From: Tony Williams 

Adam > wrote:
>> BTW, I see BAe have unveiled a new UAV. How long before wars really
>> _are_ a battle of the robots?
>>
>
> Dependent upon funding between 5 -15 years (also dependent upon there
> being a usefull "weapons proving event" aka a war/mil
adventure in order
> to try it out).

Never seems to be any shortage of those.

> However this has been happening for a while now anyway e.g. AADS
> (Automated Air Defence System) vs SEAD (Suppression of Enemy Air
> Defence) contests are generally missile vs missile / machine vs machine.

Sure, but there are now two characteristics being combined: re-usable
hardware and autonomous (no/little human piloting) behaviour. In the past
we've had either one or the other but never the two together in a single
system.

Missiles are pretty much autonomous once given a target and fired, but one
shot is all you get. Conversely, UAV drones have a remote human operator,
but can return to base after a mission.

There are shades of grey here, such as giving a missile a choice of
targets, but when you can send out a UAV to seek out self-selected targets
of opportunity and then return to base I see something qualitatively
different from current systems.

> I'm just wondering how far the US especially will go with ground based
> killer machines as those could be fun if they go wrong.

Ever read Saberhagen's "Berserker" stories 

--
Tony

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