cryptogon.com news – analysis – conspiracies

May 29th, 2010

Via: TechnoFascism Blog:

“It will save lives”, or so the argument goes. Sending a robot warrior onto the battlefield instead of humans seems like the logical next step in a world moving toward greater efficiency and automation. Everyone seems in love with this new technological trend of automated devastation: from the corporations that will profit from the sale of them; to the military leaders who admire the increased killing power of the robotic drones.

As I write this, in 2010, fully autonomous killer robots are still in the early trial phase, when scientists are still working out the bugs and lawyers are still clambering over liability issues. However, according to recent estimates there are at least 6000 robots at some level of autonomous operation in active deployment in Iraq and Afghanistan.

According to an article in Military Aerospace, former U.S. Air Force (USAF) Chief of Staff General T. Michael Moseley said, “We’ve moved from using UAVs primarily in intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance roles before Operation Iraqi Freedom, to a true hunter-killer role with the Reaper.” Currently, the U.S. Air Force’s fleet stands at 195 Predators and 28 Reapers.

As the armed forces rapidly move toward greater use of these robotic warriors, one can only wonder what this horrific automated battlefield will look like twenty years from now. Fortunately for us, there is no need to speculate about the future role of killer robots. We have only to look at one of the military’s playbooks for the development and deployment of robotic systems: the “2009 Unmanned Systems Integrated Roadmap” released by the U.S. Department of Defense.

The main point that can be gleaned from a careful reading of this Roadmap is not if the front-line military will be composed almost entirely of automated, killer robots but when. And we don’t have to wonder too long about when either, for this document gives the answer to that question too: by about 2034 — if everything goes according to plan.