Posted on 11/28/2018 5:42:46 AM PST by jerod
ROME - Fully automated and autonomous lethal weapons systems must be banned now before they become a reality in tomorrows wars, a Vatican representative said.
The development of robotic weapons or killer robots will provide the capacity of altering irreversibly the nature of warfare, becoming more detached from human agency, putting in question the humanity of our societies, Archbishop Ivan Jurkovic told a group of experts at the United Nations in Geneva.
The archbishop, who is the Vatican observer to U.N. agencies in Geneva, spoke Nov. 22 at a meeting of the high contracting parties to the Convention on Prohibitions or Restrictions on the Use of Certain Conventional Weapons Which May Be Deemed to Be Excessively Injurious or to Have Indiscriminate Effects, held in Geneva Nov. 21-23. The Vatican mission in Geneva released the archbishops remarks Nov. 27.
(Excerpt) Read more at cruxnow.com ...
When was the last time the Vatican put out any pro-Jesus messages? They are no longer the heads of a Christian Church but well-dressed community organizers.
An armed drone circling and running an area-denial program meets your stated criteria - at least until it gets a recall message or runs out of fuel.
Swarms of such drones have been tested in simulations (and probably in live field actions too)
Stationary robot sentry guns also been tested in Korea, which can automatically track human or vehicle shapes and fire on them after they get a "weapons free" message.
Mobile vehicles with similar capabilities were tested in Saudi Arabia - about 20 years ago. They broke down a lot in the trials and were eventually scrapped. But a lot of technology improvements have become available since then.
Urgent pleas to lock the barn door after the horse has already left are somewhat ineffective.
They trust a drone to fire on people without confirmation.
That is what an "area-denial" program does. Once you send the "weapons-free" message, the unit kills anything that enters the specified zone (excluding allies recognized by the IFF subsystem).
I would not want to be the technician who is supposed to do the field service on these machines.
Hopefully the unit can received the "stand-down" or "recall" messages. Hopefully, the designers included a time-limit for the "weapons-free" condition. Hopefully there are no bugs in the software.....
At least eventually the unit runs out of battery power or fuel.
If the U.S. bans them, our enemies will still build them.
Moron never heard of a Drone? Drones come in many varieties. Most military drones closely resemble planes. The MQ-9, used by the US Air Force, has a wingspan of 66 feet (20 meters). Store-bought drones can fit in the palm of your hand. All have varying degrees of autonomy. Some military drones can fly autonomously, but can’t use their weapons to target and kill without a human in the loop. Yet.
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