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Comment by averagewall | Hacker News Reader

So many fascinating inventions seem to be supposed to be used for search and rescue. We've had jetpacks, robot drones, this drone, robot walkers, crashable drones, even the Boston Dynamics Atlas walking robot is for search and rescue.

Is there actually a need for so many robots? Even if there is, is the market big enough to make economical sense? It seems like it's just an easy thing to imagine when you can't think of a real purpose for your robot.

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I always read "Search and Rescue" as a euphemism for police and military.

Just mount machine guns and/or a rocket launcher on the Boston Dynamics walker and you'll see a real purpose for it: infantry support. Search and rescue. Right. More like "seek and destroy". They probably got the idea out of Star Wars to begin with.

The Defense Department used to just be more honestly called the War Department. Search and Rescue is how lots of inventions are sold to newspapers, Search and Destroy is probably how they get sold at military trade shows :P.

> The Defense Department used to just be more honestly called the War Department.

Not exactly; the (now subcabinet) Department of the Army used to be called the (cabinet level) War Department. The Department of the Navy used to be its own cabinet-level Department. Then a new cabinet level Defense Department was formed, the Air Force split out of the Army and made co-equal, and each of the three (two before the split) service departments made subordinate to the new Defense Department.

Search and rescue is code-speak for surveillance and monitoring

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