[bdamm]

Autonomous weapons are actually a really interesting branch of this and deserves a little more.

Yes, autonomous weapons were explored and were found to be poor performers compared to actual pilots. The breakthrough is in terminal guidance and dozens of other little techniques to get quality human control extended into the far reach of the battlefield. And of course, AI assistance in logistics and analysis. But actual autonomous weapons making any more of a choice beyond "something is moving, kill it" have been, at least for now, mostly a dead end.

This is because it's very difficult to economically load the rather sizable compute requirement into the compact one-use weapons, and of course reliable communications aren't assured either.

That will probably change some day, but for now, cheap automous command drones making battlefield analysis e.g. mapping out enemy movements from afar and launching cheap autonomous kamikaze drones is not a thing beyond occasional limited testing.

[fnordpiglet]

You don’t need to load the compute onto the platform for autonomy, planning can be done remotely just like with human guidance. The latency is the same.

[SJC_Hacker]

But if comms get jammed, how will the drone decide what to target ? For that you need inference, which means sizable compute.

[tancop]

you can put the compute on a big expensive reusable control drone and send commands down with lasers. thats way harder to jam than any form of radio. if thats not enough try fiber optic like they do in ukraine.

[fnordpiglet]

There are also now drones with long spooling wires. Regardless, autonomous or not, connectivity to home is important.

I would note that a lot of drones are quite large too - small airplanes. They can carry more than enough hardware for autonomy. You can also have motherships doing planning and smaller kamikaze drones for combat.

These aren’t hard problems to solve, the harder problem is the reluctance to give over to automation. But that’s going to happen faster and faster.

[bdamm]

It is kind of a hard problem to solve. Sure, we can have expensive and custom equipment flying around, but the invasion of Ukraine (and really, any war when it gets bad enough) is all about economic efficiency. The question is not can it be done; the question is, can it be done repeatedly, can it be scaled, and can it be cheap?

We will have a fully autonomous Siri that is actually good before Ukraine gets autonomous motherships making targeting choices to repel Russian assault corps. However, given the pace of the war and the pace of AI development, that may actually happen. But it isn't happening today.

[pfdietz]

> long spooling wires

Long spooling optical fibers.