Marines Test Fire Robot Dog Armed with Rocket Launcher | Hacker News Reader

Marines Test Fire Robot Dog Armed with Rocket Launcher

thedrive.com

48 pointskposehn48 comments

As a human, this looks terrifying. Imagine being attacked by robot dogs. Now imagine being attacked by robot dogs that have rocket launchers!

Straight out of a Fast & Furious movie. You can(!) make this shit up.

But as a person in tech, where all my values are directed towards "making a better world"... this also goes against every ideal we have. Unless you count living in a world where we have the ability to exterminate a large amount of people without proportional retaliation as a "better world", in a non-nuclear way.

We don't use biological weapons, so why use seeing robots with rockets on them? Oh yeah I forgot, we can't "catch a disease" from these robots, and they have a "limited" damage capability, unlike bio-warfare that can go out of hand and can poison lands.

Coincidentally, the second point also means that we'll have to make a lot of them, and gosh darn it we'll have to build more factories and supply jobs to people. Wait a min...

I'm really happy that less marines will be put in harms way when they try to launch missiles from their shoulders (also crazy if you think about it too much), but they did sign up for it, and they're not facing an army that can comprehend what's coming towards them.

I've got competing opinions in my head, but one thing is for sure, autonomous warfare can either be a chess game that countries play (as a proxy for all the human lives), or the final game we'll play.

Yep, absolutely terrifying!

There's always the old chestnut that if your country doesn't develop it, another country (or well-funded faction) with fewer scruples will, and if they think that their tech gives them a significant advantage over you, war is more likely (because they will have a much stronger belief they can win / win at a lower cost).

That's also why we see slick video reveals of stealth bombers and missiles nowadays. The best weapon is one you never have to use in anger.

To even think that robot dogs would "attack" you in the same sense a real dog would is the funniest thing to me. Of course a robot dog would use missiles, guns, lasers, chemical spray, etc.

lol nah it should use a mechanical mouth with some insane hydraulic clamping force. And claws, why not give it some stainless razor wire claws while we're at it.

Reminds me of the book Daemon by Daniel Suarez (or its sequel, Freedom) where the automated, world controlling daemon uses robot drones with blinding lasers to semi-permanently incapacitate everyone in an area.

Pretty neat story :)

> where we have the ability to exterminate a large amount of people

Counterpoint: it’s an anti-tank rocket. Not a machine gun. (Obviously, they’ll also put a machine gun on it.)

To be fair, the M72 was originally built as a light anti-armor weapon but many other versions of it have since been developed. Particularly anti-structure rockets with fragmentation warheads.

Introducing the A10D Wardog with dual barrel M134 Miniguns

> this also goes against every ideal we have

Counterexample:

https://www.wjcl.com/article/officers-kill-man-who-killed-a-...

And there are countless other actual police dogs hurt or killed by violent offenders.

Sending actual dogs in to snoop out bad guys, who then shoot the police dog, sadly happens. Send in a robot with a rocket launcher, the bad guy is like oh fuck this bad guy nonsense, and the robot dog just has to recharge batteries.

Agreed, police should stop using dogs to escalate violent confrontations!

> who then shoot the police dog

What would you expect them to do? Play fetch with it?

I think, despite the humor fail, you have an accidental point, because the police dogs DO fetch unarmed hidden offenders.

Exactly. So the bad guys will treat those dogs as they would any other threat.

Liable to go badly for the dogs when the bad guys are armed.

If you want to know how much the courts value you as a person, remember that if a cop's dog kills you there will be no criminal charges.

If you kill a cop's dog, you will face the death penalty.

I mean tanks are machines. Why can’t you have a remote controlled anti tank device.

But this is the direction warfare is going, whether we like it or not. It started the first time anyone used a machine as a weapon. The mechanized warfare of the first half of the 20th century was very scary to people, and was very efficient at killing, but now we all look at it as the norm. The same will happen with this, and this is just a continuation of the same process.

Ukraine using cardboard drones to blow up Russian tanks, Hamas using quads to hit targets. Eventually all warfare will be done this way, and every actor will have access to autonomous technologies.

I argue it is a good thing; the goal in warfare is to negate the enemy's ability to continue their campaign, strategically as well as economically. Historically, manpower was the source of economic production as well as strategic advantage, so warfare focused on killing people. In a world where the strategic and economic targets are machinery rather than people, the number of human casualties decreases. Target automated factories and caches of autonomous weapons, force surrender, less people die.

It also democratizes access to force, no more will the ability to establish sovereignty be limited to those will large populations. It levels the playing field, like firearms did, and reduces the ability for despots to concentrate power. It is the great equalizer 2.0.

Of course, during the process of normalization of fully mechanized warfare, there will be asymmetry and people will die. But I believe the end result of this is a more peaceful world.

I used to think that but I changed my mind after being in the army myself.

What you're saying is lets send our soldiers (human beings) into a dangerous situation where they can get killed.

If warfare still exists I would rather have robots fighting robots and remove humans from the equation altogether. Second best is to minimize casualties from "our side". Yes, that's terrible but it's also more humane.

In war soldiers get killed, this typically escalates violence which increases to both sides. It makes the war more bloody and more personal. Drones are terrible but they significantly reduced US casualties in the war against ISIS. There's collateral damage, but that happens for human attacks as well.

In fact, with robots we don't need lethal weapons at all. A recent US drone strike killed a terrorist with flying knives to avoid hurting his family. If a soldier was physically there they would have to start shooting and blowing up the region so no one will shoot back at them. A robot/drone wouldn't have that problem.

Don't get me wrong, I'm scared of many aspects related to robots in these scenarios. Specifically the ability of a minority elite controlling the masses. But I also think that robots can help remove a lot of the value/incentive of wars. If countries only sacrifice robots during wars, why fight at all? Use economics policies instead. Maybe we can call it Pax Robota...

There are some obvious problem scenarios though, which are unfortunately likely to happen:

* The "no human in the loop" combat robot is deployed into an area with non-combatants, but wrongly classifies them as enemy combatants.

* The "no human in the loop" combat robot gets damaged while in active combat, forgetting the concept of "friendlies"

* The "no human in the loop" combat robot gets hacked. All sorts of ways this could go badly. If they're hacked en-masse that's potentially amplified dramatically.

100% true and concerning. My main problem is that people treat this as a simple black and white "killer robot is evil" situation. It's not. It's far more nuanced.

Fast and the Furious? I take it you haven’t seen Black Mirror?

None of the "on a dog" designs make sense to me. Robot tanks have always been able to maneuver over tougher obstacles and much harder to knock over and are significantly faster. Some tanks with the tall tracks can right-side themselves. Stability is important with aimed weapons. A tank can have a turret with multiple projectile devices and could fire any direction. A dog would fall over firing sideways. So why do we keep using the dog form?

I think perhaps the dog is accepted as a human companion so it avoids the whole robocop scenario where we’re having autonomous robots gunning down humans.

Smaller, lighter, traverses rough terrain better. How will your mini tank deal with stairs or rubble? Rocket launchers also don't have recoil.

Edit: Why would a robo dog necessarily fall over? They could take a wide stance and essentially become a tripod if they need stability.

Why would a robo dog necessarily fall over?

That's just what they do. Several Youtubers have fired guns off the robot dogs and even firing straight ahead can knock them over. Non autonomous tanks have navigated stairs just fine for the FBI and SWAT teams they do it all the time.

Tis one looks like it can right itself. The legs spin 360.

Note that large guns have more recoil than modern shoulder fired rockets. AT4 recoil is lower than e.g. a dmr rifle

"Robo doggo! Get in the house and get to the second floor and provide armed over watch out of the west facing windows!"

I'm no expert, but aren't rocket launchers recoilless?

As for why the dog form factor, I'm betting it'll be because a dog form factor makes for a much cheaper swarm than a tank form factor. Less mass to move about so a smaller power pack, too

Some rocket launchers are "recoilless". In particular, shoulder fired ones tend to be, so as to, you know, not knock people over. (LAW, AT4, etc)

> It's interesting to note that the Marines refer to the design tested last month as a "robotic goat" rather than the far more common robot dog description.

Maybe four legs provides better all-terrain capabilities at lower parts cost than a treaded vehicle?

It doesn't have a tail and carries a load. So "goat" is indeed the far better metaphor. Trust the marines to get it right.

I'd assume the "dog" designs have better movement in many terrains. Trying to drive through a forest, swamp, jungle, and plenty of other terrains is tricky to impossible while something with legs can easily go through it.

An M72 is single use, so if the robot falls over after firing it that isn't the end of the world. It can probably right itself and get back on its feet, then return to base for another rocket.

Still, I share your skepticism of these robot dogs. They seem like a solution looking for a problem.

I'm not sure US marines need a "good reason" to strap a rocket launcher onto a robot dog, other than "because it's awesome."

Dogs can jump on and over taller obstacles than can a similarly sized tank.

The special forces ideal is small packages with large firepower. I can not imagine anything that better meets that definition than quadracopter scouts and robot dogs with missile launchers.

Falling over after the shot is irrelevant. Basic marksmanship training teaches recruits to pull the trigger until the shot going off surprises them. We only care about what happens next if we want a quick follow up shot, which is not possible with single shot rocket launchers.

Atop a chinese-made Unitree dog? Huh. Did the DoD learn nothing from ceding drone supremacy to DJI?

I was thinking exactly the same thing. NSA's TAO has been modding routers since forever, and that's in a country with actual rights and stuff. Would not be surprised if every single one of these is going to have some undocumented functionality on an obscure encrypted band, like "kill nearest American soldier".

EDIT or, worse, ping your location every X seconds on this band, and let us look at the audio/video when Y command is received.

When I first saw Boston Dynamic's Atlas I thought "I wonder when will they fit a firearm to that". I was hoping my first thought was out of my cynism or bad sense of humour...

A few more years of development and it will be capable of going out and getting its own weapons.

If the First Amendment guarantees freedom of speech to corporations, then surely the Second Amendment guarantees the right to bear arms to robots.

“Instead of having a Marine handle the weapon system, manipulate the safeties, we could put a remote trigger mechanism on it that allowed it to all be done remotely,

If its remotely activated with the same control channel as the trigger, that seems like less of a "safety" and more of a "shooty".

So, they strapped an M72 LAW on the back of a little robot dog. I can see a couple practical problems with getting anything like this configuration to work. One is that since the M72 is unguided, it takes fine targeting skill to make a hit from any distance. I doubt whether you can get that kind of control with a video feed mounted on a rickety platform.

Another problem is agility of the robot. Armor in a well managed battlefield will have an infantry screen. That is why getting close enough for a kill is hard. To avoid getting shot by defending forces, the robot would need to race in, quickly changing direction, and pop up close enough for a kill. I've seen robot dogs going through their paces and they don't look nearly capable enough for this.

Won't be long now before we're reading a post about a robot dog with a suicide vest taking out a target softer than an armored vehicle.

The article neglects to mention that shipping is $1000, according to the Unitree website.

- "Designs based on tracked robots primarily designed for explosive ordnance disposal work have been and continue to be developed."

And also for the exact opposite: the Ukrainian conflict sees similar tracked robots used to place landmines.

https://old.reddit.com/r/CombatFootage/comments/17ax9mx/russ... ("Russians watch Ukrainian WALL-E laying mines (subtitles)")

Humanity is coming along nicely.

You mean ending nicely.

ok thats cool.I was just playing with one of these last night.

The owners were making behave like a playful puppy and holy hell was it agile and fun to play with.

it sat up and begged, it jumped back and forth like a puppy that wants to play would do... it rolled over and flipped itself back onto its feet.

amazing tech with a very short battery life.

Hard no on this

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