This is from the Seattle Times/AP... "PRIMM, Nev. — Four robotic vehicles finished a Pentagon-sponsored race across the Mojave desert yesterday and achieved a technological milestone by conquering steep drop-offs, obstacles and tunnels over a rugged 132-mile course without a single human command." Link
This is the part that makes me uncomfortable:
"The race is part of the Pentagon"s effort to cut the risk of casualties by fulfilling a congressional mandate to have a third of all military ground vehicles unmanned by 2015."
One Third by 2015? Wow...
I submit this is the same mistake the germans made durring WW2, but worse...the idea of having robotic vechicles used in a battle-field context even for logistics is the height of technological hubris. Every time for example a new encryption comes out for sats. its hacked, sometimes within hours...Take MS Vista, they work like mad and create something They think is bullet proof and then end up having to disable a key subsystem within weeks of their release to the developer community because its full of security holes They did not predict even with all the tons and tons of thought they put into it.
Why? Because I submit complex systems are not predictiable and that needs to be planned for.
The US Mil. is insanly dependant on tech and hugly open to the "Garage Factor." All it would take is one smart person somewhere to figure out a unexplored aspect of EM field interaction which getting into the "wrong hands" could be used to strip any force of the ability to conduct modern warfair.
Moving towards more robotics is just wrong I think.
CF