Rifle-Armed Robot Dogs Now Being Tested by Marine Special Operators | Hacker News Reader

Rifle-Armed Robot Dogs Now Being Tested by Marine Special Operators

twz.com

33 pointspeutetre60 comments

It's about time!

As a former Marine infantryman I've always admired the "do less with more" flexibility, practicality, and innovation of the corps.

Can we get those operators to provide feedback here? Are the opposing enemy team allowed to attempt to disable them?

Unpopular hot take, I've been following the progression or lack there of with robot dogs and honestly I am not impressed. I think a real dog or a high speed drone tank could disable these things. Should they evolve to the agility of the fictional character AMEE [1] they might be a threat but I have yet to see anything close to her. In my opinion these are too slow, wibbly wobbly, noisy, unidirectional. Too many of the weaknesses of a real dog have been recreated. This is a robot and they have the opportunity to engineer away all of those vulnerabilities. I would be more afraid of an actual dog trained to kill.

I have a personal request. Two of these dogs armed with owie-owie-hurt-hurt paintball guns verses two riot cops armed only with the riot-cuffs heavy duty tie wraps. Give the cops no instruction other than to disable the robots.

[1] - https://youtu.be/KTcOOzD-JQs?&t=28

> Two of these dogs armed with owie-owie-hurt-hurt paintball guns verses two riot cops

the scary part isn't putting two robots against two guys; it's putting two hundred robots against those two guys

you don't have to be tactical (or even accurate) when you can overwhelm (zerg rush)

it's putting two hundred robots against those two guys

That is the opposite I would expect financially funding a war. I would expect one robot to be able to decimate 100 to 1000 humans in short order and act as a 10x landmine if pinned down. I do not believe there would ever be a zerg rush of robot dogs as they can not rush. Something like a scaled down rip-saw tank that can autonomously fire simultaneously in 10+ directions perhaps if you want to surprise and rush a squad. Something like the rip-saw could also extract a squad of friendlies if not scaled down and/or patrol a very large area.

They aren't a threat because they aren't on par with fictional sci-fi special-effects robots yet? They're still armed with guns. Even a small gun is a threat. I don't understand your point.

They move too slow. You are a marine and I trust that you could eliminate them. I expect a robot in 2024 to be somewhat closer to the science fiction of 15+ years ago minus the shiny body and non redundant sensor. I expect them to decimate the field and map all the terrain that satellites will miss so that you have a higher chance of going home without a folded flag.

> I expect a robot in 2024 to be somewhat closer to the science fiction of 15+ years ago

Sounds like an assumption on your part. Regardless, I think you're missing the point entirely. Marines eliminate humans too but that doesn't mean humans aren't a threat. It's also a test, I'd expect them to become more polished before being fielded. These also aren't your average guys testing them either (MARSOC). Special forces looking for an edge.

> robot dogs and honestly I am not impressed

Need to contextualize robot dogs like current disposable drones. When industrial production commodifies building them in 100,000s, and they can be thrown in urban battle space purely for attrition where ROR becomes positive if they turn 1 human combatant into a casualty. Get sensors, onboard processing cheap enough and they're autonomous sentries / mines / suicide bombers that strategically dot the battlefield. Park/camp in doorways on low energy mode for area denial. Nothing shows up, have them find a nice electric conduit to self destruct. Look at PRC Zhuhai defense expo last few years, tons of very chintzy dogs with off the shelf weapons strapped to them. Considering DJI sells large farmn drones for $8000 with AESA radar, cheap robodogs can probably be made for less. An advanced Excaliber shell cost 100k.

Yeah, the day I saw one of those I thought this will end up with a gun turret rather quickly. When they gain a lot of autonomy war will become absolutely unberable for most soldiers. Death and dismemberment will be coming from all directions, totally unexpected. The tatatata rifle style combat is nearly obsolete. One stat I read was that in the Russian war on Ukraine about 90% of combat deaths and injuries are from artillery fire and drones rather than direct infantry combat. It's already changing the face of war drastically. But maybe we can eventually get to a form of MAD where in war drones fight other drones and war ends when one side runs out of its robots?

What happens when one side runs out of robots?

I can tell you what will happen in the current war. If Ukraine runs out of robots/bullets/soldiers, the russian soldiers will march forward, plant flags, steal homes, and rape and slaughter civilians, as they have been doing for years. So I don’t think this form of MAD is actually any more peaceful.

yeah, I agree in this case. But maybe with a more rational actor this would prove effective. Or maybe I'm deluding myself because rational actors don't launch wars to begin with.

Russia already has the advantage of more manpower. And theres nothing Ukraine could do about it, it is just the significantly smaller country, both in terms of population and size. I think robots could provide a balance. For robots you need money and global access to parts. The collective West has more money and better access to parts. Hence, as long as the US/EU is willing to support Ukraine, robots could turn the cards into Ukraine's favor.

You are right and I agree with you, but that point is neither here nor there.

Artillery has been the number one cause of combat casualties since World War I. The tech is obviously changing, but soldiers dying out of sight of the enemy is not new.

The Ukraine-Russia War is leading to an autonomous arms race. Many interesting examples and much faster iteration than the traditional Mil-Ind complex. Fully expect Ukraine to be a leader in drone warfare, if you don't consider them to be already

Which drones are produced by which Ukrainian companies? From my observation it's more like a testing ground for other countries systems.

Chinese made drone parts with sim and/or startlink/gps capable systems. I bet a lot of it is from off the shelf parts and some from other countries systems.[1]

[1] https://www.npr.org/2023/06/20/1183050117/how-ukraine-create...

Many local drone companies, 100s at this point. They are in full war mode and more than capable.

Some notable examples are

- the boats wrecking Russia's Black Sea Fleet

- the long range drones hitting Russian oil refineries

- the gun on tracks (like the dog in OP, but with treads)

They have dozens of FPV style drone companies, and 1000s of individuals assembling FPV drones from parts. A super cool one I saw the other day is a FPV built with eco materials with sunflower seeds embedded: https://twitter.com/frontlinekit/status/1787904371977765177

Also rolling their own anti-drone systems like

- https://euromaidanpress.com/2024/05/01/ukraine-rolls-out-dom...

- https://www.yahoo.com/news/ukraine-using-mobile-phones-6ft-1...

From my understanding non of those are Ukrainian design and so it's as i said a testing ground for other countries.

Leaving aside the manufacturing portion, I'd note out that there's a certain kind of (regrettable, tragic) operational knowledge any military might gain when using tools during real combat.

I had this thought too as part of an explanation for why America is so eager to engage in foreign wars. It gives the military a chance to use aging munitions and test out new platforms.

For reference for future generations : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metalhead_(Black_Mirror)

And before that there were Rat Things in Snow Crash or Slamhounds in the Sprawl books.

Suggested reading: Dogs of War, by Adrian Tchaikovsky. Essentially a biotech cyborg variant on the theme of mind control meets Island of Doctor Moreau.

Along those lines, suggested listening: War Pigs, the original of course, but the Cake cover is pretty good too

Black mirror a few years ahead of its time, yet again.

very spot on

for those who want to watch

Metalhead Black Mirror: Season 4, Episode 5

Interesting that Dogs of War was published earlier in the same year.

Also time to repost Slaughterbots

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9CO6M2HsoIA

> As Shell explained, the autonomous weapon system will "scan and detect targets... [locking] on [to] drones, people, [and] vehicles." As it features man-in-the-loop fire control, it will alert the operator once a target has been identified, letting the human decide whether to engage or not.

Insane. Just a press of a button to make it fully autonomous.

Battlefield 2042 Vibes intensify

Ugh, don’t remind me. I checked the other day and there are about the same number of people playing a day as V (which turned out pretty good at the end).

The Marines should have a backup plan because robots dogs can’t save everything.

So this is where my tax dollars are spent. Building “killer robot dogs”. Smh.

It’s shit like this that make you think twice about paying taxes; and sympathize with “tax dodgers”.

The waste in government isn’t in Medicare, Social Security. It’s in the military industrial complex.

Would you prefer to pay for a lifetime of disability payments to returning veterans instead?

There wouldn't be any disabled veterans if there wasn't a military industrial complex pushing for war all over the globe. The last time America fought a defensive war was WW2, almost a century ago, and if there was no military industrial complex it wouldn't have fought any wars since then.

There were civilian ships being sunk off the coast of Yemen, luckily America has the force projection capable of putting a stop to that.

Russia would have taken all of Ukraine if it wasn't for American force projection.

Do you understand that other countries exist?

this is a _very_ false dichotomy

It doesn't seem so. I believe they're pointing out that our current best alternative to a robot dog with a gun is a human with a gun. Robot dog gets shot and is decommissioned; human gets shot and relies on disability payments for a few decades.

Who do you think the robots are killing? There are countless videos of drones blowing up Ukranian and Russian soldiers. Drones are being used to kill humans.

If you don't kill the russians, they will kill the Ukrainians.

How do you solve that?

Copenhagen Interpretation of Ethics. I'm innocent of anything I ignore. Inaction absolves me of all moral failure.

Ironically, Copenhagen has [fortunately] shown a relatively strong level of support for Ukraine.

I wasn’t previously familiar with the Kopenhagener Geist but it was an interesting cursory read. Thank you.

Your ideological position on should win a war is irrelevant. We're discussing the ethics of using automation to kill humans.

Think those returning vets would like the payments to start in the first place, for your false equivalence to be valid.

And I can do that sort of logic as well - would you like to deal with the social unrest from about the only effective mass 18-23 y/o jobs and college program still around going away?

A million dollar robot dog would be blown up by a toy drone in a minute

> It’s in the military industrial complex.

I remember when people used to complain about that. Now those same people are jumping up and down for billions “for Ukraine”, not knowing they’re the same thing.

> “for Ukraine”

I'm curious, why did you put quotation marks around this? Who are you quoting?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scare_quotes

That was my suspicion, but I at least wanted to hear it from the horse’s mouth, and I wanted to give the benefit of the doubt first.

Lol, maybe go offline for a bit because you are taking your online self a bit too seriously.

Right?

I’m not going to try and explain that Ukraine funding is actually just a US domestic economic stimulus and kickback scam incentive because if they can’t see it, they aren’t going to listen to me about it -

But lol, these guys are so defensive and pseudo intellectual about it.

You shouldn't try to explain anything, because your position on this is nonsensical. And if "they" aren't going to listen to you about it, then good. You aren't worth listening to anyway.

They know perfectly well. But they see the bigger picture also, and that there's clearly a lesser-of-evils situation involved.

So much for Isaac Asimov's Laws of Robotics

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

Violations started years ago, but this is blatant. Wonder how long AI will be used for these. I am sure that is being researched :(

Never create a weapon you wouldn’t want turned loose on your family.

What weapon would you want to turn loose on your family?

Would need to specify what turn loose meant. If you turn loose an AK-47 it will just sit there. An autonomous robot dog on the other hand...

Exactly.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com