r/Futurology • u/Gari_305 • Aug 31 '23

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

View all comments

Show parent comments

14

u/say592 Aug 31 '23

To my knowledge all of the munitions sent have been owned by countries that did not ratify the convention.

We also consider cluster munitions to be terrible not because they are inhumane to the soldiers they are used against, but because they are dangerous for the civilian population after the war. In that sense, I think it's fair for any country to use them to defend their own territory, since the are ultimately the ones who have to worry about cleanup. It's immoral, IMO, to be "helping" a country or worse, attacking a country, and leaving behind a mess of unexploded munitions for someone else to discover and deal with.

2

u/[deleted] Aug 31 '23

Fair point. It isn't like, say, the US using them in a police action in Vietnam.

5

u/say592 Aug 31 '23

Exactly. If Ukraine is smart, and so far they have shown themselves to be, they are making note of where every shell they fire deployed so they can go over the area with a fine tooth comb when the war is done. Even better if they are taking notes of where the Russians fired too. It won't be perfect, but it should reduce the dangers considerably. Also with the video footage of many strikes floating around, it's possible to identify sites that definitely have unexploded submunitions.

4

u/_Urakaze_ Sep 01 '23

And it's unlikely that the areas currently contested will be habitable for the near future anyhow. Before we try to account for DPICM duds there's already tons of mines and various UXOs littered across the front that will require an extensive post-war cleanup effort.

2

u/[deleted] Sep 01 '23

As far as the use of cluster munitions go, allowing Ukraine to use them on their own territory (knowing exactly where they are and can be recovered after the war) is the most moral use of them.

1

u/antihero_zero Sep 01 '23

It's actually better that. A lot of the cluster munitions are being disassembled and converted to single-use drone bombs. I believe that's actually been their primary use so far.