The obvious question as these systems improve is whether there will ever be a moment when machines are allowed to decide to kill people without human intervention.
.. The Space Shuttle was an almost entirely automated spacecraft. The only thing on it that was not automated was button that dropped the landing gear. The system was engineered that way on purpose, so that the Shuttle had to have a crew.
.. When the Russians built their shuttle clone, they removed this human point of control. The only flight the Buran ever made was done on autopilot, with no people aboard.
.. I think we’ll see a similar evolution in autonomous weapons. They will evolve to a point to where they are fully capable of finding and killing their targets, but the designers will keep a single point of control.
And then someone will remove that point of control.
.. In the United States, we’ve just entered the sixteenth year of a state of emergency. It has been renewed annually since 2001. It has become common political rhetoric in America to say that ‘we’re at war’, even though being ‘at war’ means something vastly different for Americans than, say, Syrians.
Trump Lavishes Praise on General as He Nears National Security Picks
“What a career — we are going to see what happens, but he is the real deal,” the president-elect added.
.. As head of the Central Command, General Mattis was heavily involved in plans to counter Iran’s military and protect the sea lanes in the Persian Gulf.
.. Before attending church with Mr. Pence, Mr. Trump once again condemned the cast of “Hamilton” for its onstage appeal on Friday night to Mr. Pence — who was in the audience — to uphold the rights of a “diverse America.”
“The cast and producers of Hamilton, which I hear is highly overrated, should immediately apologize to Mike Pence for their terrible behavior,” Mr. Trump wrote.
.. the president-elect’s Twitter complaints about “Hamilton” and “Saturday Night Live” provided a distraction.
That may have been the intention. Mr. Trump’s Twitter posts diverted attention from other issues, including a $25 million settlement in a lawsuit against Trump University, concerns about conflicts of interest involving the president-elect’s business dealings
.. Mr. Trump reacted by calling the cast members “very rude and insulting” to Mr. Pence and claimed that they “couldn’t even memorize lines.” He later deleted the Twitter post about the cast’s supposed faulty memory.
Defense lobbyists deluged in wake of Trump victory
K Street scrambles to prepare for an administration it spent little time planning for.
Defense lobbyists are getting a flood of calls from longtime clients and new prospects eager to take advantage of a potential military buildup under President-elect Donald Trump — but also fearful he will spark a trade war and jeopardize their lucrative arms deals.
.. He said there is a sense that Trump’s history in business could help defense companies and their supporters on Capitol Hill to negotiate with his administration in a way that has been more difficult in the Obama years.
.. Defense industry executives fear that by making it more difficult for the U.S. military to acquire goods it needs from overseas manufacturers, foreign governments will retaliate by shutting out U.S. contractors.
.. “Do whatever you want to the rest, but we’ve got a $60 billion defense surplus here and exports are important.”
.. “I believe it’s the only trade surplus left that the U.S. still enjoys. In this, a lot of good paying U.S. jobs are created.”
.. Oshkosh is among a number of leading Pentagon contractors who are heavily reliant on international sales, reporting last week a 22.2 percent jump in quarterly earnings largely due to “higher international sales in the defense segment.”
In another sign of the growing importance of foreign arms sales, Lockheed Martin, the world’s largest defense company, reported last month that international sales are on track to account for 25 percent of annual revenue later this year and 30 percent in the next few years.
Long-range projectiles for Navy’s newest ship too expensive to shoot
The automated AGS can fire 10 rocket-assisted, precision-guided projectiles per minute at targets over 100 miles away. Those projectiles use GPS and inertial guidance to improve the gun’s accuracy to a 50 meter (164 feet) circle of probable error—meaning that half of its GPS-guided shells will fall within that distance from the target.
The projectile responsible for that accuracy—something far too complex to just be called a “shell” or “bullet”—is the Long Range Land-Attack Projectile (LRLAP). Each projectile has precision guidance provided by internal global positioning and inertial sensors, and bursts of LRLAPs could in theory be fired over a minute following different ballistic trajectories that cause them to land all at the same time.
..
the Navy is canceling production of the LRLAP because of an $800,000-per-shot price tag—more than 10 times the original projected cost. By comparison, the nuclear-capable Tomahawk cruise missile costs approximately $1 million per shot, while the M712 Copperhead laser-guided 155-millimeter projectile and M982 Excalibur GPS-guided rounds cost less than $70,000 per shot. Traditional Navy 5-inch shells cost no more than a few hundred dollars each.