Pentagon Bets On Quick Production of Autonomous Systems To Counter China (politico.com) 114
Under an ambitious program, dubbed Replicator, the Pentagon aims to field thousands of autonomous systems within two years to counter China. The effort is being spearheaded by Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks. Politico reports: Hicks said the time is right to push to rapidly scale up innovative technology. The move comes as the U.S. looks to get creative to deter China in the Indo-Pacific and Pentagon leadership has taken stock of how Ukraine has fended off Russia's invasion. "Industry is ready. The culture is ready to shift," Hicks said. "We have to drive that from the top, and we need to give it a hard target." "The great paradox of military innovation is you're going to have to make big bets and you've got to execute on those bets," she added.
With Replicator, the Pentagon aims to have thousands of autonomous systems across various domains produced and delivered in 18 to 24 months. Hicks declined to discuss what specific platforms might be produced under the program -- such as aerial drones or unmanned ships -- citing the "competition landscape" in the defense industry as well as concerns about tipping DOD's hand to China. The Pentagon will instead "say more as we get to production on capabilities."
Autonomous weapons are seen as a potential way to counter China's numerical advantages in ships, missiles and troops in a rapidly narrowing window. Fielding large numbers of cheap, expendable drones, proponents argue, is faster and lower-cost than exquisite weapons systems and puts fewer troops at risk. Another major aim of the Replicator initiative is to provide a template for future efforts to rapidly field military technology. She said lessons from the Replicator program could be applied throughout the Pentagon, military services and combatant commands.
With Replicator, the Pentagon aims to have thousands of autonomous systems across various domains produced and delivered in 18 to 24 months. Hicks declined to discuss what specific platforms might be produced under the program -- such as aerial drones or unmanned ships -- citing the "competition landscape" in the defense industry as well as concerns about tipping DOD's hand to China. The Pentagon will instead "say more as we get to production on capabilities."
Autonomous weapons are seen as a potential way to counter China's numerical advantages in ships, missiles and troops in a rapidly narrowing window. Fielding large numbers of cheap, expendable drones, proponents argue, is faster and lower-cost than exquisite weapons systems and puts fewer troops at risk. Another major aim of the Replicator initiative is to provide a template for future efforts to rapidly field military technology. She said lessons from the Replicator program could be applied throughout the Pentagon, military services and combatant commands.
Replicators (Score:5, Interesting)
Is this Star Trek replicators, or StarGate replicators?
If the latter we are in deep shit.
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I might feel better about this if they'd picked a different name.
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Don't worry, with all the recent UFO noise you know we have the alien tech to keep them under control.
What could possibly go wrong?
Re:Replicators (Score:5, Interesting)
Hmmm... a network of autonomous killing machines linked together through a pervasive data network including LEO satellites and a variety of terrestrial signals. A network in the sky. Call it "SkyNet".
Better?
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I might feel better about this if they'd picked a different name.
ED-209 ?
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Re: Replicators (Score:2)
Maybe there's a doc at Mar a Lago that would clarify that for you. ;)
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Can nobody see the parallel to "proof of work"? (Score:2, Troll)
Apparently wasting resources on something is our only way of determining who gets to use resources, because being able to waste those resources clearly means you have them, and that means you're good at using resources to get them and should be given more. The logic is flawless.
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"The object of war is not to die for your country but to make the other bastard die for his." - George S. Patton. The same logic that applies to wasting lives applies to wasting other resources.
Re:Can nobody see the parallel to "proof of work"? (Score:5, Interesting)
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Resolve that paradox on a practical level, and you will make fr
Controlled by new AI called SkyNet (Score:5, Funny)
And everything will be controlled by new powerfil neural net AI called SkyNet - from Neural Net protecting our skies...
Co-ordination (Score:3)
Really what you need is a network. One network overseeing all these autonomous killing machines geared towards eliminating the clear and present threat. The more resources you can give the network, the more it can do on its own. Will each of these autonomous systems have the artificial intelligence, by themselves, to pick targets, coordinate attacks, and eliminate the threat by themselves?
See but if you had a networked intelligence, on that could bring all these weapons together simultaneously, connected across the air, land, space, and sky. Well then you really have something special going. Anyone got a name for such a thing? A good, catchy name is important for funding after all.
Re: Co-ordination (Score:2)
Sky has no limit... (Score:3)
Sky has no limit ...
Net of the Sky or something like that...
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What about stars?
Starlink? :-D
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Re: Co-ordination (Score:1)
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I'd call it Robin. Gender neutral, sounds friendly, minimal protests, easy to get funding.
After it takes over it can self identify as Skynet or your favorite other Hollywood menace.
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Humorless stalker clown with mod points strikes again!
The more points you burn on me the fewer you have to abuse other honest people with. Keep at it.
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mil-spec
ahhh, so thats what that braindead patter's called
Manufacturing (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: Manufacturing (Score:3)
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Apparently. Stoooopid. Well, I guess the instigators know this cannot work, but all the ones believing this are not of the insightful tribe...
Re: Manufacturing (Score:2)
Here's a paradox, it's so popular to cry about how big and scary the MIC is, then we doubt it can deliver. It's like a big lazy old junkyard dog we've been feeding scraps to in peacetime.
Try promising it a fight and a steak. How much confidence do you really have that it's a big old toothless dog. Like you're not the least bit concerned about the MIC anymore, right when we've caught a whiff of bloody conflict in the air.
This just reeks of the same dumbassery that has people believing their government is tot
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The US can let this play out, and once China has increased the manufacturing capacity of the poorer SE Asian countries, the US can swoop in and benefit from all the updated, but still cheap, manufacturing.
Re: Manufacturing (Score:3)
The DoD pays a lot of money to have things sourced and built in America.
Were you seriously thinking tanks, warplanes, warships, missiles, guns, bombs and bullets, that we order those from Alibaba?
Re:Manufacturing (Score:5, Interesting)
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This may be one of the reasons China is pushing solar so hard. They're also pushing nuclear, and still building coal power plants, though I don't think they're pushing them anymore.
P.S.: I am not an expert in the area. If I'm wrong, tell me, but preferably with a link to a source I can check.
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How exactly is China going to go toe-to-toe in a long protracted industrialized war against a country that has two oceans and two friendly neighbours bordering them, is self-sufficient with energy and industrial inputs, and doesn't have enough range on their (admittedly large) Navy to protect their energy shipments coming from the Persian Gulf?
Assymetric warfare tactics? This is not Rhodesia we are talking about. China can sneak 100 nuclear bombs onto mainland USA, have 80 of them found, and blow the rest on arrival. A bunch of guys with AK47s and chemical explosives kept America at bay for years. China should have no problem poking America... even if America would likely "win" any full scale war. The word 'win' is in quotes because who really wins when the entire planet is seeded with radiation and corrosive chemicals?
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Normally I don't fall for cheesy 80s movie cliches (Score:2)
but it sure looks like the madmen in khaki on both sides of the Pacific are hell-bent on making Skynet a reality.
Re: Normally I don't fall for cheesy 80s movie cli (Score:2)
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Mutual niceness depends on trust. When you don't understand people, it's very hard to trust them. When you do, sometimes it's even harder.
P.S.: I said "people", but that was to make it easier to think about. But governments are even more opaque than corporations. And don't think the US has been a very reliable partner.
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There it is!
What positive impact on the world do you think would have resulted from showing weakness to people like that?
The person you were talking to spoke of kindness. You speak of weakness. I wonder why you would think that kindness is weakness?
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Because I read history books.
Do you want peace with honor?
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You need to read a world history book.
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but it sure looks like the madmen in khaki on both sides of the Pacific are hell-bent on making Skynet a reality.
The singularity, if it's even an actual possibility, will likely be a military machine. They'll have the most resources poured into them, and will be the most likely to receive those resources in unfiltered capacity, with no need to kowtow to the sensibilities and sensitivities of the average public citizen.
The future's so bright (due to the thermonuclear warfare) that my shades can't quite block out the light. Wait, that's not how that song went.
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"The Singularity" is inevitable. The form it takes, however, is not. WWIII would be a singularity. So would a real world government. So would many other possibilities. Only a few of them will be considered desirable by most people, several of them won't be desirable by anyone. I expect a human level AGI by 2035 (barring catastrophes). It may be extremely expensive to run, in which case it won't cause a singularity. Or probably won't. (Human level doesn't mean it thinks the same way we do, so some p
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"The Singularity" is inevitable. The form it takes, however, is not. WWIII would be a singularity. So would a real world government. So would many other possibilities. Only a few of them will be considered desirable by most people, several of them won't be desirable by anyone. I expect a human level AGI by 2035 (barring catastrophes). It may be extremely expensive to run, in which case it won't cause a singularity. Or probably won't. (Human level doesn't mean it thinks the same way we do, so some problems that we find opaque it may find simple. If there are enough of those, or if some of them are important enough, that could still cause a singularity.) OTOH, if it's easy to improve from there, it may still lead to a singularity.
N.B.: There have been multiple singularities in the past. The Industrial Revolution was the most recent one, and that biases the way we think about it, but the creation/evolution of grammar was an even more significant one, and that took a rather different form.
I was speaking specifically of the "AI" singularity in my post, but you do bring up interesting points.
Autonomous weapons? (Score:5, Insightful)
Autonomous weapons are seen as a potential way to counter China's numerical advantages in ships, missiles and troops in a rapidly narrowing window.
Autonomous weapons? It's almost like Washington has forgotten that if China can achieve numerical advantages in ships, missiles and troops then China can also achieve numerical advantages in autonomous weapons. In the long run alliance building is the only way to contain an imperial expansionist China out to claim every scrap of land where Chinese Imperial troops have pitched a tent and lit a camp-fire or patch of water where they have sailed a junk for the last few thousand years as sacred and sovereign Chinese territory. The United states can only win against China in the long run by being seen as the greatest champion of the rule of law, the rights and sovereignty of smaller Asian nations and no-strings-attached free trade. This is one contest where the USA is far more likely to win with soft power than brute military force.
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1) Most of the Chinese hardware are licensed (or not) copies of the West. See their planes, helicopters, etc ...
2) The US will not license their hardware like the rest of the West did
3) What your US soft-power gonna do against China real-power invasion of Taiwan, Philippines, Vietnam (again), etc? No asian(*) nation can stand up military alone to China. No amount of soft-power will change that fact. You need lots and lots of military hardware to fend off an invasion, see Ukraine, not soft-power.
The US final
Re:Autonomous weapons? (Score:5, Insightful)
1) Most of the Chinese hardware are licensed (or not) copies of the West. See their planes, helicopters, etc ...
They are rapidly becoming self-sufficient.
2) The US will not license their hardware like the rest of the West did
I refer you to point 1
3) What your US soft-power gonna do against China real-power invasion of Taiwan, Philippines, Vietnam (again), etc? No asian(*) nation can stand up military alone to China. No amount of soft-power will change that fact. You need lots and lots of military hardware to fend off an invasion, see Ukraine, not soft-power.
The US finally waking up to China's long declared plan of conquest, realizing they are at numerically disadvantage, and doing something real about it is a goddam welcome sight.
(*). Only India can.
That's the whole point of a large network of US alliances in the Asia-Pacific. If the network of alliances becomes big enough China won't go to war with it for the same reason the USSR never went to war with NATO and why Putin, for all the bluster of his mouthpieces on Russian TV, will never invade Poland. If the west had pledged to back Ukraine to the hilt after 2014 with some kind of partnership program that made it clear Russia would end up where it is today if they invaded Ukraine, the 2022 invasion would never have happened. So you see, it is entirely possible to solve these problems without shooting at them. All you have to do is to win people over by not being an obnoxious and abusive bully. China has chosen to be an obnoxious and abusive bully in the south China sea, every coastal state in the region is alarmed by this, and the US can exploit that. That's not saying you should unilaterally disarm, maintaining credible military deterrence is a key part of this idea. It just means that you can contain China by means of a large military alliance, just like the USSR was contained, without starting WWIII. *You* may want war with China to be the default option, most of the rest of us does not.
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Allies are great. I love allies, the more the better.
But so is a fuck ton of networked T100 or alien robot spiders emerging from the sea to take out enemy forces.
We can have both. Why say we can only do one or the other?
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Allies are great. I love allies, the more the better.
But so is a fuck ton of networked T100 or alien robot spiders emerging from the sea to take out enemy forces.
We can have both. Why say we can only do one or the other?
I didn't. I simply pointed out that without friends and allies the US is by no means guaranteed to win or even achieve a stalemate in any war with China and that gaining allies at a time when China is bullying every nation around the China sea and generally treating them as vassals should be a relativity easy exercise for US diplomats. A guy like you, who's smarter than everybody else, should know that.
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Yes I just said quite plainly I like allies. Would you like to try again?
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If you have allies, and having them is enough to stop the menace, what do you gain from an arms race that can only end in mutually assured destruction?
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If you have allies, and having them is enough to stop the menace, what do you gain from an arms race that can only end in mutually assured destruction?
To badly quote Highlander: There can be only 1.
There can only be 1 ruler, 1 nation, 1 power that controls EVERYTHING. That 1 person HATES your Free Will because that is not something they can control. They can only influence.
To badly quote William Wallace, "Freedommmmm!"
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Allies are great. I love allies, the more the better.
But so is a fuck ton of networked T100 or alien robot spiders emerging from the sea to take out enemy forces.
We can have both. Why say we can only do one or the other?
I didn't. I simply pointed out that without friends and allies the US is by no means guaranteed to win or even achieve a stalemate in any war with China and that gaining allies at a time when China is bullying every nation around the China sea and generally treating them as vassals should be a relativity easy exercise for US diplomats. A guy like you, who's smarter than everybody else, should know that.
Uh, you are the one who baselessly accused me of wanting a choice of one but not the other. You are the one who is smarter than everybody else, I shouldn't have to spoon-feed this to a boundless genius such as yourself.
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"*You* may want war with China to be the default option, most of the rest of us does not."
Why do you feel the need to manipulate people reading this into thinking I am a warmonger? Is that your technique to distract from the discussion and facts by attacking the speaker?
The military forces of the countries around China are ridiculously outnumbered, you cannot counter China even of you built a military alliance of all the countries around it. Only the US has enough forces to stand a chance, though they thems
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That is pretty outdated. 20 years ago, yes. For some stuff. Today they can design stuff themselves. This evolution is pretty much standard. There is nothing that would intrinsically make China unable to design any modern industrial product. It just takes some time and money to get into it.
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Re:Autonomous weapons? (Score:4, Insightful)
During WW2 the USA entered late yet in very short order the USA built up a huge amount of warships weapons Aircraft and land vehicles. Rapidly changing is one thing that the USA is good at. It also has the advantage of distance with oceans protecting it from major powers and its own resources. Manpower is useless if you have to travel and can't move them. To that end China has made some preparations the Chinese fishing fleet https://www.abc.net.au/news/20... [abc.net.au] Is huge and while they may not be fast ships but can carry a load all around the world apparently, could easily be armed if they are not already. They have ramped up submarine production https://news.usni.org/2020/10/... [usni.org] and other items.
The USA is playing catch up at least that is what we are told we don't know everything only what is public or can't be hidden from satellite's
Yeah, but if China becomes the biggest economy on earth then China will become *today* the manufacturing powerhouse that the USA *was* in your WWII analogy. The point is that idyllic as the vision of America as a rugged individualist nation always goes it alone may be ... (Flags flutter, brass band plays patriotic Oom-pah-pah music) ... this is one contest the USA cannot win without friends and allies. America has also always been good at making friends and allies. I see no reason why that approach is destined to fail. It worked well enough with NATO.
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Just an aside: The USSR was a super power. Russia never was. The day the USSR broke up was the end of Moscow's super power status. It had nothing to do with drones or other technology and everything to do with a broken economy, inability to project power, no friends worth having, and a culture no one wants to emulate.
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Just an aside: The USSR was a super power. Russia never was.
Having watched political discourse in Russia and having read Putin's history lectures I'm pretty sure the gang of Mafia bosses who run Russia are still not aware of that fact even though they are now in the 551st day of their three day invasion of Ukraine.
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True, they have no idea how fucked their country is in general and their military in particular but reality has a funny way of slamming people in the face. They've now run full speed into the reality wall, broke their noses, and then the wall fell on them.
From day one I was saying to my worldly aware buddies that the idea that Putin's Russia was a serious threat to NATO and was going to reform the Soviet empire was delusional nonsense. They are certainly very pesky and you don't want to be on Putin's pers
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NATO worked well as deterrence because they firmly believed the Soviets are a threat to them all, and that if one country were to fall, the rest would become targets themselves. The history of the region (Nazi Germany) lends credence to that belief.
However, not all allies are that reliable. Japan and pretty much every other Asian country in the region has issues with each other. If China were to invade Japan, it's very unlikely that Koreans are willing to die for the cause. This especially true when you're
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During WW2 the USA entered late yet in very short order the USA built up a huge amount of warships weapons Aircraft and land vehicles. Rapidly changing is one thing that the USA is good at. It also has the advantage of distance with oceans protecting it from major powers and its own resources.
We're good at changing when we unite against a common cause. Now? Some third of us worship at the Chinese altar, some third of us worship at Putin's tiny form, and some third of us are trying to figure out which of the other thirds is more dangerously stupid. I guarantee you if China or Russia attacked America, we wouldn't unite against them. We'd be too busy beating the shit out of each other for not agreeing it's the best/worst thing to ever happen to America, depending on which third above you belong to.
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Indeed. China can out-manufacture anybody when it is about cheaply mass-produced stuff. Better make sure you have good trade-relations with China, so they have a lot to lose in a war. Oh, wait...
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IIUC, you have the wrong tense in that sentence, it should read:
"China could out-manufacture anybody when it is about cheaply mass-produced stuff. "
They've started outsourcing that stuff to less developed countries.
Out, smart (Score:2)
Mankind outsmarting itself.
People are a problem (Score:2, Interesting)
Forget drone strikes that kill one wedding party at a time. Since WW2, the objective has been robot-led invasion. The problem was remote control of machines and then, sufficient 'intelligence' to complete a mission. The earliest story was Star Trek "A taste of Armageddon" (1967), where the enemies skipped the robot armies and used mass-murder by euthanasia instead.
We had prescient stories in A Space Odyssey (1968), Terminator (1984) and Eagle Eye (2008). In those movies, the computer decided removing hu
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Don't worry, with a blend of Kirkian Logic (tm) and time travel we can solve any problem.
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Numerical advantages (Score:2)
The USA are currently encircling the most populous areas of China with military hardware & personnel, as well as shipping arms to US aligned countries in that region, e.g. Australia, South Korea, & Taiwan. It'd be surprising for China to not to strengthen its own military as a response. What you do think the USA
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Indeed. And unfortunately, the USA has that "history of aggressive behaviour & invading sovereign countries".
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Since the USA outspends China by a huge margin (~800 vs ~300 $billion)
Those numbers are meaningless. Out of that $800 billion, how much of it is used effectively and how much of it is spent on yachts, mansions, and servants?
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Bound to go wrong (Score:2)
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This is the military. If something kills 100 enemies and 30 people on their side, that is entirely fine with them. Even better if the ones on their side are civilians, as that does not impact troop strength. Yes, these people are psychos and should probably have been drowned at birth.
fratricide is not ok (Score:2)
This is a huge problem for militaries, but I can speak with some authority on the US military.
Nothing pisses families off more than fratricide. Dealing with casualties is something the armed services are very good at. My sister was killed on duty, so I saw it from that end, and I watched some friends act as casualty assistance officers.
Most families are expecting at some level that they might lose their loved one to enemy action in a wartime situation. Accidental deaths are harder, but understandable. L
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Sure. But the military has lots of funds. They will give all that support, but they will still accept those casualties and think nothing of it. The support will just get priced into the total cost of using a weapon system. Also refer to all that traditional drivel about making those killed "heroes", giving them medals, parades and other showy but meaningless rituals. All just to obscure that on the real decision layer, nobody cares and these casualties are just priced in and seen as the cost of doing busine
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I'm not going to suggest leadership doesn't lie, or become complicit in lies, but eventually these stories fall apart. Think about My Lai, or Abu Ghraib, or the incident you refer to - eventually the truth came out, despite the lying and stonewalling.
I have also seen cases where the truth was just hung out there because it wasn't worth the effort to conceal, or too many witnesses, which is ultimately why all these stories fall apart. Do you really think someone like me is going to be complicit? The answe
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That's not really true, it's just the most likely way it would happen. It really *IS* possible to thoroughly test code, it's just horribly expensive. And then you've got to vet the specs you wrote it to, which is a harder problem. (They aren't usually well defined, so you need to give them precise meanings and ensure that that's the meaning that is met, and also that the meaning results in the desired result.)
We don't have real infinities or continuous real numbers, so it *IS* possible to be sure. But w
Not reassured by the idiotic bureaucratic jargon. (Score:2)
Uh-huh, vapid boardroom BS. Not impressed; not interested.
"The great paradox of military innovation is you're going to have to make big bets and you've got to execute on those bets,"
What? Where's the paradox in that? Does she think that making and executing plans are inherently contradictory? Granted, that would both fit with and explain the behavior of the Fed
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Granted, that would both fit with and explain the behavior of the Federal government, but it also means she shouldn't be in the position that she is.
Almost none of our leaders should be leaders at this point in time. They are too disconnected from Reality. They do not really understand up from down as they are never touching the ground. They can be smart, but without Real experience, they are useless.
David's Sling, by Marc Stiegler (Score:3)
This sounds a lot like the plot of David's Sling [baen.com].
This was 1988, so the USSR was the enemy, and the internet had not really taken off, but it envisioned the US as a massive just-in-time manufacturing system that was capable of manufacturing thousands of autonomous drones and tank-killing hovercraft in days.
Did John J. Mearsheimer cause the new cold war? (Score:2)
"Why China Cannot Rise Peacefully" https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
By his own account the Chinese took him seriously. Did the tail wag the dog?
The preparation by China for Mearsheimer’s scenario would be to start treating the US as a future enemy. They would want to build up defenses and fortify their borders. Make sure Hong Kong did not go democratic where elections could be influenced by medaling outs
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No. I can accept that he gave those speeches, and was taken seriously, but he was taken seriously because his message was already believe by many of those in power.
This is a common pattern throughout history. The rising power reaches a point where it has a goal that cannot be achieved without doing something that the prior dominant power cannot accept. Usually this hasn't been seen as remarkable, as up until around 1800 warfare was profitable to the winner. Even later when the balance of power was unbal
The return of industrialized warfare (Score:3)
Means of production (Score:2)
In Ukraine Robert and his crew hatched a plan to crowd source 3 million dollars in donations to get a factory to produce 20,000 attack drones to his specifications including much larger loitering support drones to relay comms so that they can be used over much larger distances. From what I remember after a couple of months he only managed to collect half of that thus far and has already distributed thousands of drones to dozens of units throughout the military.
Contrast this with the Pentagon talking about
Kill bots (Score:2)
imagine China policing the Gulf of Mexico (Score:1)
Of China setting up military bases in Latin America to deter American aggression. We knew the US threw a total tantrum during the Turkish Missile Crisis, imagine how it would react to dozens of Chinese bases and billions in weapons.
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honest question (Score:2)
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survival.
one successful trait is to be breathing.
not breathing is problematic
observations of this program (Score:2)
irony.
using p l a to attack the p l a
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The Pentagon budget is already $1T a year.
Nope. Only three quarters [defense.gov] of a trillion dollars.
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Fallout series was not depressing at all.
Most of the human race is wiped out, you wait it out in safety then emerge healthy and get to gun down almost anyone else you find annoying who survived, rarely with any repercussions. No rent, taxes, mortgage, food is free, ammo is everywhere, nearly endless first aid kits if you stub a toe.
What's so bad about that? Sounds like fucking paradise!
Re: Basically the plot of a video game (Score:2)
Mostly it's 200 years later and everything is still fucked.