[michaelt]

Are these drone-based 'lethal autonomous weapons' markedly different to cruise missiles?

Or is the alarm here about the fact that every man and his dog will be able to get their hands on them, when they cost $1000 instead of $1000000?

[neurobashing]

I guess the answer to me is "it depends". Modern cruise missiles are pretty much drones, but at the same time they're always what I guess I'd call "weapons of state". Big, expensive, and part of a large decision-making loop. You can't just lob one; someone signed for it. Attacks are planned in advance at high levels.

whereas this "slaughterbot" idea is smaller, low-cost, and with far less top-down control.

At least, as I understand it.

[nick238]

I think the latter. For what it's worth, the 'arms' that are still protected by the 2nd Amendment are still approximately the same as in 1787 (line of sight, bang bang), as you're legally restricted from owning guided bombs, cruise missiles, nuclear weapons, etc, but even aside from that, you're practically restricted because of limited availability and/or extreme cost.

On the flip side, the hardware for Slaughterbots is basically here: TinyWhoops cost ~$100, say ~$100 to upgrade the ARM processor to one that can process realtime video, ~$100 for a shaped charge. So the hardware is super cheap, and once developed, the software to tie it all together has nearly no incremental cost. Once it's out there, that's the genie leaving the bottle.

[zokier]

That is my question too. Tomahawk missiles have been fielded since early 80s, and are very much fire and forget autonomous weapons that can track targets based on sensor data (i.e. not reliant on GPS or other external guidance).

Maybe the small difference is that cruise missiles generally are not anti-personnel weapons; maybe the article is seeking a ban in the same sense that Ottawa treaty banned anti-personnel mines but allows anti-tank mines. But I think this is something that would need to be explicitly addressed instead of just spouting sky is falling rhetoric.