Terry is dead-on. The autonomous Unmanned Combat Air Vehicles (UCAVs) can take
off by themselves, fly a grid pattern looking for targets, ask, "permission to
engage" when they find targets, then return home and land themselves.
It's been seven years since Boeing demonstrated autonomous vehicles
decision-making.
According to wikipedia:
" On February 4, 2005, on their 50th flight, the two X-45As took off into a
patrol pattern and were then alerted to the presence of a target. The X-45As
then autonomously determined which vehicle held the optimum position, weapons
(notional), and fuel load to properly attack the target. After making that
decision, one of the X-45As changed course and the pilot-operator allowed it to
attack the simulated antiaircraft emplacement. Following a successful strike,
another simulated threat, this time disguised, emerged and was subsequently
destroyed by the second X-45A. [2] This demonstrated the ability of these
vehicles to work autonomously as a team and manage their resources, as well as
to engage previously-undetected targets, which is significantly harder than
following a predetermined attack path.
> Date: Sat, 28 Jan 2012 12:44:24 -0500
> Subject: Re: [Vo]:Skynet Advances - Autonomous Drone
> From: hohlr...@gmail.com
> To: vortex-l@eskimo.com
>
> On Sat, Jan 28, 2012 at 12:21 PM, Jones Beene <jone...@pacbell.net> wrote:
>
> > Instead, the
> > designated scapegoat will mostly likely be a console jockey on the control
> > deck of a billion dollar vessel, staffed mostly by high-school dropouts -
> > with joy-stick in hand.
>
> Yeah, but this is even mo-better. There's no need to blame a human.
> It was a software glitch. An undocumented feature. What will we do,
> pinpoint and blame the code writer. No, now we can blame it on a
> robot.
>
> T
>
