The Senate Armed Service Committee loves drones. They’re so smitten, in fact, that they’re trying to force the Pentagon to prove why any new weapons system should be manned at all. Check out this snippet from the Committee’s version of the 2007 Defense budget:
The Secretary of Defense shall… develop a policy applicable throughout the Department of Defense on research, development, test, and evaluation, procurement, and operation of unmanned systems [which] shall include the… preference for joint unmanned systems in acquisition programs for new systems, including a requirement under any such program for the development of a manned system for a certification that an unmanned system is incapable of meeting program requirements. (emphasis mine)
Now, this unmanned romance began a long time ago. Six years back, SASC Chairman John Warner called for one third of all military vehicles — both in the air and on the ground — to be robotic by 2015. Nobody expected it to happen, literally. But, as National Journal noted at the time, “Warner has already achieved his first objective. He has fired his shotgun into the heavens and gotten everybody’s attention.”
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I’ve been following developments around military robots for awhile now and recently wrote about a related tongue-in-cheek conspiracy theory (see URL).
But after writing it, I thought more about some of the implications of having a robotic force:
One thought is this: robots don’t find themselves in moral quandaries. It is far easier to send robotic forces against targets that human soldiers might balk at attacking. A soldier on the ground will likely question an order to shoot a child; a robot would simply follow its program. Even the use of a remote controlled drone makes a morally suspect action easier, as the human controller sitting in a far away command bunker sees only through the limited sensors of the drone, not with his or her own eyes. So much easier to push a button that launches a missile from a thousand miles away than to aim and pull the trigger with the target just across the street.
The April 2006 edition of Harper’s included a panel discussion on the possibility of an American coup d’etat by the military. One of the arguments made against such an action ever taking place is that Americans aren’t going to take up arms against their neighbors. Reading some of the statements in this article, as well as about the complaints of religious bias at the Air Force Academy, I found myself wondering if that is really the case, given that our all volunteer military is now hardly representative of the population.
But a robotic force has no allegiance to anyone, or any principles, other than its programming. How much easier to send a bunch of automated tanks and drones against a rioting crowd, a noisy minority, or a political opponent! What dangers to the republic will we experience 20 years down the road if DARPA’s strategic plans are realized?
When humans are removed from the military combat equation the spin-off effects will be wide ranging and largely unpredictable. Mechanized robots will have no allegiance and electronics can be compromized. Freedom, liberty, democracy, republic and justice are concepts in the human mind that have an intrinsic value based on what we are willing to sacrifice to get, keep and defend them. Take human blood out of the struggle to obtain them and keep them and their value will decline. Additionally by sanitizing warfare by removing the human cost of war and worse losing at war we may well find that instead of resorting to war as more or less a last resort we decide its more effient to simply send out a bunch of robots to do our fighting what the hey it not like we well be putting our kids at risk only someone elses kids will die that is until the other side whoever that is also comes up with robotic forces. Then we will see robot vs robot no sweat no blood and no guts just continual robotic wars.
There will be no heros and without human sacrifice as an integral element politicians wont have to explain to their constituents why the dead are not coming home and why they were sent to die in the first place. Without the value of human life being put at risk nothing will be gained in victory nor will much be lost in defeat. What a grey world we are moving into, no patriots dreams, no rockets red glare no courageous charges nor gallant defenses.
Thomas Jefferson said the tree of liberty never grows quite so well as when it is from time to time watered by the blood of patriots. Fighting our wars robotically might be cleaner but the sterility of that kind of warfare will make it more horrible more likely and the tree of liberty may well wither a way and die for lack of watering by patriots blood.
What do you expect from those dumb asses. U.S. Senators couldn’t find their back ends with both hands and we are supposed to trust their judgement on weapons development. Rubbish!