Hacker News Reader

Comment by jmward01 | Hacker News Reader

The thing that worries me isn't the drone/anti-drone escalation. It is the fact that these weapons aren't actually limited to anti-drone use. Recently we have seen clear examples of countries, including Israel, that will use automatic id technology to mass tag a population. If you then have tools that can automatically track and mass kill, which this type of weapon represents, then we have reached a type of warfare that is new in the world and deeply scary. It isn't hard to imagine a scenario where person x is killed since they are marked as a 'bag guy' and as part of being marked every person they were next to for the last few days was also marked as likely enough to be bad guys to kill as well. All that has to be done is push a button. It is a scary, and unfortunately all to possible, future if not now.

View on HN

It's been possible for a long time.

For antipersonnel use, guns are perfectly adequate and guns on tracking turrets have been widely deployed (for example, CIWS). The underlying technology is a ballistic calculator and a fast panning turret. Modern ballistic calculators, weather stations (a small device about the size of a cellphone), and good quality ammunition allows for incredible precision with small arms -- hitting something 25cm in diameter at 1000m is something people can do with these tools.

A weapon like this can't really "mass kill" -- it is for point targets -- but we have long had tools that can automatically track and kill. Why don't we employ them to shoot at people? We have the tagging technology, &c, as you mention.

One reason is that positive identification really does matter a lot when designing and developing weapon systems that automatically attack something.

The anti-missile use case is one of the most widespread uses for automatically targeted weapons in part because a missile is easily distinguished from other things that should not be killed: it is small, extremely hot, moves extremely fast, generally up in the air and moves towards the defense system. It is not a bird, a person, or even a friendly aircraft. The worst mistake the targeting system can make is shooting down a friendly missile. If a friendly missile is coming at you, maybe you need to shoot it down anyways...

Drones have a different signature from a missile and recognizing them in a way that doesn't confuse them with a bird, a balloon, &c, is different from recognizing missiles -- but here again, the worse thing that happens is you shoot down a friendly drone.

And note an advantage to lasers--when you fire ordinary stuff it falls back. C-RAM is specifically designed that misses detonate while still in the air, but no munition has a 100% fusing rate, you get duds. Nothing falls back from the laser.

CWIS is pretty massive, not that this isn't still big, but I think this is taking a miniaturization turn, is upping the accuracy and number of engagements it can handle significantly and potentially upping the range especially in urban environments. CWIS in an urban environment would cause chaos and a lot of collateral damage to buildings but you can now be very sure that only your intended target is being hit so people could die without all the optics of buildings crashing down. It is much easier to have a war when the cameras don't see the destruction. Positive ID is huge, if you really care about it, but even with perfect positive ID if a government is ok with genocide then everyone is a valid target. Are you a male older than 13? You are a combatant and will be killed once you are in sight. Did someone help you in any way (like your mother of family giving you food?) They are also combatants. It is unfortunately not a stretch with modern tools to see this happening in real time. This weapon is, unfortunately, on an inevitable path.

CIWS is big but this has nothing to do with it -- it's actually easier to make a small turret, and small arms precision has been well understood for a long time. Put a 6.5mm Creedmoor on a computer controlled turret -- 6.5mm Creedmoor is generally accepted to be usable to 1km or more.

Range is limited in urban environments because of obstructions -- even the range of CIWS is far too great to be useful.

There hasn't been a real possibility for a long time, I don't think -- it's just not an easy use case.

Are you a male older than 13? You are a combatant and will be killed once you are in sight.

This is exactly the kind of thing that is unworkable.

(A) You don't want to shoot all those people. It's rare if ever the case that even 10% of those males are actually combatants. Even in Germany at the end of the WW2, I doubt it was that high.

(B) What if your own people make a breakthrough and take control of an area, and have all these machines with wildly nonspecific rules shooting at them?

Range due to obstacles is greatly overcome with altitude. My point about the 13yo is that -you- think it is unworkable, but a country that doesn't mind the word 'genocide' thinks it is a fine definition. Camera tech quickly went this route right? 'you could mount that camera but we haven't done it and therefor won't' turned into multiple cameras covering every square inch of a city from multiple angles once the tech was easy enough. The 'easy enough' trend is clear here. Miniaturization, precision, ease of maintenance, etc make the reasons this hasn't been done rapidly fall away and make it clear that it will be done. There is a clear argument that is isn't, yet, realistic to be done but this is a clear step in that direction.

I don't think there is a clear argument that it isn't realistic to be done from a technology standpoint -- in other words, I don't think this laser meaningfully changes things from a capabilities standpoint. The necessary miniaturization and precision are available.

Now, you may think I have the facts wrong, here -- that we haven't had the kind of precise turret before, or that we can't deliver small arms ammunition with great precision -- but you don't come out and say that: you haven't said I have bad facts.

If we accept that the technical capabilities have been there for a while, then we need another explanation for what the hold up is. I have offered an alternative, which is that it comes down to doctrine or operational issues -- it's not easy to see how to deploy a weapon system that automatically targets people without creating huge practical problems. I offered two concrete cases in my earlier comment. Here again, you haven't really spoken to them: you haven't said, for example, A is not a problem and here's why not. You have just ignored them.

It is really starting to look like you have a story and you are sticking to it.

My argument is that bullets move slow, can miss causing obvious damage to surrounding infra that shows up on cameras, that they are loud and that minaturization is important to making this a real trend. You started with CWIS which is massive and has a lot of maintenance. I don't have information on the small precise turrets you mentioned. Please provide it. Either way my arguments still stand. What may have not been done in the past because it was technically possible but not practical is now quickly becoming technically possible and practical and therefore will be built. We are seeing minaturization, simplification and movement towards a weapon system that minimizes camera unfriendly damage while also seeing a massive improvement in surveillance identification and tracking tech. The trend is there and it is pretty clear that it leads to a capability to track a city down to the individual and to be able, at any time, to hit a button to kill a bunch of people. This is a capability that will be developed and what is morally right never stops weapons development, just what is practical. We need to have the discussion sooner rather than later about how to handle these weapons on the battlefield and just as importantly how to keep them away as 'peacekeeping' use in civilian populations.

Is sounds like you're saying something that "...was technically possible but not practical..." is no longer impractical, or at least is "...now quickly becoming technically possible and practical...", because of these additional facts that should be considered:

(A) "...bullets move slow, can miss causing obvious damage to surrounding infra..." -- In other words, the precision I say is possible with small arms isn't realistic. This has two consequences:

(A1) The bullets can miss. Consider a bullet on its way to a target 500m way -- it may be in the air for more than half a second. Maybe the target was walking forward at 1m/s and just stops walking forward -- then the bullet will pass 50cm in front of them. This kind of miss is unacceptable can prevents technology like the kind you imagine from being deployed.

(A2) If the bullet misses, it will put a whole in a wall, &c, &c, whereas a laser either (A2A) will not miss or (A2B) won't cause a problem if it misses?

Regarding (A2A) and (A2B), are either or both of them something you had in mind?

(B) "...they are loud..." -- Firearms are loud but it's hard for me to say what you think the contrast or relevance is here. The lasers are silent or nearly so? Or the firearm's sound creates a problem for some other reason?

(C) "...minaturization is important to making this a real trend..." -- Firearms are not small enough. You said earlier that "...I think this is taking a miniaturization turn..." but how small do you think these lasers need to be, for the reality that you're concerned about to come into play?

It seems incredibly hard to imagine what else you would do with a ground based laser other than shoot at incoming projectiles. What exactly are you expecting the Israelis to do? Change the laws of physics?

I think we’re already there. Sounds like Obama administration hit jobs.

Truth is it's already happening, this is how "Lavender" and "Where's Daddy" were used to collectively punish entire families of what a poorly trained AI model thought may or may not be a Hamas fighter

Evidence?

And the Lavender system was only deployed once it was doing as good as the humans. It isn't 100%, war never is.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com