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posted by LaminatorX on Sunday October 05 2014, @07:59PM   Printer-friendly
from the judgement-day dept.

Jeremy Hsu reports that the US Navy has been testing a large-scale swarm of autonomous boats designed to overwhelm enemies. In the test, a large ship that the Navy sometimes calls a high-value unit, HVU, is making its way down the river’s thalweg, escorted by 13 small guard boats. Between them, they carry a variety of payloads, loud speakers and flashing lights, a .50-caliber machine gun and a microwave direct energy weapon or heat ray. Detecting the enemy vessel with radar and infrared sensors, they perform a series of maneuvers to encircle the craft, coming close enough to the boat to engage it and near enough to one another to seal off any potential escape or access to the ship they are guarding. They blast warnings via loudspeaker and flash their lights. The HVU is now free to safely move away. Rear Adm. Matthew Klunder, chief of the Office of Naval Research (ONR), points out that a maneuver that required 40 people had just dropped down to just one. “Think about it as replicating the functions that a human boat pilot would do. We’ve taken that capability and extended it to multiple [unmanned surface vehicles] operating together… within that, we’ve designed team behaviors,” says Robert Brizzolara. The timing of the briefing happens to coincide with the 14-year anniversary of the bombing of the USS Cole off the coast of Yemen that killed 17 sailors. It’s an anniversary that Klunder observes with a unique sense of responsibility. “If we had this capability there on that day. We could have saved that ship. I never want to see the USS Cole happen again.”

 
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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 06 2014, @04:47PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 06 2014, @04:47PM (#102499)

    A Brief History Of Conflict (with apologies to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Hawking [wikipedia.org])

    In the beginning, it was a slugfest as one's two fists were the only weapons that were readily available.

    Then clubs and knives came along.

    Someone thought 'let's mount a knife on the end of a long stick and see what happens.' The spear is born.

    Metalworking is developed and knives are made so big you have to use both hands to hold one. The sword is born.

    'What if I make the spears a lot smaller and invent something that can throw them farther than I can.' TA DA--(cross)bows and arrows.

    And warfare remained like this until the day the Chinese invented gunpowder....

    I just found out that was LITERALLY a mistake!!! o_O;

    When Chinese alchemists invented gunpowder it was a mistake. The alchemists were trying to find a potion for immortality and instead they wound up making an explosion. So the opposite effect came out of the original Idea. Gunpowder consists of potassium nitrate, common charcoal, and sulfur.
    -- http://fourriverscharter.org/projects/Inventions/pages/china_gunpowder.htm [fourriverscharter.org]

    After the invention of gunpowder, conflicts became more brutal and more efficient with the development of firearms of all sorts of shapes and sizes and the platforms that carry, launch, and deliver them, along with bombmaking, the purest form of waging war as destructively as possible!

    Bombmaking returned conflicts back to slugfests but made them impersonal!

    Bombmaking gave the world:

    Landmines that STILL maim and kill after the conflict is over--waiting to be stepped on and set off....

    Suicide bombers that seek to kill themselves and as many of the (perceived) enemy around them as possible--substituting flesh, blood, and an idea one is willing to personally die for in place of precision machinery, electronics, and ballistic technology more commonly used in bomb-delivery missiles.

    And nuclear weapons that hold EVERYONE on Planet Earth hostage with their MERE EXISTENCE and constant threat of use--able to strike anywhere on Planet Earth within an hour and kill MILLIONS OF PEOPLE!...

    Since there is ABSOLUTELY NO WAY to unlearn nuclear weapons technology, isn't there some way people can learn to live with one another in true, lasting peace without killing every living thing on the surface of the Earth?...