First we heard about "smart bombs". And now…
The United States Armed Forces is gearing up for the next level upgrade in armament. No, it’s not a new discovery of an atomic bomb-like weapon. They have just most recently perhaps realized the smartest thing to do in combat and warfare---send robots to the battlefield instead of humans.
In a most recent New York Times report, the U.S. military will sooner than expected roll down a new batch of robot soldiers as early as April of this year and people in the know have already started either glorifying the expediency of the idea or criticizing its grave consequences.
See New York Times Report Here: A New Model Army Soldier Rolls Closer to the Battlefield
Of course, as you read through this, one could not help but feel some sort of excitement about this new development especially when one is a movie addict who have seen "Star Wars" and "Terminator" more times than he had seen the sea.
The progenitors of this project justifies the huge cost of fielding a robot army in the future by rationalizing that robots can do more than human foot soldiers especially in terms of accuracy and ferocity of attack. Besides, any damage or lost to the army would have no human cost as a factor.
They asked: What if a fleet of ultra-ferocious robots malfunction and go haywire and starts to shoot at buses and public buildings instead of enemy tanks and missiles. Besides, can the robot decide on its own with reasonable certainty whether to shoot or not shoot a person? Can it, without fail or mistake, distinguish who is the enemy who is the friend? Can the robot analyze information so well while processing the command of whether to shoot a person or not? These questions remain to be completely unresolved by the robot soldier inventors. Maybe, the doomsday scenario painted in the movie "Terminator" may happen after all in the future that is not so distant from our present time.
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