Humanoid infantry robots become available (RAR!)

[Zor]

Lets say that in today in Canada a new company finishes up work on a factory which can produce robots to the effect of these...





General purpose humanoid infantry robots. They stand 1.8 meters tall, have about twice the strength of an average human, run on rechargeable batteries which can last for 48 hours of continuous activity (though with greater physical endurance during said time period), communicate with each other via radio, have vocorders allowing them to speech. They have plating rated against shrapnel on their limbs as well as plating proofed against nato 5.56mm rounds (though it's protection against full rifle rounds such as .303 Enfield is marginal). They can operate firearms with an internal database to all NATO firearms, as well as most Russian and Chinese firearms and has a superior degree of accuracy to that of the average human soldier. They are indented to be supervised by a Human at the squad level. Each unit costs $125,000 and the factory (which unlike it's Elysium counterpart meets Canadian Occupational Health and Safety codes) can produce some 365,000 units per year, as well as spare parts.

What happens?

Zor

[Mr Bean]

General purpose humanoid infantry robots. They stand 1.8 meters tall, have about twice the strength of an average human, run on rechargeable batteries which can last for 48 hours of continuous activity (though with greater physical endurance during said time period), communicate with each other via radio, have vocorders allowing them to speech. They have plating rated against shrapnel on their limbs as well as plating proofed against nato 5.56mm rounds (though it's protection against full rifle rounds such as .303 Enfield is marginal). They can operate firearms with an internal database to all NATO firearms, as well as most Russian and Chinese firearms and has a superior degree of accuracy to that of the average human soldier. They are indented to be supervised by a Human at the squad level. Each unit costs $125,000 and the factory (which unlike it's Elysium counterpart meets Canadian Occupational Health and Safety codes) can produce some 365,000 units per year, as well as spare parts.

What happens?

Zor

Well Peacekeeping becomes much easier since the US can shit out a million robo soldiers inside of two years of defense budgets. Suddenly a hundred thousand troops in Iraq looks great with 10 robo soldiers for every live one. And since America does not care about robo causalities it just means the reason not to get involved in lots of areas went out the window and quick.

Even if these things only last a year your going to see America buying them by the bucket load and equipped our entire armor with robo soldiers. Humans will become squad leaders rather than line shooters even if there will still exist all human units. Nothing says fun like sending Sparky in first.. why? Because you can fix him and if he can take 5.56mm he can laugh off some flash bangs and CS gas. And if we maintain a 10 to 1 ratio no bumble fuck milita is going to have a shot because trust me once the military can use these things properly they will abuse the "we don't care clause" to do everything but march the things across mine fields. Shoot the robot? We drone bomb you, shoot the drone? We double drone bomb you and remove your ability to do anything but afgani AA against any future drones.

Remember that bit about us not going places because "it's to dangerous" Something like staying out of the Ghetto does not exist because you can just swarm an area in robo soldiers and count on them to trip the traps or scare out the insurgents because the only thing destroying them does is give us a target to hit with airpower or other robo soldiers. We can literally out kill the insurgents because with robo soldiers taking 5 to one casualties is just fine since very few of them will be human causalities.

Ma and Pa robot don't vote so lets do everything but put "shoot me here so we can bomb you" signs on them.

[InsaneTD]

A thousand units a day seems like a lot but I'll skip over that. A couple questions, what happens when the human team leader eventually gets killed, and an aside, how does he keep up with these when they have twice the endurance of humans, what do they do then?
Will they be available to anyone who can pay?
Can they use vehicles?

[Zor]

A thousand units a day seems like a lot but I'll skip over that. A couple questions, what happens when the human team leader eventually gets killed, and an aside, how does he keep up with these when they have twice the endurance of humans, what do they do then?
Will they be available to anyone who can pay?
Can they use vehicles?

They will stay with their human commander. If their human commander falls, they are programmed to accept the command of another human in the same unit. If no human commanders are around, they are programmed to fall back to base unless specifically ordered to hold their position or press an attack. They are willing to business with Canada and Canada's allies.

Zor

[Purple]

Well Peacekeeping becomes much easier since the US can shit out a million robo soldiers inside of two years of defense budgets.

Yea, how about no? Peacekeeping is the one role where robotic troops would fare worse than their human counterparts. Remember, there is a difference between peacekeeping and an occupation. In the former you are supposed to at least give lip service to trying to win the people over and build their nation up. And that's one thing where humans are good where as faceless robots suck.

[Mr Bean]

Well Peacekeeping becomes much easier since the US can shit out a million robo soldiers inside of two years of defense budgets.

Yea, how about no? Peacekeeping is the one role where robotic troops would fare worse than their human counterparts. Remember, there is a difference between peacekeeping and an occupation. In the former you are supposed to at least give lip service to trying to win the people over and build their nation up. And that's one thing where humans are good where as faceless robots suck.

That's because we are not going to go with traditional peacekeeping, we are going to run the old fashion British Empire method. IE keep enough well armed, technologically superior troops on hand until the opposition runs out of fighting age males to oppose us. All hail the new American Empire.

That's what these robo soldiers mean for American policy makers. So many decision seen as bad because they get American's killed will become acceptable once it's just scrapped robots.

[Purple]

That's because we are not going to go with traditional peacekeeping, we are going to run the old fashion British Empire method. IE keep enough well armed, technologically superior troops on hand until the opposition runs out of fighting age males to oppose us. All hail the new American Empire.

That's what these robo soldiers mean for American policy makers. So many decision seen as bad because they get American's killed will become acceptable once it's just scrapped robots.

No population in the world is going to support such an occupation. That sort of thing could only work back in the day when billions of people could not express their outrage over trivial things instantly to everyone else.

[Enigma]

Would there be some sort of self destruct mechanism to prevent it from falling into enemy hands? Let's say a few malfunction or some how lost power or partially damaged and cannot move. What then? Leave them so the enemy can grab them to reverse engineer it?

[Purple]

Would there be some sort of self destruct mechanism to prevent it from falling into enemy hands? Let's say a few malfunction or some how lost power or partially damaged and cannot move. What then? Leave them so the enemy can grab them to reverse engineer it?

That's going to happen sooner or later anyway. This sort of technology is not something you can keep secret for long. People have sold out on much greater stuff after all. And having a self destruct mechanism like that only ensures that in the meantime you have a vulnerability that your enemy can easily exploit.

[Mr Bean]

No population in the world is going to support such an occupation. That sort of thing could only work back in the day when billions of people could not express their outrage over trivial things instantly to everyone else.

I dunno the Turkey, Israeli, China and Morocco all manage large scale occupations with unhappy natives in the case of Kurds, Palestinians, Tibetans and and the Ceuta area. You could say the same thing about how America manages border towns which are run along occupation lines these days including internal checkpoints and random inspections.

[Sea Skimmer]

Yea, how about no? Peacekeeping is the one role where robotic troops would fare worse than their human counterparts. Remember, there is a difference between peacekeeping and an occupation. In the former you are supposed to at least give lip service to trying to win the people over and build their nation up. And that's one thing where humans are good where as faceless robots suck.

But you can order the faceless robots simply never to return fire if a civilian would so much as be wounded, and just eat casualties no living troops could or would ever accept. The advantage of that would be incredible, and its not like you'd have zero human troops around. If the robots can actually act as a sort of entirely level headed not human shield between parties they'll be accepted just fine for peacekeeping. Occupations depend on the details.

The place where robot infantry as specified here are going to fair badly is a high intensity, high tech war where the larger thermal and radar signature is going to make them very easy to locate and wipe out with stand off weapons and the armor won't make any real difference. Plus these don't have a specified ability to operate heavier weapons or vehicles, which seems like it should be easy to change. While having swarms of them is still useful it may not be all that great a use of money compared to just building endless swarms of missiles and robotic bombs. 5000 dollar guided anti vehicle missiles have now been demonstrated. can this robot use one?

[Starglider]

In high threat areas you wouldn't actually send the human squad leader in with the robots. They can just monitor the visual feeds and issue commands remotely from a safe location. Likewise for patrols, you wouldn't need to buch up a whole squad of robots around the human leader, you can send them out in singles or pairs and remotely monitor them (easier to ambush of course but at this price who cares).

Reverse engineering is not the issue, high-tech production capability is; third world militias obviously don't have it but Europe, Japan, China, etc certainly do (India and Russia might be restricted by semiconductor fab capacity, depending on whether the chips are off-the-shelf).

But you can order the faceless robots simply never to return fire if a civilian would so much as be wounded, and just eat casualties no living troops could or would ever accept.

Sure although at this level of intelligence, civillian vs terrorist discrimination is not going to be any more sophisticated than 'is holding a gun'.

[Tribble]

Lets say that in today in Canada a new company finishes up work on a factory which can produce robots to the effect of these...

Canada? Really? I have to admit the idea of Canadians developing robots for military purposes to be pretty funny, but I digress. At any rate, the first thing that happens is the USA flat out annexes the designs and schematics so that they can build the robots without any interference. The idea of Canada producing infantry robots and having a monopoly on them for any meaningful length of time is ridiculous. And the USA will no doubt put enough political pressure on Canada to shut its plant down, or hand it over to an American firm. There is no way in hell Americans are going to allow Canadians to produce that kind of military technology on their own, without American oversight. One way or another the USA will take total control, quickly at that.

[Borgholio]

Are the robots able to commit atrocities? That is, will they commit human rights violations or violate any rules of the Geneva Conventions if ordered to do so? Or are they hard-wired to obey the law and will refuse to obey an illegal order? If it's the latter, then I can see these guys be used for Police work too. Imagine cops that will not racially profile you, will not act in in aggressive fashion if they dislike the color of your skin, and will obey the same laws they are programmed to enforce. That's a good thing.

Assuming they are programmed to respect human and civil rights, they would be great in the peacekeeping role. A nation could ask the United States for help with an insurrection or terrorists and they would know that the troops we send would not piss off or kill the civilians they are meant to protect. We would probably end up intervening in more places due to the lack of human casualties on both sides and end up doing more good overall.

[Zor]

Are the robots able to commit atrocities? That is, will they commit human rights violations or violate any rules of the Geneva Conventions if ordered to do so? Or are they hard-wired to obey the law and will refuse to obey an illegal order? If it's the latter, then I can see these guys be used for Police work too. Imagine cops that will not racially profile you, will not act in in aggressive fashion if they dislike the color of your skin, and will obey the same laws they are programmed to enforce. That's a good thing.

They do have an index of known torture methods like water boarding, beating people tied to chairs and electrocuting them and they won't do them.

Zor

[Borgholio]

They do have an index of known torture methods like water boarding, beating people tied to chairs and electrocuting them and they won't do them.

So no torture, good. Will they obey an order such as, "Only shoot black people?" or "Kill every living thing in this city block to root out the terrorists hiding among them?"

I only ask because although I highly doubt anybody would give such orders, to make the population more accepting of their presence, they need to know that these kinds of safeguards are in place whether or not they are actually needed.

[Purple]

I only ask because although I highly doubt anybody would give such orders, to make the population more accepting of their presence, they need to know that these kinds of safeguards are in place whether or not they are actually needed.

Does it matter if the safeguards are really in place for this result to be had though? You just have to say that they are. It's not like any random civilian is going to start accessing your source code.

[Borgholio]

It's not like any random civilian is going to start accessing your source code.

Aren't they? I think it's a valid question people are going to ask if robot cops or troops start taking over from humans. It would go a long way to building trust in these things if civilian computer engineers and scientists were allowed access to source code to make sure the safeguards are actually there. If the government just said, "Oh trust us, it's there...but we won't let you verify for yourselves.", then there would be problems.

[Purple]

It's not like any random civilian is going to start accessing your source code.

Aren't they? I think it's a valid question people are going to ask if robot cops or troops start taking over from humans. It would go a long way to building trust in these things if civilian computer engineers and scientists were allowed access to source code to make sure the safeguards are actually there. If the government just said, "Oh trust us, it's there...but we won't let you verify for yourselves.", then there would be problems.

Don't governments do that all the time anyway? It seems to be standard procedure these days.

[Borgholio]

Oh it's standard procedure to lie, yes...but if they REALLY want to push robots onto us, then they'll want us to actually trust them.

[Me2005]

Oh it's standard procedure to lie, yes...but if they REALLY want to push robots onto us, then they'll want us to actually trust them.

Pffftt... We're using glorified RC aircraft called "drones" now and they tell us they're safe (and really, there isn't that much that can go wrong with one) but many people are up in arms (literally, in some cases) about their use. No matter what safeguards they do or don't have, some people will be upset.

I say we buy up 100% of production for a few years, then use them to conquer Canada and take over the manufacturing process.

[Simon_Jester]

...Is it bad that I keep picturing those "roger roger" droids from Star Wars Episode I?

In high threat areas you wouldn't actually send the human squad leader in with the robots. They can just monitor the visual feeds and issue commands remotely from a safe location. Likewise for patrols, you wouldn't need to buch up a whole squad of robots around the human leader, you can send them out in singles or pairs and remotely monitor them (easier to ambush of course but at this price who cares).

For that matter, even if a robot gets ambushed, a large fraction of the time you'll be able to salvage/repair it at reasonable price. Repairing a robot that gets its fool head shot off is easier than repairing a human with the same problem.

But you can order the faceless robots simply never to return fire if a civilian would so much as be wounded, and just eat casualties no living troops could or would ever accept.

Sure although at this level of intelligence, civillian vs terrorist discrimination is not going to be any more sophisticated than 'is holding a gun'.

Eh, good enough. Step one: send B-52 overhead with one leaflet per citizen (better yet, three or four!) saying "Danger: do not carry a gun around our robot minions. They kill people who carry guns." Then send in the robots.

Are the robots able to commit atrocities? That is, will they commit human rights violations or violate any rules of the Geneva Conventions if ordered to do so? Or are they hard-wired to obey the law and will refuse to obey an illegal order? If it's the latter, then I can see these guys be used for Police work too. Imagine cops that will not racially profile you, will not act in in aggressive fashion if they dislike the color of your skin, and will obey the same laws they are programmed to enforce. That's a good thing.

Are they smart enough to do that? It's not clear whether they're sentient. Just because the thing can talk doesn't mean it's got a mind. And nothing non-sentient or semi-sentient will be capable of being 'programmed to obey laws,' at least not in the human sense of the word 'law.'

[Elheru Aran]

Re Simon's last comment there:

They could certainly be programmed to obey the letter of the law. But they wouldn't be able to observe nuances or obey the spirit of the law. Say that whole "don't torture/commit atrocities" thing. Sure, they won't be able to beat a guy with a rubber hose. Nothing stopping them from just standing around while one of the humans does that, though. And unlike human soldiers, they wouldn't *care*; they would be simply quite literally following orders, incapable of really thinking through the consequences of just standing around while "creative interrogation" is being applied.

[Me2005]

But you can order the faceless robots simply never to return fire if a civilian would so much as be wounded, and just eat casualties no living troops could or would ever accept.

Sure although at this level of intelligence, civillian vs terrorist discrimination is not going to be any more sophisticated than 'is holding a gun'.

Eh, good enough. Step one: send B-52 overhead with one leaflet per citizen (better yet, three or four!) saying "Danger: do not carry a gun around our robot minions. They kill people who carry guns." Then send in the robots.

Good, the terrorists now carry knives/crowbars and disable all of your bots before taking their (likely much nicer) guns.

You'd probably fare better arming the robots with tazers or tranquilizers and handcuffs and have humans process the cuffed population. You'll get very low collateral damage that way without loosing as many bots.

One issue that isn't coming up her that came up in the power armor thread is how well these bots will hold up with a 48 hour engagement window? It's much less of an issue, as the bots loosing power in the field don't matter as much as people in suits, but will they be able to perform?

[Borgholio]

Nothing stopping them from just standing around while one of the humans does that, though.

Well if programmed to obey the letter of the law, couldn't they be programmed to non-lethally break up fights, beatings, protect against looters / robberies, while being allowed to use lethal force if they encounter someone armed with a deadly weapon and attempting to use it?

Granted as you said, the spirit of the law is different. The spirit of the law often involved allowing someone to break the letter of the law if it the morally correct thing to do. But when you have practical anarchy, isn't some law better than none? I think that if most violence was taken care of by the bots, the society could recover enough to have human police resume normal patrols and have them deal with more nuanced or abstract issues.