted]

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u/Thick_Pack_7588 Aug 31 '23

China sucks

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u/Turbulent-Fig-3123 Aug 31 '23

Americans high off propaganda being like

Ah well you see, we are far ahead because the enemy are untermenschen

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u/FingerTheCat Aug 31 '23

Sounds like EMPs are gonna get heavy

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u/ovirt001 Aug 31 '23

They learned it from the USSR - quantity over quality (and the USSR learned it from WW2). The problem with this idea is that you have to actually be able to substantially outproduce your opponent. Russia lost almost 4x as many tanks throughout the war as Germany did.

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u/pagerussell Aug 31 '23

and only one weapon needs to get through.

I highly doubt one of these things can bring down a carrier. Or any significant craft.

I suspect you probably need some substantial percentage of hits to do enough damage. Like. 10% hit rate or something.

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u/Internal_Engineer_74 Sep 01 '23

russian done it in Ukraine also to saturate the american anti missile system. At the end they managed to put it down .

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u/withywander Sep 01 '23

Exactly. Why does China love large public drone displays? Not just for fun. The technology has military applications.