A dozen types of drones are patrolling the skies over Afghanistan and Iraq. But because most of them run on different software, it’s tough to get the robot planes to work together — or to port one machine’s advances to another drone.
That’s why the Pentagon’s way-out research branch, Darpa, has been working on a common operating system (COS) for the next generation of killer drones. The “first components” of that software were delivered last month, according to the agency.
The COS “is not like UNIX, LINUX, or any of the available embedded operating systems,” Darpa says. “It does not manage and control resources such as hard drives, network cards, and keyboards as one would expect of these typical operating systems.”
What the COS is supposed to do, eventually, is let the drones pass information back and forth between each other, with operators on the ground, and with manned airplanes in the sky. If all goes according to plan, the system will tie together the drones’ sensors, giving the robots a single picture of a warzone. It will manage the aircraft’s weapons array. It will make recommendations on when to fire. And it will manage the “balance between autonomy and human interaction” in each mission.
In other words, it’s pretty damn important. No operating system, no robot war.
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Of course, the OS will have to be dubbed “Skynet.”
All this does is lower the cost of war. When lives are not at risk it will be even easier to start un-ending war. It is the shock at losing life that ends wars. Remove that and war becomes too easy for the President and Congress to wage.
Yeah right jake, like those crazy-ass camel jockeys wont fight against us cuz R2D2 is on our side…..
Man, it your enemy has nothing to lose it wont matter if you have antimatter bombs or plasma guns, they`ll do whatever they can to try kill you, no matter what happens to them.
And ryan is right. Plus think about this:first drone soldiers, then anti-protest drones. You wont be able to protest against your crappy wage without getting zapped by a robot running COS
But then you can just build robot protestors, and you won’t have anything to lose either.
Jake:
“Ever hear of deterrence. One of the goals of this equipment is to make us so powerful, we will not have to use it.”
Those where the same goals for developing weapons of mass destruction, and the idea of Mutually Assured Destruction and none of those has made us the least bit safer. In fact it is easily argued that they have made us much less safe.
Robotics and computers have always followed Moores Law about computer power and increasing and cost decreasing applies to this too. This will make war too easy to start for the United States. Deterrence should apply to those with the power as well.
I would like to be the first to welcome our new autonymous drone overlords.
I think you guys are diong a good job.Thes drones are very good also in INS.Border Patrol as proven.
Why do we need armed drones for border patrol?
Matt is right. I dont think we should rush into developing these kinds of weapons. There has never been a perfect operating system or even one good enough to trust with weapons.
Welcome, oh masters of the sky, we bid you our servitude. Please look over us with impunity and wisdom.
I’ve read about ADA, and sure, it sounds neat, but the problem is that no one was teaching it in universities. Also, the constant push towards COTS and industry standards really kind of took the fire out of this language that was only really used by DoD.
I wonder when the first 12 year old hacker will be able to write a virus for those plains
“Military drones stopped attaking and started playing Twister! 12 year old arrested!”