Robot Wars

EyesWideOpen writes "According to this New York Times article (free reg. req.) the Office of Naval Research is coordinating an effort to determine what it will take to build a system that will make it possible for autonomous vehicles (in the air and on the ground), or A. V.'s, to serve as soldiers on the battlefield. The project, called Multimedia Intelligent Network of Unattended Mobile Agents, or Minuteman, would consist of a network in which the highest-flying of the A. V.'s 'will communicate with headquarters, transmitting data and receiving commands. The commands will be passed along to a team of lower-flying A.V.'s that will relay them in turn to single drones serving as liaisons for squadrons of A.V.'s.' The article also mentions that the A. V.'s will have the ability to send high resolution color video as well as still photographs using MPEG-4 compression. Pretty interesting stuff."

Question...

[T3kno]

In order to be pollitically correct are they going to build a female version called MinuteMaid?

M.I.N.U.M.A.M. ??

[Apostata]

"...Multimedia Intelligent Network of Unattended Mobile Agents, or Minuteman..."

Tell you what...ditch the robots, get someone who can make cool acronyms and go from there.

For example: B.A.D.A.B.O.O.M.

Ballistic Aeronautic Destructive Assault Bullet [which has a tendency to be] Overly-Optimistic [in it's] Massacre.

Sure

[scott1853]

And they can use that wonderfully accurate facial recognition technology to differentiate between good and bad guys and kill the right one.

Didn't they see AOTC?

[thud2000]

We should be working on clones! Clones, man, not droids! Droids suck!

Re:Sure

[ronfar]

ED-209: Drop your gun! You have 10 seconds to comply

Dick Jones: I'd do as he says. (chuckling)

hapless victim drops gun

ED-209: (growls) You now have 5 seconds to comply....

Gah. I can see it now...

[American AC in Paris]

if (target.headgear == "turban")
{
FireDeathRay();
} else {
GlowerMenacingly();
}

Have movies taught us NOTHING?

[Scutter]

Everyone knows all you have to do is fly your ship into the hangar of the mothership and destroy its reactor, and all the drones will cease working.

Code Red meets Red Dawn

[Darth_Burrito]

Heh, the next time a script kiddie says he owns you he'll mean it and you will refer to the entire US via it's military network. Seriously large networked armies sounds like a recipe for Code Red meets Red Dawn [imdb.com].

Obligitory Simpson's Quote

[grip]

The wars of the future will not be fought on the battlefield or at sea.
They will be fought in space, or possibly on top of a very tall mountain. In either case, most of the actual fighting will be done by small robots. And as you go forth today remember always your duty is clear: To build and maintain those robots.
-- Military school Commandant's graduation address, "The Secret War of Lisa Simpson" as found on the best Simpsons site http://www.snpp.com

In other news...

[putrescence]

Blizzard Entertainment announed its entry into the military control software market.

Our advanced unit control interface will allow the easy, dynamic control of a large number of military units of various types. Unit divisions can be formed on-the-fly allowing for easy regrouping of units.

Our revolutionary interface provides not only visual information but also features our advanced Aural Notification of Unit Situation system (A.N.U.S.). Simple audio queues inform the operator what military units are up to both on and off screen. Aural queues such as "daboo", "zug-zug" and "work completed" will inform operators of the current status of infrastructure units and codes such as "We're under attack!" will provide data pertaining to attack units.

Re:Robotic Battlefield?

[garethwi]

They would probably just bomb the shit out of everything just like they do now.