Seriously. Incremental improvements are worthwhile.
In general, militaries never want to comprise their effectiveness. So if given the chance to implement a life-saving intervention that harms their effectiveness, they will be reluctant at best to implement it. But this is a life-saving intervention that possibly even increases their effectiveness!
That's what truly makes it awesome. A way to save lives that militaries are not only willing to implement, but rather are actually enthusiastic about implementing.
That's a best case scenario. What it could do is make military intervention an even easier decision. The loss of human life is a deterrent to engaging in war. If one side isn't concerned about that, wouldn't they be more inclined to go to war?
Conversely removing the threat to human life may reduce the probability of escalation and make a response more measured.
For example two men break through a security fence. A robotic patrol would seem to be much less likely to respond with deadly force than a human patrol would in that situation.
If the men were refugees or wounded soilders looking for medical care the more measured response of the robotic patrol may prevent a death and actually de-escalate conflict.
Also assume that the two men were hostile and fired on the patrol. The destruction of the mech is much less likely to provoke a political and civilian response than the death of a human and may lead to a more measured response.
My bigger concern is that a fully mechanized force may decrease the apparent cost of oppressing a civilian population.
Drone operators refer to children as “fun-size terrorists” and liken killing them to “cutting the grass before it grows too long,” said one of the operators, Michael Haas, a former senior airman in the Air Force
Already, in the case of Israel vs. Palestinian resistance, we're talking teenagers throwing rocks and people firing WW2-class rocket artillery, versus one of the most high-tech and well-funded armies (with very good, uncontested air support) in the world.
With robots involved it would most definitely be a one-sided reduction in casualties, but it already is so one-sided I'm not sure that it would meaningfully alter the numbers in that conflict. Take the 2014 Israel-Gaza war, for instance (numbers from Wikipedia):
Israel: 70 casualties, 90% military.
Gaza: around 2 500 casualties, 30-40% military (depending on source, but even Israel estimates <50%).
Worth mentioning: the side that has the biggest causualities is the one who keeps attacking first. The only reason why more Israelis aren't hurt seems to be that they put a lot of effort into shielding their civilians.
There is little doubt that if stabbings, rocket attacks etc stopped Israel would stop as well.
... and, there is also little reason for doubt that if Israel stopped first it wouldn't stop attacks against them, quite on the contrary there is reason to believe they would escalate if left alone.
PS: while I feel this was worth mentioning I was not the one to downvote you, I think you argued reasonably.
>Worth mentioning: the side that has the biggest causualities is the one who keeps attacking first.
>There is little doubt that if stabbings, rocket attacks etc stopped Israel would stop as well.
Every violent action by both sides is framed as a retaliation for previous wrongs.
It's almost impossible to prove conclusively who started the tit for tat in almost all cases. However, if you do an analysis of most media stories or news reports in the US, there's a curious degree of unanimity about it.
Dismissing the proportionality of the responses (which you can measure) in favor of focusing of "who started it?" (which you can't), is effectively prioritizing propaganda over facts.
The issue isn't robots versus robots of course, it's robots versus humans. Robots are far less squishy and compassionate than their human friends.
Now if there were a treaty stating that all wars are to be fought in a robot battle arena, and the event was available to stream on Netflix, count me in.
This comment does not make sense -- it isnt like the robots will be shooting at Clay pigeon -- the robots will be killing humans. Right now, most of the targets end up being civilians, that can only go up.
Sounds good but the problem is, once all the robots of one side are killed, the winning side robots will attack and start to kill the losing side humans.
We are fighting asymmetric wars where one side frequently doesn't have the resources or knowledge to use robots.
These robots will make it easier to kill people by reducing your own risk. I doubt they will reduce the amount of lives lost. At the very least the calculus is quite a bit more complicated. I doubt we will see robots fighting each other …
I assume that these devices will mainly being deployed against enemies not having those. Main advantage: no chance of mercy. Extremely valuable in civil wars...
Do note that the robots described in this article only drive autonomously, and when armed, need a human to (remotely) fire the weapons.
If the robot shot autonomously, you'd have a point about mercy. But the way it is described here, it's exactly the same mercy-wise as if the soldier manning the weapons was riding along in the vehicle.
This is already happening.