Here is news of another advancement in drone military technology. Lockheed is now marketing a semi-autonomous stealthy unmanned system http://www.lockheedmartin.com/us/products/uclass.html http://aviationintel.com/2013/04/12/lockheed-unveils-their-unclass-concept-s entinel-prime/ Note this is not fully-autonomous. In case you are not fully familiar with the implications of autonomous drones, here is clarification from my Drone Terms: http://www.scribd.com/doc/105029922/Drone-Terms-by-Al-Mac * Autonomous Drone = Concept of a Drone which does not require human involvement to pilot it, decide where it is to go, decide who it is to shoot at, refuel it, maintain it, update its programming.[1] There have been stories alleging that some drones are in testing which go part way towards these goals, not yet achieve all of them in one craft. * See: AHAR; AUSV; AWS; SAWS. * AHAR = Autonomous High Altitude Refueling[2] Basically, drones will need the same kinds of services as manned flight. * AUSV = Autonomous Unmanned Surface Vehicle. * AWS = Autonomous Weapon Systems. * QUOTING International Committee for Robot Arms Control (IRAC):[3] * Department of Defense Directive 3000.09 <http://www.dtic.mil/whs/directives/corres/pdf/300009p.pdf> [4] "for the development and use of autonomous and semi-autonomous functions in weapon systems" defining an AWS as "A weapon system that, once activated, can select and engage targets without further intervention by a human operator." The ability of the system to select and engage targets autonomously makes it an AWS even if it is human-supervised with a possible human override; thus "human on the loop" is assigned the same status as "human out of the loop," a conservative (good) policy. * UNQUOTE * SAWS = Semi-autonomous weapon system * The International Committee for Robot Arms Control (IRAC)[5] says the DoD defines SAWS, as QUOTE: * "A weapon system that, once activated, is intended to only engage individual targets or specific target groups that have been selected by a human operator." The category includes systems that automatically acquire, track, identify and prioritize potential targets or cue humans to their presence, "provided that human control is retained over the decision to select individual targets and specific target groups for engagement." It also includes weapons with terminal homing guidance, and "fire and forget" weapons where the target has been human-selected. * UNQUOTE * See: Autonomous Drone; AWS; DoD. * In Drone Robots, see SAWS, where I express misgivings about "fire and forget" implications. As usual, in case my footnotes don't come thru, ask me if you wish to see the citations involved. My Drone Robots covers the implications of autonomous drones in more detail, including specific examples of autonomous weapon systems already being used. http://www.scribd.com/doc/115182066/Drone-Robots-Al-Mac Al Mac = Alister William Macintyre _____ [1] Autonomous Drones http://blogs.cfr.org/zenko/2012/09/04/the-coming-future-of-autonomous-drones / http://www.acq.osd.mil/dsb/reports/AutonomyReport.pdf 2012 Nov 28 I started a Drone Robots doc, on Autonomous Killer Robot Drones, what I have on it, in time may diverge from references in Drone Terms. [2] http://aviationintel.com/2012/10/10/unmanned-game-changer-autonomous-aerial- refueling-is-a-reality/ [3] http://icrac.net/2012/11/dod-directive-on-autonomy-in-weapon-systems/ [4] I have downloaded this, naming it DOD Autonomous Weapon Policies 2012 Nov. [5] http://icrac.net/2012/11/dod-directive-on-autonomy-in-weapon-systems/ -- Want to unsubscribe? Want to receive a weekly digest instead of daily emails? Change your preferences: https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/drone-list or email companys@stanford.edu ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE