'Our Oppenheimer moment' – In Ukraine, the robot wars have already begun | Hacker News Reader

'Our Oppenheimer moment' – In Ukraine, the robot wars have already begun

politico.eu

10 pointsconsumer4518 comments

All this "OMG!!!" fuss about autonomous weapons, as if the world has been "every single shot was personally aimed at a carefully selected and fully identified target" since the dawn of warfare.

Meanwhile, if you know squat about military history, and can figure out Wikipedia's search feature - land mines (gunpowder-based) were described in great detail, in a Chinese military treatise compiled back in the 1300's.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_mine#History

But you won't score the same clicks and bucks and social media cred as a journalist, if your article points out the long history of mines and indirect fires and booby traps and homing torpedoes and buzz bombs. And how the technical, legal, and moral issues therewith have been handled over time.

We have had things like buzz bombs for quite a while. But, as I mentioned in another comment, suddenly the proliferation of cheap kamikaze UAVs allowed the poor-as-heck Houthis to shut down Western marine traffic in the Red Sea, even though we threw part of our multi-trillion dollar navy at the issue.

So, what is happening? I would argue that it's the proliferation of these cheap solutions, so even "the poors" have them.

> I would argue that it's ...

Yes, to a great degree. Coupled with the west's military equipment establishment being disastrously optimized for sort-term profits.

> ... Coupled with the west's military equipment establishment being disastrously optimized for sort-term profits.

A couple of years ago, I would have agreed that the Western military procurement system is so corrupt, that this was the main fault.

However, what we just saw happen due to Ukrainian ingenuity and desperation was almost a phase change level event, at the infantry level.

Only 2 years ago, it was US supplied Javelins killing Russian tanks at a cost of $176k a shot. Today, it is a $500 drone with a spare RPG round killing those Russian tanks. That's around a 20x reduction in cost. The delivery method is better in many ways, and can be manufactured in a thousand bedrooms, simultaneously.

Not only could Russian procurement not adapt at this rate, but neither could Western procurement. Both sides still have no idea what to do about FPV/RPG drones.

I think that the pace of change may have outpaced even our own mutual corruption, as our main fault. This might only be the beginning of that asymmetrical ability curve.

Cruise missiles have exited decades. They are autonomous robots.

That's true, but these will be 3 orders of magnitude less expensive, require much less CapEx to setup manufacturing, and will proliferate like AK-47s.

As an example of new cheap tech doing surprising things on the battlefield, the Houthis just shut down the Red Sea for Western marine traffic with kamikaze UAVs, for which we were somehow entirely unprepared - with the greatest Navy in human history.

we'll be safe until they teach the ai how to recharge the drone's batteries then we're done. keep the recharging procedure secret and we're good!

Too late for that:

https://interestingengineering.com/innovation/non-stop-drone...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com