IGI-111
God was a dream of good government.
10mo ago·Edited 10mo ago
What do you mean by holding a position?
Continuously effect control in the tactical sense "maintain physical influence over a specified area to prevent its use by enemy or to create conditions necessary for successful friendly operations" as the Americans put it.
But we're about to get in pedantic debates about things being tools of control instead of effecting control in and of themselves, because the real disagreement we are having, I think, is as to considering automated systems as agents. I do not think it is wise to do so.
the problem was that the human guards were understrength and unprepared due to the holiday
I think this is the key to what I'm saying. The fact that the human element failed is evidence that it is still and will probably remain crucial to effective operations even in a world with drones.
If drones were effective on their own and could replace the infantryman, the lack of intelligence would not have mattered as the automated defenses could have adapted to the breach. But machines are not generally intelligent so they can't do that, you need some human to figure it out before he gets killed, and the fewer humans you have right next to the problem the harder it is to figure things out on the fly.
I do not mean to imply that automated systems won't play a big part as a force multiplier in wars current and future. I only mean to assert that you're not going to be able to remove the humans from direct battlefield involvement without compromising capability to an unreasonable degree.
This is why I've long prognosticated that flesh and blood pilots would continue to exist in significant numbers even as drones become more sophisticated. There's just too many situations where looking at the objective or the enemy with your eyes and making a decision right there and then beats interpreting a camera feed, even with how sophisticated modern sensors are.
And ground combat is a lot more chaotic and difficult to parse so I intuit it's even less likely.
Another factor we haven't really discussed is how fragile all this equipment is. For all the fictional cachet robots get for being indestructible machines of death, they are surprisingly brittle and needy. If we had to bet on who survives continuous shelling for the longest, I'm not sure I'm putting my money on the high tech stuff. Even if it's a more morally acceptable loss, obviously.
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Notes -
Continuously effect control in the tactical sense "maintain physical influence over a specified area to prevent its use by enemy or to create conditions necessary for successful friendly operations" as the Americans put it.
But we're about to get in pedantic debates about things being tools of control instead of effecting control in and of themselves, because the real disagreement we are having, I think, is as to considering automated systems as agents. I do not think it is wise to do so.
I think this is the key to what I'm saying. The fact that the human element failed is evidence that it is still and will probably remain crucial to effective operations even in a world with drones.
If drones were effective on their own and could replace the infantryman, the lack of intelligence would not have mattered as the automated defenses could have adapted to the breach. But machines are not generally intelligent so they can't do that, you need some human to figure it out before he gets killed, and the fewer humans you have right next to the problem the harder it is to figure things out on the fly.
I do not mean to imply that automated systems won't play a big part as a force multiplier in wars current and future. I only mean to assert that you're not going to be able to remove the humans from direct battlefield involvement without compromising capability to an unreasonable degree.
This is why I've long prognosticated that flesh and blood pilots would continue to exist in significant numbers even as drones become more sophisticated. There's just too many situations where looking at the objective or the enemy with your eyes and making a decision right there and then beats interpreting a camera feed, even with how sophisticated modern sensors are.
And ground combat is a lot more chaotic and difficult to parse so I intuit it's even less likely.
Another factor we haven't really discussed is how fragile all this equipment is. For all the fictional cachet robots get for being indestructible machines of death, they are surprisingly brittle and needy. If we had to bet on who survives continuous shelling for the longest, I'm not sure I'm putting my money on the high tech stuff. Even if it's a more morally acceptable loss, obviously.
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