[leeroyjenkins11]

What I fear are hypersonic weapons and other fast delivery systems that will require AI offensive and counter offensive weapons. At what point will humans need to be removed from the loop because a human response will mean that we would be destroyed. What happens when you have superpowers that have AI stats constantly checking on when the optimal nuke or emp time is, or even worse, faulty info or hacked info that tells it when are under attack and issues a counter offensive. Or it interprets human intent incorrectly.

[georgeg23]

Balloon platforms for Hypersonic weapons (both monitoring and launching) have been a DoD priority recently

(before the latest "incident") https://www.politico.com/news/2022/07/05/u-s-militarys-newes...

[jhoelzel]

There is actually a Stargate episode about this where two civilisations lived in bunkers and fought each other with drones without really knowing why anymore.

[christkv]

There is the old Star Trek episode where two civilisations decided to forgo a real war for a simulated war where the computers would simulate attacks and then parlay the losses to each as a list of people who died in the attack who would then promptly commit suicide.

[barrkel]

Actually what I recall was one side had real pilots, but the side SG1 came in on were flying drones. They were offered a chance to fly themselves then O'Neil was disturbed to see there was a person in the other aircraft.

[fsiefken]

That reminds me of the Screamers movie about a war between the mining company (N.E.B.) and "The Alliance" (former mining and science personnel) on the planet Sirius 6B.

"Five years into the war, Alliance scientists created and deployed Autonomous Mobile Swords (AMS) — artificially intelligent self-replicating machines that hunt down and kill N.E.B. soldiers on their own. They are nicknamed "screamers" because of a high-pitched noise they emit as they attack. Screamers track targets by their heartbeats, so Alliance soldiers wear "tabs" which broadcast a signal canceling out the wearer's heartbeat and rendering them "invisible" to the machines.

A fragile stalemate is in effect between the two exhausted, poorly supplied, and undermanned armies. The Alliance recovers a message from a dead N.E.B. soldier, killed by screamers as he approached the Alliance compound, guaranteeing safe passage through N.E.B. territory to discuss a truce. When Alliance commanding officer Joe Hendricksson reports this development to his Earth-based superiors, he is told that peace negotiations are already underway on Earth; but Private "Ace" Jefferson, newly arrived from Earth, says that is untrue. Hendricksson is not surprised; he has long suspected that both sides have simply written off Sirius 6B and abandoned their armies." -- wikipedia

The script is loosely based on a story by Philip K. Dick: "Set in a world where war between the Soviet Union and United Nations has reduced most of the world to a barren wasteland, the story concerns the discovery, by the few remaining soldiers left, that self-replicating robots originally built to assassinate Soviet agents have gained sentience and are now plotting against both sides." -- wikipedia

[refuse]

How about that Star Trek episode where they simulated all conflicts in a program and then killed the real soldiers which were lost in the simulation?

Sometimes I wonder if TV was ever worth watching.

[raincom]

hahaha, just like the work done in large organizations. Something is done, without knowing the larger goals.

[time0ut]

Automated counter attack systems exist already, at least to a degree [0]. Hypersonic weapons may make a first strike more feasible, but not that much. SLBMs with a depressed trajectory already have very short flight times [1]. The defenses against this apply to hypersonic weapons as well. The defenses being maintaining a survivable second strike capability in the form of a very stealthy SSBN fleet and a launch on warning posture.

Having lethal automated weapons systems is a scary idea, but hopefully we've already learned how to avoid using them for strategic deterrence.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Hand

[1] https://www.scienceandglobalsecurity.org/archive/sgs03gronlu...

[trabant00]

The title is complete click-bait. What they are actually doing:

> Ishtari uses machine learning to virtually assemble and test war machines from computer models of individual components, such as the chassis and engines, that are usually marooned on separate digital drawing boards

[DoesntMatter22]

What surprised me is how fast icbms travel. It's like 15 minutes from Russia to the US via ICBM. Other side of the planet in no time because it's traveling though outer space to get here

[YurgenJurgensen]

The US isn't on the other side of the planet to Russia. The missiles fly over the Arctic, and typically travel less than a quarter of the circumference of the planet.

[DoesntMatter22]

Still 15 minutes is incredibly fast. Even if it was 30 minutes it's super quick when a plane flight would be like 16 hours or something

[freediver]

They fly at 7 km/s.

[soco]

At this point you might be describing Skynet.