DARPA's AlphaDog robotic pack mule is ready for battle (and awesome) | Hacker News Reader

DARPA's AlphaDog robotic pack mule is ready for battle (and awesome)

extremetech.com

24 pointsmrsebastian13 comments

Ready for battle? Awesome? Both of these are plainly false. Obviously we have learned nothing from Metal Gear Solid 4...

Does anyone else have an uncontrollable urge to jump on that thing and ride it around? I suppose it would be dangerous, but this could spawn a new breed of bull-riding scientist-cowboys.

The total lack of detail here is completely uninteresting. Look up bigdog and you cam see tons of cool articles and better videos. BigDog was an awesome prototype but not ready for prime time. I was hoping to see whether they solved the major noise issues that essentially made earlier prototypes unusable. In the military, if you are going through rugged terrain, it's very common that you are doing so for stealth reasons. Earlier versions of BigDog wouldn't allow for this.

The last line of the article "Not to mention, the sight (and sound) of AlphaDog is sure to instil more than a little fear in the enemy, too…" makes me think that even if the good information were available, the reporter doesn't have the knowledge of the area to ask the right questions.

Not always. Often you're going through rugged terrain because that is the only viable path to the target, or because that's the only way to get to the post you're supposed to defend.

I'm no tactical attack expert, but don't think that the prototype in the video is "battle ready". However, the news of al-Awlaki killed by a drone attack (along with numerous other such successful hits) implies that the armed forces are definitely moving towards more drones and robots.

I don't know what the chances of AlphaDog against a man with a high powered rifle, but think of this: A number of these, armed with some sonic weapons (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonic_weapon), attacking a compound at night. Then, the "instill a little fear in the enemy" bit may not sound so stupid.

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Hmm, I don't get your point. Nobody said drones are "nice". I guess they are as "nice" as, say, an A-Bomb, an AH-64 Apache, or an RPG. Now, are they effective? That is the question that is being discussed here.

But I think you've touched upon an important point. One should direct unhappiness about weapons technologies to the people who control those weapons and authorize their use, not to the technology itself, which can have beneficial uses. A good example is the Roomba robot, derived from iRobot's expertise in military (and police) technology.

EDIT: another interesting thought: Why do people find the general concept of autonomous drones so "horrifying" (not that we're close to that currently). Is it worse than a bunch of stressed out, afraid/angry soldiers coming to your house/compound? In a search and destroy mission, like the one that was done by SEALs on bin Laden's house, would it have mattered if he faced drones instead of SEALs?

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It's no more horrifying than bombs or smart missiles, or mines, or just about any other means of dealing death on a large scale. For that matter, go back a few hundred years to when artillery was becoming popular, how do you think archers men with spears and axes felt going up against field cannon?

If you're looking someone in the eye in those last moments before he shoots you, I doubt very much that you'd be "enjoying" anything.

Bottom line is war sucks. Not a whole lot can be done to make it "better" other than working to eliminate the causes.

(Unfortunately the person who posted the above two comments proved him/herself to be a total jerk by deleting them, so this thread became an orphan)

Exactly. Now that I think about it, I would very much like to go against an autonomous drone than a manned one, I wouldn't want to fight a proxy of a person sitting a large distance away. At least you have a chance (albeit very small) of harming/disabling your opponent so it seems more "fair".

A newer(?) video showing it actually being field-tested: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xqMVg5ixhd0

// please mute the speakers

Put some armor on this thing and some sniper detection systems it will map out all the enemies locations who shoot at it or put a soflam on it and it can run through the mountains marking hidden targets for a drone or AC-130 overhead.

But there are so many technologies that you can integrate together on the Alpha dog (platform) to create so many military capabilities.

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