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Comment by credit_guy | Hacker News Reader

It's not more morally reprehensible than landmines. Borders all over the world use landmines, one of the most common weapons for area denial. Remote controlled or autonomous machine guns have the advantage that you can retire them more easily. With landmines, if you misplaced the map, you have a problem. Even if you still have the map you have a problem: what if the map is only 99% accurate?

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164 states have already signed an anti-personnel mine treaty, and more countries will join in the coming years. 48 million land mines have already been destroyed because of this Ottawa treaty, and this is a moral good.

There is a strong movement for banning anti-personnel mines precisely because they are horrific weapons that kill and maim indiscriminately.

> precisely because they are horrific weapons that kill and maim indiscriminately

The problem with mines is less that they are indiscriminate and more that they outlast their battles.

Those are two sides of the same coin, still indiscriminate if they are not limited in both time and target.

If discrimination in terms of time is what concerns you, then I guess you'll welcome this new development of autonomous machine guns used for area denial, right? They address exactly the problem, after all.

Landmines are forbidden to be used by majority of countries, here is the UN link to the treaty

https://www.un.org/disarmament/anti-personnel-landmines-conv...

Also there are 32 countries that refused - sadly no surprises who that actually is.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_parties_to_the_Ottawa_...

> It's not more morally reprehensible than <very reprehensible thing>.

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