On Wed, 23 Mar 2011, Eugen Leitl wrote: <snip>
The flying robot's RF array can penetrate concrete walls from "an extended range," according to TiaLinx, which is based in Newport Beach, Calif.
Other skills include providing the layout of a multistory building and scanning roads for unexploded ordnance.
Skynet might dig that, but the Phoenix could also be deployed in humanitarian missions. It could work in disasters such as earthquakes to scan for survivors, or even find landmines in former war zones.
Yes, it *could*, and even *should* be put to such high end humanitarian uses. But how many people really believe that this will ever happen? It's *so* much more fun to use them in seizure cases, where you can beef up your budget through fee-splitting with the manufacturer and USG. //Alif -- "Never belong to any party, always oppose privileged classes and public plunderers, never lack sympathy with the poor, always remain devoted to the public welfare, never be satisfied with merely printing news, always be drastically independent, never be afraid to attack wrong, whether by predatory plutocracy or predatory poverty." Joseph Pulitzer, 1907 Speech