U.S. Army considers replacing thousands of troops with robots- what are your views on this?
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/defence/10587820/US-Army-considers-replacing-thousands-of-troops-with-robots.html
What are you views on this? Discuss.
Looks like that U.S. Army Tank-Automotive Research, Development and Engineering Center (TARDEC) has already demonstrated this technology recently:
http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2014/01/driverless/
I agree that it takes out the human factor. Implementation of this most likely won't occur for at least another 5-10 years.
Every branch of service have their 'eyes' and 'hands' in this topic in one way or another.
Unmanned weapons platforms, transport devices and/or IED defeaters are more cost effective - the loss of any of these items is nothing compared to the loss of an experienced human warfighter.
Getting our personnel out of harms way all the while inflicting heavy losses to the enemy is the main objective of remotely controlled items.
As long as we keep the 'human' element in the 'loop' this type of thinking is a good thing in the long run. But if they think they can run things without the human element - I would hope the American public would go against this - there is no unhackable system in existence so the consequences of taking the human factor out would lead to disaster.
Our Commander-in-Chief has already welcomed our new Robot Overlords as shown in the link below:
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Peace/2014/04/24/Obama-Bows-to-Japanese-Robot
Were it to change to a direct firing asset (remember the original Predator drones were unarmed) this would likely lead increased animosity toward U.S. forces.
The U.S. Army Tank-Automotive Research, Development and Engineering Center (TARDEC) has recently conducted a Capabilities Advancement Demonstration on Ft. Hood. Here's the video:
http://youtu.be/HseUNLP6q24
Note that in 1:10 in the video that the mannequin is not wearing a PT Belt.