Robocopter gunship abandons sinking warship project American arms'n'aerospace tech titan Northrop Grumman has announced that its "Fire Scout" unmanned helicopter will now be trialled by the US Navy on a different class of warship than that planned. This is good news for the robochopper, as the Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) it was originally intended to fly from is in severe trouble …
Why has someone designed the heicopter to look like a mini submarine. It's a bit ugly and doesn't really stoke fear like this Killer Robot should. Nobody is going to bow and worship our Robotic masters if that's how it looks!
Posted anonymous coward as any reference to gok wan should be shot!
Why wouldnt you be scared of this? It doesnt have to be mean, huge and scary.... the primary way for an enemy of the Good ol' US of A (and Lord knows, the list is getting bigger fast!) to win, was to increase the bodybag total.
Remove any chance of sending bodybags back to the home States in quantity, and you remove the ability to "beat" the USA per se - they'll just send more robots. Would you like to shoot one down, knowing that 3 more will follow?
Skull and cross bones..... quality death-tech if you ask me, beats silly raygun 747 tripe!
You have a point. Take the bodies away and no nobody in the US will be sad / see army officers deliviring letters to mothers and no more soppy films with mel gibson showing how sad modern warfare really is...
All part of the grand sheme of things...
That way u cant have a repeat of vietnam's anti war rallies cos no one will get killed.
Regarding Future Combat Systems and BSOD:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/23/AR2008012303695.html
"Boeing and the Army said they chose not to use Microsoft's proprietary software because they didn't want to be beholden to the company. Instead, they chose to develop a Linux-based operating system based on publicly available code."
You vision of a scary robot is learned; you see hollywood robots, and they make them scary, so then when you see them, they look scary. It's built up associations.
...If this things works and is effective, and you have to fight them or see them in action, you will likewise ~learn to be scared~ because new associations will build up with it's image.
Slap some stainless steel teeth on the front or something, some long scythe wielding arms would be good for close support work. It's not a proper kill bot till it can drip with blood. Make it whisper to it's self when it's parked and anyone approaches, nonsense or something creepy.
Cool - can't wait to see this thing in service. No more whinging from prima donna pilots and their 1001 reasons for why they can't fly today, and no more collecting flying pay for actually not doing any flying. Good riddance to the whole lot of them, the overpaid, underworked, whining, precious, talentless bunch of tossers.
And the fire scout can actually go in harm's way, too.
The only downside is losing the ability to hop ashore to pick up the latest newspapers. Then again, on the upside, the padre can't demand to hop onboard for his weekly confessional either.
It sounds like win-win to me.
Try one more time to comment on this story as it seems to be rather hard to get one accepted.
I recommend reading Joe Haldeman's Forever Peace it has some great insights into where this might lead technologically as well as politicalky and socially, though I'd also recommend reading Forever War first (great book by the way).
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