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I can not comprehend the mindset that would let someone work for years on building something, and then go, "I know what I want this to be used for: Murder!"

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Without making any statement of adherence from my part (on your perspective, or any of the below), I'll give you some possible alternative perspectives I can think of:

   - "this way I can help our guys protect innocent civilians"
   - "I need to sell this to to develop my baby (which I'm sure will ultimately benefit humanity); I'd prefer to sell this to Indian orphanages, too bad they have no budget or use for this"

As a anside, the product has already been sold to Argentinian mountaineering search-and-rescue teams.

To get an idea of the motivations or people in the Army, I can recommend "why I chose a gun", a 15 minute TED talk by a Dutch army officer that explains his reasoning. https://www.ted.com/talks/peter_van_uhm_why_i_chose_a_gun/tr...

Or to give some historical perspective: Christiaan Huygens developed clocks for (military) naval navigation. Not because he was the type of gung-ho "let's kick some French ass" type of guy. In fact, he collaborated scientifically with French and English, being Dutch, even when for example France was at war with Holland. He just wanted to Make Something People Love (tm). And at the time, the only one able to foot that sort of R&D bill was the state. If the state had not invested huge sums like that, it's not at all obvious that he would have been able to perform his work.

If I am given the choice of making something which I will enjoy making, but that will be used to kill a single human being, and not making it, I will choose not making it every single time.

That was an excellent TedX talk. Thank you for sharing it.

Most of them don't think of it as murder, but (at worst) a dirty job that someone has to do.. and many of them think of themselves as performing a selfless service to their country. For others it's just a job, the family business, or a way out of a desperate situation.

Of course, as with any job with the power of life and death over others, there'll be some sadists who enjoy hurting or killing, sociopaths who care about nothing but themselves, and those who just want power. For others it's just a fun and exciting adventure (or so they expect before they experience it).

Being in an actual war and witnessing and/or participating in real-life violence up-close sometimes leads to massive guilt, PTSD, and disillusionment.. but others remain true believers their whole life.

Those who've never participated in combat (or at least not at close range) nor witnessed the long-term devastating impact of war on its victims are some of the truest believers of all.

It's called "defense" for a reason. No strong society can exist without a public force.

The way it's demonstrated in this video looks geared towards search and rescue, anti-piracy, hostage situations, etc.

And why are you taking that at face value?

You're probably missing the fact that there are clear scenarios this could be used for where for one thing murder isn't the priority, and for another it may not be malevolent either.

i.e.

* Somali (or similar) pirates hijack a freight vessel and are potentially holding crew hostage. So there needs to be a quick way to render aid/help with extraction.

* As someone else up-thread mentioned, this can also be used to aid in SAR missions, such as in mountainous terrain.

You know most of SV was built on military tech requirements and its not "murder" if its a navy assaulting an enemy ship.

Only in the strictest legal sense. It still involves intentionally killing human beings.

Is pulling the lever in a Trolley Problem murder? Is the navy sniper who killed the pirate captain who was holding hostages at gun point a murderer? Seams like you're taking a moral absoluist stance in a very morally grey world, and remember "only sith deal in absolutes."

Star Wars is not a very good basis for a moral argument.

Nor is naiveté. There are bad people in the world. That's a brute fact you have to account for in your moral reckoning. If you take the purist "no violence" stance, you're abandoning victims to their fate so you can remain pure. That doesn't seem moral to me.

You consider a transportation device "murder"? Interesting, seeing as it also can be used to do the opposite: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gtvCnZqZnxc

No, I am calling what armies and navies do "murder", as they kill people.

The US Navy is the largest peace keeping and rescue organization in the world. Just one aircraft carrier is a disaster response super hero, complete with a hospital, food, clean water, and tents.

They also murder people.

Sometimes 'murder' is justified, like when you're protecting civilians against pirates. That's the main use-case I see here. Nobody in their right mind would send these guys against an armed vessel.

Killing and murdering can be two different things, which is why we have separate words for the actions. You're conflating the two things as though they're always the same.

To kill is not inherently to murder. Typically from a legal and moral perspective killing someone in self-defense is not murder, for example.

Armies don't generally kill in self defence, though.

Collective self defense is still self defense, but it obviously needs to be argued on a case-by-case basis.

Arguing that is something an army doesn't do. It murders when asked to murder.

What do you think should be done when someone hijacks a ship and crew and starts threatening to kill them?

I don't understand pacifists - are people willing to literally just lie down and be killed and let others be killed and do nothing and prepare to do nothing?

If we simply disband the imperialist military-industrial complex, those people will no longer be tragically forced into a life of violence and we will all sing Kumbaya.

It's not murder, it's defense

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