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from the Sit!-Stay!-Aim!-Shoot!-Good(?)-doggie! dept.
Uh Oh, They Strapped a Sniper Rifle to a Robot Dog:
For years, we've been warning that it was only a matter of time — and now, the inevitable has happened.
Somebody strapped an honest-to-god sniper rifle to the back of a quadrupedal robot dog.
An image shared on Twitter by military robot maker Ghost Robotics shows the terrifying contraption in all its dystopian glory.
Latest lethality 6.5 #creedmoor sniper payload from @SWORDINT. Check out the latest partner payloads @AUSAorg Wash DC. Keeping US and allied #sof #warfighter equipped with the latest innovations. @USSOCOM #defense #defence #NationalSecurity #drone #robotics pic.twitter.com/Dvk6OvL3Bu
— Ghost Robotics (@Ghost_Robotics) October 11, 2021
[...] There's a lot we don't know about the machine, but according to an Instagram post by Sword International, a gun manufacturer, the machine is called the SPUR or Special Purpose Unmanned Rifle.
More at the Sword's website [Ed Comment: Link is sometimes giving 404 since this story was released--JR].
(Score: 3, Insightful) by HiThere on Thursday October 14 2021, @01:58PM
It probably is remotely operated. I'd give long odds that that's correct, even though we don't know for sure. We also don't know its capabilities. How does it identify its target? Web cam? How hard is it to jam? to subvert? (My guess is easy to jam, hard to subvert, but you've got to know it's there before you start jamming.)
IOW, this is an incremental "advance". It adds another layer of insulation between the killer and the victim. It's a very bad direction to head, from the viewpoint of preserving freedoms, but is not, in and of itself, anything spectacular, except that it may turn out to be spectacularly useless. (But what about the next model?)
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.