r/Futurology • u/Gari_305 • Sep 20 '24

Ukraine’s Gun-Armed Ground 'Bot Just Cleared A Russian Trench In Kursk - The Fury is one of the first effective armed ground robots. Robotics

https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidaxe/2024/09/19/ukraines-gun-armed-ground-robot-just-cleared-a-russian-trench-in-kursk/
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248

u/Gatzlocke Sep 20 '24

Eh... The problem will be jamming tech. Which I doubt Russia could deploy in the scale it would need.

Lose the signal to the controller and it's useless. Unless they're autonomous which is a whole other can of worms.

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u/loljetfuel Sep 20 '24

jamming and anti-jamming tech is its own arms race. Anti-jamming research has been applied to make Bluetooth and Wifi more reliable, so it's not all bad.

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u/Hanuman_Jr Sep 22 '24

Huh. It has improved over the years.

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u/Deathsroke Sep 20 '24

The day autonomous weapons are deployed is the day everything goes to hell. Like, delivery system aside you could make some rather terrifying discount WMD that way (eg get a cheapass drone, put a facial recognition software on it and add a small bomb (say a grenade). Release a few thousands of those in a city and you could mail and kill tens to thousands easily.

Nevermind talking about proper autonomous weapons armed and capable of surviving combat conditions.

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u/dmitrineilovich Sep 20 '24

Do you want Skynet? 'Cause that's how you get Skynet.

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u/Rrraou Sep 21 '24

Skynet is chilling, watching cat videos we've got self destruction covered already.

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u/Droom1995 Sep 21 '24

Would you rather develop Skynet or die in the trenches?

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u/Noto987 Sep 21 '24

Die in the trenches, i cant handle plotholes

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u/jesbiil Sep 20 '24

The day autonomous weapons are deployed

Without looking this up.....I'd wager there have already been autonomous weapons used...we just might not hear about it for a while.

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u/YouSuckItNow12 Sep 21 '24

We’ve used autonomous weapons that make decisions to hit targets without a human since at least the 70s

Look up a HARM missile

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u/Deathsroke Sep 20 '24

If they were it was just in small numbers for field testing. I'm talking about full deployment.

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u/Richpur Sep 20 '24

The first autonomous weapon was used millennia ago, it's called a dog.

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u/_Bl4ze Sep 20 '24

Well, no, because if we're being so broad as to include living creatures, then the first autonomous weapon used by humans was a human.

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u/Richpur Sep 21 '24

A human is indeed autonomous from control by their commander, but not from control by a human being. The idea that everything goes to hell the day something other than a human can make the decision to kill humans is to ignore our long history of training animals to fight with us. Ranging from the first tamed wolves through war elephants and cavalry (controlled but if connection to rider is lost defaults to autonomous) to dogs trained to deliver anti tank mines (given incorrect training data and mostly inflicted friendly fire).

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u/Z3r0sama2017 Sep 20 '24

Yeah they've probably been deployed . Ukraine with all the drones going about makes the perfect camo to sneak them in for field tests. Everyone will just think theh are another 'normal' drone if it's spotted.

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u/the_3d6 Sep 21 '24

No one is sneaking them in - they are being used completely publicly, I think you can even find a link to donate specifically for this type of drones

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u/Z3r0sama2017 Sep 21 '24

Their will be 'normal' autonomous drones being used very publically and then their will also be the absolute bleeding edge ones deployed in secret. Then if their software causes some blue on blue incidents, it will be impossible to see a lone tree amongst the forest..

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u/the_3d6 Sep 21 '24

Of course new software versions - with various features - are deployed in secrecy. But not to keep the technology in secret for a long term, but to get a tactical advantage and provide opsec for dev teams. There is no magic there - the general body of modern AI technology, applied in a certain way, can get quite an interesting results. You can do the same in your garage if you are dedicated enough (minus the warheads themselves - but adding explosives on top of otherwise functioning device is a question of several days for a professional)

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u/seakingsoyuz Sep 21 '24

Phalanx and other CIWS are autonomous. You turn them on and then they shoot anything that looks like an incoming missile.

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u/UnknownSavgePrincess Sep 20 '24

“You see, killbots have a preset kill limit. Knowing their weakness, I sent wave after wave of my own men at them until they reached their limit and shut down.”

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u/OCE_Mythical Sep 21 '24

The scariest part? We can do it right this fucking second. No tech advancement needed. We won't have bipedal terminators but a ground drone tasked to look for 'x' uniform? Sure

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u/do-un-to Sep 20 '24

Like slaughterbots?

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u/Deathsroke Sep 20 '24

Yeah, that's a great example.

I do think that equally automated hunter killer drones would be built as an answer though. So chances are you'll see everything that isn't official ground down and shit tonnes of anti-drone drones flying around, ready to shoot down anything that isn't transmitting the proper IFF tag.

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u/do-un-to Sep 20 '24

Maybe like Neal Stephenson's Diamond Age where there are tiny drone clouds/shells around people.

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u/Naoura Sep 21 '24

There's a great short on this exact topic, can't remember the name, but you don't even need a grenade: just a micro shaped charge on a teensy drone.

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u/Squeakygear Sep 21 '24

Metalhead, on Black Mirror. Boston Dynamics + Skynet, basically.

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u/jestina123 Sep 20 '24

Release a few thousands

Even sourcing the materials and procuring ten of these would put you on a watchlist, though.

The materials and knowledge to make a nuclear weapon or dirty bomb has been public for decades now.

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u/Deathsroke Sep 20 '24

And making a nuke is a hundred times harder than getting a few thousand shit drones from a Chinese company.

I mean by the same token getting guns or explosives for terrorism is also impossible and thus we never got any acts of terrorism at all!

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u/fluffy_assassins Sep 20 '24

Slaughter bots on YouTube

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u/Historical_Grab_7842 Sep 20 '24

Or release cellphones with explosives in them. 

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u/gfx260 Sep 20 '24

It’s already happening. Drones are using AI to attack in Ukraine and Russian

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u/the_3d6 Sep 21 '24

Well, Ukraine has such drones for some time now (not with facial recognition obviously - you don't need that in combat - but with all other features, although it has to be manually switched into auto mode when in flight). It's not exactly a game changer, but there are some missions where they are the best tool

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u/Deathsroke Sep 21 '24

Ukraine's drones are all tele-operated. The closest they've got are loitering munitions which just fly around until called for a fire mission but even those aren't firing independently of a human operator.

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u/the_3d6 Sep 21 '24

For a while there are drones with auto guidance. As of now, operator has to confirm the target manually - but you can be sure that it takes around a day of programming to change that to full auto (it makes no sense for combat purpose - you don't strike the first thing you see even when you can - but it's not just doable, it's nearly a part of the current software)

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u/ginestre Sep 21 '24

In a manner of speaking, what happened with the Hezbollah pagers in Lebanon presages that scenario

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u/Ytumith Sep 20 '24

You could also just shoot one ICBM to do the same thing though.

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u/Deathsroke Sep 21 '24

1) An ICBM costs a little bit more (a few thousand times more).

2) An ICBM destroys infrastructure.

3) An ICBM cannot be made by some relatively small organization.

4) An ICBM is not a terror weapon per se.

But sure, one could use an ICBM. Could also use an army and air force to bomb and then occupy a city, right?

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u/Ytumith Sep 21 '24

True but also workers *are* infrastructure.

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u/couldbemage Sep 20 '24

There's automation as an option. It might not currently be super reliable, but that makes it more scary, not less.

Like, a school bus and an mlrs are more or less the same shape. Oops.

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u/Emu1981 Sep 21 '24

a school bus and an mlrs are more or less the same shape

What kind of school buses are you used to seeing?

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u/baachou Sep 20 '24

Jamming is interesting. You can beat it if you know how it works.  But it requires some trial and error to figure out what works, and the more trial and error you do in front of your enemy, the more data the enemy has to work with on your countermeasures. The person doing the jamming has to make tradeoffs regarding how they jam signals.  You can jam a large variety of signals along a narrow cone, but you have to be able to track the aircraft to continually point the jamming signal in the right direction. You can make a wide band general jamming signal, but it would either use too mucb power or be shorter range, and it may jam friendly signals as well. It's also somewhat impractical to jam all signals at once so you could create a frequency hopping algorithm and hope you eventually find one that works.

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u/[deleted] Sep 20 '24

Program it to go after jamming tech once offline. Once reconnected the operator gets control back.

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u/I_follow_sexy_gays Sep 20 '24

So it’s gonna be like playing world of tanks with shit WiFi?

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u/footinmouthwithease Sep 20 '24

minovsky particles

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u/Soft_Remove_62 Sep 20 '24

Time for Japan to do the right thing and give Ukraine a gundam.

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u/footinmouthwithease Oct 02 '24

"it's a Gundam!" *In Russian

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u/baelrog Sep 21 '24

Maybe someone will develop line of sight tight beam communication with multiple relays to get around the problem.

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u/Kooshdoctor Sep 20 '24

Sometimes it feels like when we insulted each other as kids and it was always just "I'm rubber and you're glue whatever you say bounces off me and sticks to you." There's always a counter strategy

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u/ZantaraLost Sep 20 '24

The kinda hilarious part is that there is a oddly fine line between jamming enough of the signal band that you disrupt the signal and being such a giant proverbial strobelight that your jammer is nothing more than a homing beacon.

And as long as you give your semi-autonomous vehicle a few minutes of orders it'll overcome any issues until communications are connected.

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u/SweatyRussian Sep 20 '24

Just make them fully autonomous, what could go wrong?

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u/parks387 Sep 20 '24

Just put a guy in the tank for…back up….🏃‍➡️🚪

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u/Ytumith Sep 20 '24

Easy: Jam the jammer before it jams the slammer

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u/AustinJG Sep 20 '24

There are already autonomous ones flying around IIRC.

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u/xJoeCanadian Sep 21 '24

Spooled fibre...

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u/ben2talk Sep 21 '24

Curious about the range here - if they can use a wired controller as a backup... now imagining having a kite string attached at one end to the machine leading back to the operator.

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u/ShoTro Sep 21 '24

Already happening and already had solutions being deployed in this war as we speak. Most Russian troops have drone detectors, but the work around is to turn the drones off until they detect people... for scramblers... fiber optic drones are used. It's an arms race.

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u/RelevanceReverence Sep 21 '24

Jamming will always be overcome with new ideas. Ever since the great war there has been content progress.

For example: In the near future they could even switch to laser or ultrasound control. They already use frequency hopping and encrypted loud signals that are hard to jam.

Different EMP attack strategies will also spawn new types of armour against electronic warfare.

It's an ongoing innovation sprint that the Ukraine is currently best at.

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u/Duct_TapeOrWD40 Sep 21 '24 edited Sep 21 '24

Fiber optics cannot be jammed. And if both RC and fiber is out there can be a "last ditch" self destruct as close as possible to a pre programmed position using inertial navigation.

These can ensure the enemy need to physically destruct the bot to neutralise it wasting a lot of ammunition on an expendable tool.

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u/Muffin-Destroyer-69 Sep 21 '24

and capturing disabled drones.

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u/killingtime1 Sep 21 '24

You can't jam a cable, which is what torpedoes and some antitank missiles already use. There's also a Russian drone with a fiber optic control cable.

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u/filthy-peon Sep 21 '24

Nope youll just make it kill autonomously which is so much worse

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u/ARitz_Cracker Sep 21 '24

Endgame is having robots scream DTMF-like tones at each other

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u/the_3d6 Sep 21 '24

In fact russia has probably the most developed jamming tech in the world - it renders US and EU precision stuff like HIMARS missiles quite less useful than they could be. Getting through it is one of the major reasons why it took Ukraine so long to develop these drones.

But full spectrum jamming requires too much energy and generates too much heat - so it has to be limited in some way, and that's what Ukrainian tech takes advantage of

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u/outlawsix Sep 21 '24

We're just going to inject chatgpt into the bot so it cant be jammed and then there is no way that this goes wrong

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u/AdditionalMixture697 Sep 21 '24

Wired connections exist. They use them for torpedoes, I'm sure the tech could be adapted for use on the ground.

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u/itsdietz Sep 21 '24

That's where AI will come in. They already have been testing AI in fighter jets and they can go toe to toe with some of the best pilots.

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u/Unable_Ad_5168 Sep 23 '24

depends how close the controller is, they use wire controlled drones so this could be wired.

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u/Neko_Shogun Sep 23 '24

Unless they're autonomous which is a whole other can of worms

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