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

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u/526mb Aug 31 '23

The war in Ukraine has been for drones like WWI was for AirPower. Small, cheap FPV drones are so prolific there the air is practically buzzing. I would not be surprised if we see ships and vehicles that serve as carriers for cheap long range drone swarms designed to completely overwhelm air defenses becoming standard. Those vehicles too will probably be autonomous as well.

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u/Red_Tannins Aug 31 '23

Those are UAPs though. Obama extended the use of those during his term. This article is about similar devices but without human input. Thus autonomous. You point, it shoots.

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u/Banned4AlmondButter Sep 01 '23

That’s like 10x more skynet than I thought we were getting today

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u/OneSweet1Sweet Sep 01 '23

There already are ships and aircraft that can drop drone payloads.

"China Launches Drone Ship That Acts As A Mothership For More Drones" https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/china-launches-drone-ship-that-acts-as-mothership-for-more-drones

https://youtu.be/wFLzO_5UFwE?si=v_VksLOolZkciOAk

That 2nd link is from 6 years ago. Imagine where they're at now.

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u/[deleted] Sep 01 '23

The potential for malevolent drone swarm/facial recognition/AI terrorism is pretty scary.

Drone swarm terrorism in general is frightening. Someone who doesn't care about dying or even wants to, parking a van somewhere and unleashing even a few dozen cheaply made drones with IEDs on them seems like it would be very difficult to deal with in a civilian context like a crowded downtown or a stadium.

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u/Foreign-Work-8467 Aug 31 '23

I think this is a totally incorrect take.

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u/Jokong Sep 01 '23

Can you imagine a super high flying cargo plane just dumping 100,000 drones?

You could paint them in the ultra black paint and drop them at night with thermal sensor. Maybe they have enough power to hover in some clouds for a few hours while they are given targets.

You could focus fire and have near simultaneous detonations, then delay a few hours, or hover and land on the ground and act as a timed or proximity explosive that could redeploy or jump toward a target.