[drone-list] Semi-Autonomous Military Weapons

[Al Mac Wow]

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/ 


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Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org
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