Pilotless Plane Can Launch Own Attacks

Sky(net) News ^ | Friday November 02, 2007 | By Geoff Meade

[SubGeniusX]

It sounds like something straight out of a Terminator film script. Future air battles may be fought by robots with minimum human input.

The Ministry of Defence is spending £124m developing a prototype of Britain's first unmanned fighter-bomber.

Named Taranis after the Celtic god of thunder, the sinister bat-wing shape will be the size of one of the Red Arrows' Hawk display jets. Its range will be intercontinental.

It can carry bombs, missiles and canon. And, for the first time, it will be capable of shooting down other aircraft.

"This is a machine able to think for itself," said Chris Allam, project director at BAE Systems' top secret works at Salmesbury, near Preston in Lancashire.

"It's a new generation of UAV (unmanned air vehicles). It won't need a pilot on the ground with a joystick. It will be assigned an area to operate in and then will acquire and track targets autonomously."

The prospect raises obvious fears. What if the deadly machine turned on its creators?

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That's science fiction say the designers. "At no time will the machine be able to take the decision to release a weapon. That will always require human authorisation."

Although that may reassure flesh and blood pilots, there is strong lobbying for unmanned aviation.

A conventional fast jet costs £40,000 an hour to operate. Drones can be cheaper and - because no life is at stake - more expendable.

"They're valuable for operations that are dull - such as protracted surveillance - dirty, operating in a contaminated environment or dangerous, where there's heavy anti-aircraft fire," explained aviation writer Jon Lake. "But their sensors are far inferior to a human being's whose eye can take in detail in an instant."

I was the first TV journalist to be allowed inside the factory to see the first metal being cut on the prototype.

The builders are justly proud of a project which restores Britain to the premiership of aerospace innovation. It should fly within two years and could be operational in ten.

The French are developing a similar weapon, whilst America is building a solar-powered plane to stay aloft for a year.

This really could be the rise of the machines.

[SubGeniusX]

Why won't you people listen to me!!!

This is a VERY BAD idea!!!

[txroadkill]

"It's a new generation of UAV (unmanned air vehicles). It won't need a pilot on the ground with a joystick. It will be assigned an area to operate in and then will acquire and track targets autonomously."

Hmmmmm, I've seen this movie and it didn't go to well for Jamie Fox.

[wolfcreek]

“This is a machine able to think for itself,”

As soon as we get all the bugs worked out.

[Resolute Conservative]

Take the pilots out of the equation and allow some video gaming goober or worse yet the mechanism itself to target and watch friendly/civilian casualties rise.

[Eric in the Ozarks]

“Open the pod bay doors, Hal.”

[ari-freedom]

[fweingart]

"This is a machine able to think for itself,"...

A description of Hillary Clinton if I ever heard one.

[wastedyears]

Agreed

[Rick.Donaldson]

A conventional fast jet costs £40,000 an hour to operate. Drones can be cheaper and - because no life is at stake - more expendable.

Unless, of course, it accidentally crashes into a populated area, with armed weapons and kills people upon impact (or detonation)....

[rednesss]

"Just what do you think you're doing, Dave????

[AJMaXx]

"It's a new generation of UAV (unmanned air vehicles). It won't need a pilot on the ground with a joystick. It will be assigned an area to operate in and then will acquire and track targets autonomously." Hmmmmm, I've seen this movie and it didn't go to well for Jamie Fox.

Did not go well for Chevy Chase either....But is is such a Deal of the Century ! ! !

[Herakles]

Ok, try this on for size; we buy a whole bunch of Russian fighters, put the AI in it and let them attack North Korea, China (just to piss them off), Iran, Syria, Hugo Chavez, and the DNC and blame it on Putin.

Then sit back with a cigar and a beer and watch the fun!

[TalonDJ]

Because nothing like that would EVER happen with humans at the trigger...

[TalonDJ]

What if the deadly machine turned on its creators?

I am sick of this old moronic argument. Do we worry about airliners going nuts and crashing? Or current fighters? In modern fights the computer software does more of the actual flying than the pilots does. Oh, but that is different... How? Oh it is different because engineers designed autopilots to not suddenly crash a plane... right, and these same engineers, according to Hollywood and morons, apparently will be utterly incapable of designing a pilot-less aircraft that would be just as safe. Anyone with that much paranoia about what engineers are doing is better off becoming Amish.

[Hazwaste]

The French are developing a similar weapon

My mind is a raging torrent of surrender jokes, flooded with rivulets of thought cascading into a waterfall of creative alternatives.

[wildbill]

Sic semper taranis?

Remmeber the Chevy Chase movie “Deal of the Century” where a robot plane with independent targeting goes amuck?

Life imitating art?

[B-Chan]

It can carry bombs, missiles and canon

An pilotless aircraft that can quote Scripture will be an important weapon in the war against Islam.

[BlazingArizona]

Just wait till a civilian version of this gets built. Imagine an airliner that treats passengers like crap without airline personnel even being involved. It could kidnap passengers and hold them on sweltering runways. It could suddenly decompress enroute, then eat the passengers’ luggage before their next of kin could retrieve the bodies. It would be an airline executive’s dream!

[djxu456]

every Army sergeant in Iraq
should get one.

[Sender]

Morpheus: We don’t know who struck first, us or them. But we do know it was us that scorched the sky.