July 6, 2010 • 26 mins
We know that robots are taking over more and more tasks traditionally performed by humans -- but assembling cars isn't the same thing as waging war. In this episode, Allison and Robert explore the current unmanned robots used by the U.S. military.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff from the Science Lab from how stuff
works dot com. Hey guys, and welcome to the podcast.
This is also Know the science editor how stuff works
dot com. And this is Robert Lamb, science writer and
how stuff works dot Com. Today, Robert has prepared a
(00:23):
real treat for us. Yeah, you know, we just upgraded
the whole studio. Here, we're recording some pretty high tech digs. Yeah,
you look pretty sweet in those sad months. Yeah, I
feel kind of loud in them. But but but this,
this brings us, brings us to the question, do you
ever worry about things being upgraded to the point where
you'll be replaced by a robot? Um a little bit,
(00:47):
I mean sure of an editor, So some of the
job functionality I have could surely be performed could surely
be performed by a robot. Yeah, definitely, I mean I
can I think a little on those lines, Like a
lot of my job is like getting information, reassembling it
and throwing in a done joke, you know, and you
could considerably program something to do to do just that. Yeah,
(01:09):
but a robot is never going to have your creativity. Yeah,
well there's the definitely a human factor. Now, one area
where the robots have really made some inroads. Were just
pouring some jobs. Yeah, warfare. And it's kind of like
we talked in the Robots podcast or earlier, is that
you know, we give a lot of crap jobs to robots.
Indeed we do. And you know, you look, war is
(01:32):
a pretty crap job. So that's why we have these
u a v s flying around. All right. Yeah, Well
today we're going to talk about two main ua vs
going on the unmanned aerial vehicles, right, the Predator and
the Reaper. Do you want to kick it off with
the Predator today? Yeah? The Predators. The Predators are pretty
awesome piece of machinery. Um, They've been around for a
(01:53):
number of years. It's the m Q one Predator. It's
a medium altitude, long endurance unmanned aircraft system. Uh. And
if you've seen pictures of it, I mean, it just
looks like a sleek airplane that doesn't need any room
for a human pilot because the pilot um and crew
are in a little a little studio if you will,
um around. Yeah, and uh, the thing's loaded up with
(02:16):
a bunch of high tech since sensing equipment, you know,
and for red all that and Uh, it was you know,
invented primarily to be used as a reconnaissance right, okay, yeah,
so the predators out there and use right now. Yeah, yeah,
we've been using using it for for years. Um and
I think currently we have we've we've created something like,
(02:38):
uh like over a hundred I think counting the different
predators and and then the the eventual offshoot, the Reaper,
which we'll get to in a minute. So what kind
of weapon where we're talking about. It looks like they
become equipped with two leaser guided missiles, yeah, to to
help fire missiles they can carry and and this is
kind of be like they're out on you know, on
some sort of reconnaissment, reconnaissance mission and then the encounter
(03:01):
an enemy plane they can fire those off. In fact,
there's a there's a YouTube video from just before the
second I Rock War where um on a Rocky Meg
encounters one of these predators. Right. I was interested in this.
I mean, would an unmanned aerial vehicle be able to
engage top gun, Yes, sort of engage like it. You know,
(03:21):
it did some some defensive maneuvers, it fired off those
hell fires, but the MiG shot it down and and
at the time, like I saw like an old um,
you know, newsreel of this and they were like, finally
the the Iraqis, you know, have encountered a plane. They
can outmaneuver an outgun, you know, which was you know,
I guess there's a lot of chest bumping at you know,
not chest bumping, chest stumping at that time, which maybe
(03:43):
chess bumping or maybe chess bumping. It feels a little like,
you know, since everything that's happened since then, it feels
a little little tacky. But but but but yeah, that's
an example of where you know, the predator wasn't able
to hang with a human pilot and uh and and
for that reason, like dog fighting is definitely one of
those areas that that humans have a good hold on.
(04:05):
Those jobs aren't going to disappear anytime soon, except dog
fighting has kind of disappeared, at least in our current
military situation. The predator comes equipped with some pretty cool
stuff like the weeper holes. Yeah, this was amazing. Um
you've seen you've seen Iron Man, right, you know that
scene where he goes up he's like shooting up into
the area. He's all excited about it, and he starts
freezing up, covering with ice and then plummets. Well it's
(04:28):
like it's the same deal, you know, except without Robert
Downey Jr. Right, Yeah, without without without him behind the
wheel as it were. Um, yeah, And these are just
the edges of the wings are titanium and they're dotted
with the microscopic weeping holes. Needs allow an ethylene glycol
a solution to seep out out of internal reservoirs and
(04:50):
break down the ice it forms on the wings steering flight.
So you think you would have thought of that, you know,
and being a weapons designer, right right, right, So just
to give you guys a scoop, it's not just one
predator flying up. Typically, Um, you'll usually have a small
army of four predators with the sensors, and then you're
(05:11):
gonna have a ground control station that is where the
pilots are sitting, and you're going to have sensor operators
and you're also have a satellite link communication suite. Yeah,
there's like there's like one pilot, two crew members operating
stuff on the ground. There's a direct line of sight
link between the two, and then there's a satellite up links.
So it's it's not just like sending out a robot
(05:32):
to do a guy's job. It's like a it's like
a system, you know, with with plenty of guys still
involved in the process. And the aircraft can stay up
for roughly twenty four hours. And what they'll do is
we'll swap out one and they'll put another one up
so that they can have constant coverage. Yeah, it's like
if like if they unveiled like some robot louder Milks here,
you know, it's like one would do a you know,
(05:53):
eight hour shift and then another one would take over
right after that. You met, you bet, And uh, the
Reaper is uh kind of like the younger batter brother
of the Predator, Yeah, and the more heavily equipped one
at that it's heavier. The predator can go like a
hundred forty miles per hour, and the Reaper can go
three hundred UM. While the Predator has just those two
(06:15):
missiles um, the Reaper can hold like fourteen hellfire missiles
that can carry you know, carry a lot a lot
of heavier armaments. So it's uh, and it's it's basically
picking up and making an offensive weapon out of the
the reconnaissance technology, right It also comes equipped with some
laser ranger finders that can locate and transmit our images
of the targets. And the Reaper can also carry two bombs,
(06:37):
which is as many as the most standard fighter jets. Yeah,
and the Reapers, of course, there are currently in operation
there out there doing their job in the Middle East. Right.
I think it began flying missions back in October two seven.
So tell me a little bit about Noel Sharky, Who've
got to interview for the Discovery News article. Oh yeah, yeah,
(06:59):
no is a really cool dude. He is a professor
of Artificial Intelligence and robotics at the University of Sheffield
in the UK, and he's also the co founder of
the International Committee for Robotics Arms Control, and he's just
he's really a guru on all things um on robotics
in general. But he's he's really made it his mission
to to get out there and get information out about
(07:21):
the current state of robotic weaponry and and sort of
you know, where we're headed in the future and making
sure that we're heading in the right direction. So, I mean,
he's like I think he's been on The Daily Show,
you know. He he's and he's one of these guys.
He can just he can talk for hours on the
second Yeah, yeah, he talked to me for like half
an hour, maybe forty or five minutes, and it was
(07:41):
all awesome. We could have kept going, but you know,
I wouldn't have any place to put it. So Sharky
was making the distinction between in loop systems, specifically men
and loop systems, right and man on the loop systems. Yeah,
this is really this is really cool and apparently these
are these are industry terms for these, um, but the
systems that we were talking about just now the Predator
(08:02):
the Reaper with you know, with a command system on
the ground with guys working, and that is a man
in the loop system, all right. That means that someone
controls the applications of lethal force. And you know, it's
like other stuff will be will be automated, but but
there'll be certain key things that a person is definitely
taking care of. And likewise, it can operate on its own.
(08:25):
It can be programmed, Sharky says, to react to the GPS,
so it can go about on its own. It can
navigate itself. Um, but a pilot is still going to
step into control the heightened Yeah, and there's still there.
They're guys, you know, they're manning the thing on the ground, right,
So a man in the loop is really a hybrid
between you know, channa, So a man on the loop
(08:45):
system is really a hybrid. Then huh, but the the
next step and we're not there yet, but but like
the next step in the evolution of this would be
a man on the loop and uh. In this you'd
have a swarm of playing And when we say swarm,
don't think of like bees exactly. Swarm. It's like a
robotics term for, you know, a bunch of robots that
(09:06):
are operating in chorus with one another. So in this system,
there would be multiple planes and a you know, in
a full computerized system, but instead of having like one
crew on the ground for each plane, they'd be like
one crew for numerous planes. Um, you know, it's kind
of like imagine like a really rowdy kid at the beach, right,
(09:30):
and you have a parent like over his shoulder at
all times, making sure that he's not like eating sand
or you know, punching crabs or whatever, you know, bad
stuff kids do them. Yeah, I'm pretty familiar with the scenario.
So so that's that's that's man in the loop. Man
on the loop is like, you have a bunch of
kids that are reasonably well behaved, and somebody's just keeping
an eye on them, you know, Right, you get a
(09:51):
chance to sneak a peek at your summer reading your
trashy novel while the kids are swimming, you know, in
the ocean and jumping the waves, but occasionally step in
make sure they're right closen up to the beach. So
the next logical step in all this is just letting
the kids go to the beach by themselves, right and
and well, and you're gonna have a party. We'll see
you're concerned. And that's that's the key, because maybe the
(10:12):
kids aren't ready to go to the beach by themselves,
and likewise, neither is the technology. Yeah yeah, Likewise, do
we have the technology to send out robots on their
own to wage war or even wage reconnaissance? Um? And uh?
And should we even if we do have that technology.
I think you always need the red button. I think
you always need the executive pilot who's going to be
(10:34):
able to cancel the attack at any moment. I think
it's a predominant thinking on the matter. Yeah, So let's
talk about the advantages of some of these unmanned aerial vehicles. Um,
you found a pretty good article on this from Christian
Science Monitor writer Gregory M. Lamb new Relation. Yeah, he
did a good job of running through the panages. Right.
So obviously one of the things is that we're going
(10:55):
to be able to protect our own soldiers, our own
human soldiers. We're not going to have to put them
in interest missions, you know, whether it's crawling through caves
or uh street distrect urban combat, and ultimately we may
reduce casualties. Although I do think that there is still
a place for um, you know, infantry man in in
in combat. I don't I don't see robots entirely replacing that,
(11:17):
do you not? The current state of infantry now, And
that's the really interesting part. If we were introducing robots
into like the infantry of a hundred years ago, like
back when you had you know, clearly drawn lines, you know,
on the battlefield, and you had guys in uniform that
kind of thing, you had a much you know, as
much clearer and far more distinct, and you could conceivably
(11:38):
like send in a robot to do things like all right,
anybody in this uniform will be shot or anybody in
this area will be carpet bombed. Um. But but modern warfare,
I mean it's kind of the point where you just
don't have as much um, you know, black and white.
It's nuanced, right, I mean, you may have an area
like you all right, you can identify as like a
kill box where you know there's there's the enemy is
(12:01):
dense enough in this area that you can just unleash
full force on it. But aside from that, I mean,
you know, you have you know, you have street to
street warfare and heavily populated areas. I mean basically, the
whole situation in Iraq and Afghanistan is just not suitable
for at least you know, certainly on the ground for
a for a robotic warfare. And according to some, the
(12:23):
the neither is the the aerial scene. Right. Well, so
you could take this as an advantage or disadvantage. Um.
Some see civilian casualties being reduced with robotic warfare, especially
these unmanned aerial vehicles. But it all relies on human
information or misinformation, is the case, may be, right, right,
And that also assumes that you could introduce sufficient ethical programming.
(12:44):
According to Gregory Lamb. Yeah, there's a there's a UM
there's a project to Georgia Tech actually that was looking
into that and Ethical governor for robots. And this is
a key area UM something called the principle of distinction
UM and this is and this is something that the
International Committee for Robotics Arms Controller or or BIG I'm
talking about UM and and this is this is an
(13:06):
example that sharky uh put put forth. All Right, imagine
that you have in any war, you're gonna have people
that are immune to armed force. All right, You're gonna
have like, you know, wounded soldiers shouldn't be you know,
executed in the street. People should be able to surrender,
health workers should be able to get through. Civilians should
you know, not be harmed. Clergyman clergyman, yeah, yeah, et cetera.
(13:29):
All these people. So you're gonna have to have you
canna have a robot that's going to distinguish between all
these people. I mean that's pretty complicated. I Mean, we
have some some pretty high tech sensing equipment, but but
nothing that really replicates, you know the ability of you know,
if a human to take all that data and make
a judgment, right, the ability to interpret our definitely, Like well,
you like back to Sharky's example, It's like, say you
(13:51):
had a funeral procession, right, and if you you had
a robot that was designed to identify a funeral procession
and say, all right, I'm not going to attack those
guys because that's that's a few Well, then what would
happen the next day, right, You'd have you'd have enemy
you know, combatants UM generally marched into the street. Um.
So yeah, so yeah, it's like robots are not in
(14:13):
a position to make those kind of of choices. Now
the people are working on the Ethical Governor program. Their
argument was that, well, in some situations you could you
could create a program like not for like street to street,
you know, house to house warfare kind of a situation
where there's just too many factors. But if you had
say like if you had to say a reconnaissance robot
(14:35):
and you had a designed to respond to to UM force,
you know, even you could conceivably have it programmed to
where it could make the right decision. But but it's
still very this is a huge topic of discussion, right,
and it's not there, right, Yeah, the technologies yet not
there yet. So another advantage of using a robot might
be that they act as a force multiplier. So, um,
(14:59):
that is that you could extend your manpower farther. You
could have one soldier, one human fighter who was commanding
a squad of robots that were working semi autonomously on
the loop. Right right, right right, Okay, so you could
have much smaller army that is augmented with mechanical soldiers. Okay. Yeah,
(15:21):
And then of course, um, robots can make faster decisions
than a slow humans and that's an important advantage on
the modern battlefield where everything happens really fast. It's hard
to process all that information and you know, things like
shocks set in or their injuries and and a robot
it's just going to make that split second decision. Whether
or not it's the right one is open for discussion,
but it can make that. It does have that split
(15:42):
second capability. Yeah, and you know to that point, they're
not affected by emotion. They're not gonna get it angry
or vengeful or hungry or fatigued, tired, any of that. Yeah.
And uh, and Sharky just guts that and he said
that I think his words were a quote, and neither
does my refrigerator. But that doesn't mean I'm going to
give it a weapon until it to go kill people. Um.
(16:06):
That's an interesting perspective along these lines. Two of the
other big disadvantages are how easy robotic weaponry can conceive
if we make it make killing. You know, it's if
you're you know, you're in a little studio or a
little control room and you're navigating a robot you know,
on the other you know, miles and miles away, you know,
(16:28):
to blow up an apartment or something. You're you're you
know that that we have that disconnect from the violence,
you know, and what does that do to us? Uh?
And similarly, if you if you were waging war and
you're sending out robot soldiers, robot soldiers that you know,
they get blown up, they crash, and and a large
number of the predators, for instance, have either been blown
(16:48):
up by the enemy or they've crashed. We even had
to shoot one down, I believe, um and because because
we've lost control with it and we had to had
to take it out. So if you're sending out these
robots soldiers and and they're just you know, they're crashing
or they're blowing up and they're doing their job whatever.
You're not getting body bags coming up, right, You're not
getting you know, images on the on the nightly news
(17:11):
of of grieving mothers, etcetera. And so therefore it makes
it easier politically to wage war because where's the outcry.
You know, nobody's you know, writing folk songs about the
poor robots that are that are dying. Right, I think
you can make the argument that presently we're disconnected from
wars going on all around us. Um, you know, at
least if you don't have a husband or a wife
(17:34):
or a brother, you know, some family members serving in
one of the wars, then then I think you might
be disconnected. Although at this point we've we've been bombarded
with so many images, you know, whether it's on the
news or reading a story in the newspaper. So I
don't know if that's true anymore because the war has
gone on so long, But at least initially at the outset,
I think that, yeah, currently people can be pretty disconnected
(17:56):
from a new war. Yes, what do you think? I think? So?
I mean the you know, the same technology of course,
also allows us to see images, you know, immediately of
what you know, what's happening on the battlefield or you know,
in the streets of Flusha or what have you. So,
so you have the same technology that can bring us
closer can also distances someone. So how effective are the
(18:19):
predator in the reaper? Have you found any stats on
what they're doing to the state of warfare? You know,
how many targets they are talking, Well, they've they've been
pretty pretty successful. I mean, that's why it's such a
growth industry. I mean, you have you know, it's one
of the the ua V s are one of the
more sought after areas in the U S military and
(18:39):
various other militaries around the world are are involved in
in other ua V projects, And there's a lot of
effort to get the ground based stuff rolling um literally
um at a at a much and a much great
greater pace too because this you know, it's lags significantly.
I mean you have you know, like you know, bomb
disposal bots and those have been really used well, but
(19:00):
you don't really see robotic like weaponized ground vehicles yet,
um none, not that, not any that are actually really
working there. You know a lot of them in you know,
test phases, etcetera. So just going back to the U.
A V. Specifically, I was reading a article about drones
in the Atlantic and one of the military men interviewed
was comparing drones as a strategy. That's a lot like
(19:23):
attacking a hype of bees with a single bee and
taking out one b at a time. Do you think
that's a Do you think that's an opt to analogy? Yeah,
I mean it's a I mean the aim of it
is to be, you know, like a strategic kind of
warfare thing. You know, this one we call these a
decapitation strikes, you know, because here you're taking out supposedly
the head of something. You know, you're be at a
(19:45):
you know, a military leader, you know, taking a nap
on his rooftop or you know, or an arm some
sort of armament, et cetera, cash of weapons. Yeah. I
think that's the real take on is that we we
have to to keep our eyes on where this technology
is now and it's going. And that's that's what the
International Committee for Robotics arm of Control is really into.
Um not as much saying we shouldn't have robotic you know, soldiers,
(20:08):
or that we you know, we should just we should
use them all the time, but rather we should really
think about what we're doing as we proceed, and we
should proceed with a full knowledge of what the technology
is and what it isn't um because it's uh, you know,
and we've we've talked about this before. It's really easy
to to trick yourself um into into thinking robots are
(20:29):
doing things that they're not, like like attributing them with
with wisdom that they're not capable of our judgment, et cetera.
Um and just and like I say, keeping in mind
like how changing changing the way we wage war changes
the the changes how easy it is to partake in
it right right, So if you guys are curious about
(20:49):
Amanda aerial vehicles, we have some pretty good articles at
house to first dot com. Now yeah, yeah, we have
a really good one on on the Predator and a
really good one on the Reaper h and a number
of artic was about like the like future war and
robot soldiers. So you can just dropping in that stuff
into the search bar and you'll get a load of
cool stuff. And we've covered those this kind of thing
(21:09):
on the blogs a lot too cool. What you got
in front of you? Oh, I have some listener mail here, Oscar,
do you remember, Oscar. He wrote us a rather exhaustive
um passionate. I mean, I loved it. I've read the
whole thing. Um. He admitted that. He even admitted though
(21:31):
that he was a bit long winded in it, but
I'm just gonna read a part of it. And he said, quote,
let's start by saying, I found your podcast interesting, although
in a different way from the other podcast. And which
podcast was he talking about stuff in the science which
podcast episode? Oh? Um? Well he was talking about too.
He was talking about our robots a lot, and the
one we did about aliens destroys. Yeah. And he says,
(21:55):
while stuff you should know, tech stuff and stuff you
missed in history class deal mostly with facts, you guys
tend to deal with abstract issues where personal opinions it
counts a lot, and that always brings up great conversations.
So thank you for that, um, which you know. And
then he went on to discuss his own thoughts about
the nature of humanity, um and how that plays into
our expectations of alien life and uh and and also robotics. Um.
(22:20):
So it was a really cool email, thanks, Oscar. Yeah,
thanks for sharing your thoughts, Oscar. It's really great to
hear from listeners. We we read every single one and
we appreciate it more than you guys know. And then
I got a really cool one from this guy named
Mark and uh and and this is awesome too because
he's he's a former sailor, so excellent. So I always
love to hear navy stories. Um, he says, I just
(22:42):
started listening to your podcast and his skyrocketed one of
my faves. I had listened to your podcast about the
virtues of venom, and it reminded me. When I was
in the Navy, I had a drink in Japan called habusaki.
We were officially warned about the drink from my chief.
Haboo is a Japanese cobra which is added to saki,
which is rice wine. The bottles had the whole snake
(23:04):
coiled at the bottom of the bottle. It was explained
to us that the venom shuts off the liver and
all the alcohol is sent into the bloodstream. Nothing is filtered.
Help I of course had to try it. As a
season sailor, I developed a very high tolerance for alcohol,
and after my first shot, I hadn't felt anything. I
was extremely, extremely smooth. Now it was extremely smooth and sweet,
(23:25):
like a good saki usually is. After my second shot,
the room got very warm and I broke out into
a sweat. I stopped drinking after that and made it
back to the boat. Others did not have the same
discretion and had a much harder time finding their way
out from under the table. So he's referring, of course,
to some of our discussions in that podcast about alcohol
that has been infused with with typically snake venom, right
(23:48):
the Cheese of Venom podcast. And I'm really interested in that.
So I really enjoyed hearing people, you know, tell us
about their own experiences with crazy snake wines. So hapusaki
is not gonna be on your happy hour cat Deilist, No,
but it's I would love to have just a selection
of it, you know, like you know people have a
little mini bars, Like what if you had a mini bar,
it would be most impressive, ye had it only had
like venom liquor, you know. Um and then he uh.
(24:12):
Also he also added that he says, my uh, my
senior year of high school, I was part of the
robotics team and we competed in the in the first competition.
This is the first robotics competition that we also did
a big road trip podcast about I didn't actually build
a robot. Part of the competition when I participated was
a three D animation short about the robots movement capabilities.
(24:33):
I work with two of the guys to make an
animation of our robot loading a cannon with a big
rubber ball and shooting a flying car out of the sky. Awesome.
The flying car and cannon had nothing to do with anything,
but we spent most of our time animating the explosion,
which always got a lot of cheering when it was
played at the competition. I also met my now current
wife and the robotics team, so this nerdy club did
wonders for my social life as well. Keep up the
(24:55):
good work. So that's great that he is a former
sailor who drank snake wine and and it's lovely white
man after our own heart. Yeah yeah, Well, like I said,
we do love hearing from you guys. So what do
you guys want to tell us about how you met
your spouse, how you build a robot, or what your
thoughts are on unmanned aerial vehicles. Send us a line
(25:15):
at Science Stuff at how Stuff Works Dot com and
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(25:36):
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(25:57):
com home page. S
Welcome to Stuff from the Science Lab from how stuff
works dot com. Hey guys, and welcome to the podcast.
This is also Know the science editor how stuff works
dot com. And this is Robert Lamb, science writer and
how stuff works dot Com. Today, Robert has prepared a
(00:23):
real treat for us. Yeah, you know, we just upgraded
the whole studio. Here, we're recording some pretty high tech digs. Yeah,
you look pretty sweet in those sad months. Yeah, I
feel kind of loud in them. But but but this,
this brings us, brings us to the question, do you
ever worry about things being upgraded to the point where
you'll be replaced by a robot? Um a little bit,
(00:47):
I mean sure of an editor, So some of the
job functionality I have could surely be performed could surely
be performed by a robot. Yeah, definitely, I mean I
can I think a little on those lines, Like a
lot of my job is like getting information, reassembling it
and throwing in a done joke, you know, and you
could considerably program something to do to do just that. Yeah,
(01:09):
but a robot is never going to have your creativity. Yeah,
well there's the definitely a human factor. Now, one area
where the robots have really made some inroads. Were just
pouring some jobs. Yeah, warfare. And it's kind of like
we talked in the Robots podcast or earlier, is that
you know, we give a lot of crap jobs to robots.
Indeed we do. And you know, you look, war is
(01:32):
a pretty crap job. So that's why we have these
u a v s flying around. All right. Yeah, Well
today we're going to talk about two main ua vs
going on the unmanned aerial vehicles, right, the Predator and
the Reaper. Do you want to kick it off with
the Predator today? Yeah? The Predators. The Predators are pretty
awesome piece of machinery. Um, They've been around for a
(01:53):
number of years. It's the m Q one Predator. It's
a medium altitude, long endurance unmanned aircraft system. Uh. And
if you've seen pictures of it, I mean, it just
looks like a sleek airplane that doesn't need any room
for a human pilot because the pilot um and crew
are in a little a little studio if you will,
um around. Yeah, and uh, the thing's loaded up with
(02:16):
a bunch of high tech since sensing equipment, you know,
and for red all that and Uh, it was you know,
invented primarily to be used as a reconnaissance right, okay, yeah,
so the predators out there and use right now. Yeah, yeah,
we've been using using it for for years. Um and
I think currently we have we've we've created something like,
(02:38):
uh like over a hundred I think counting the different
predators and and then the the eventual offshoot, the Reaper,
which we'll get to in a minute. So what kind
of weapon where we're talking about. It looks like they
become equipped with two leaser guided missiles, yeah, to to
help fire missiles they can carry and and this is
kind of be like they're out on you know, on
some sort of reconnaissment, reconnaissance mission and then the encounter
(03:01):
an enemy plane they can fire those off. In fact,
there's a there's a YouTube video from just before the
second I Rock War where um on a Rocky Meg
encounters one of these predators. Right. I was interested in this.
I mean, would an unmanned aerial vehicle be able to
engage top gun, Yes, sort of engage like it. You know,
(03:21):
it did some some defensive maneuvers, it fired off those
hell fires, but the MiG shot it down and and
at the time, like I saw like an old um,
you know, newsreel of this and they were like, finally
the the Iraqis, you know, have encountered a plane. They
can outmaneuver an outgun, you know, which was you know,
I guess there's a lot of chest bumping at you know,
not chest bumping, chest stumping at that time, which maybe
(03:43):
chess bumping or maybe chess bumping. It feels a little like,
you know, since everything that's happened since then, it feels
a little little tacky. But but but but yeah, that's
an example of where you know, the predator wasn't able
to hang with a human pilot and uh and and
for that reason, like dog fighting is definitely one of
those areas that that humans have a good hold on.
(04:05):
Those jobs aren't going to disappear anytime soon, except dog
fighting has kind of disappeared, at least in our current
military situation. The predator comes equipped with some pretty cool
stuff like the weeper holes. Yeah, this was amazing. Um
you've seen you've seen Iron Man, right, you know that
scene where he goes up he's like shooting up into
the area. He's all excited about it, and he starts
freezing up, covering with ice and then plummets. Well it's
(04:28):
like it's the same deal, you know, except without Robert
Downey Jr. Right, Yeah, without without without him behind the
wheel as it were. Um, yeah, And these are just
the edges of the wings are titanium and they're dotted
with the microscopic weeping holes. Needs allow an ethylene glycol
a solution to seep out out of internal reservoirs and
(04:50):
break down the ice it forms on the wings steering flight.
So you think you would have thought of that, you know,
and being a weapons designer, right right, right, So just
to give you guys a scoop, it's not just one
predator flying up. Typically, Um, you'll usually have a small
army of four predators with the sensors, and then you're
(05:11):
gonna have a ground control station that is where the
pilots are sitting, and you're going to have sensor operators
and you're also have a satellite link communication suite. Yeah,
there's like there's like one pilot, two crew members operating
stuff on the ground. There's a direct line of sight
link between the two, and then there's a satellite up links.
So it's it's not just like sending out a robot
(05:32):
to do a guy's job. It's like a it's like
a system, you know, with with plenty of guys still
involved in the process. And the aircraft can stay up
for roughly twenty four hours. And what they'll do is
we'll swap out one and they'll put another one up
so that they can have constant coverage. Yeah, it's like
if like if they unveiled like some robot louder Milks here,
you know, it's like one would do a you know,
(05:53):
eight hour shift and then another one would take over
right after that. You met, you bet, And uh, the
Reaper is uh kind of like the younger batter brother
of the Predator, Yeah, and the more heavily equipped one
at that it's heavier. The predator can go like a
hundred forty miles per hour, and the Reaper can go
three hundred UM. While the Predator has just those two
(06:15):
missiles um, the Reaper can hold like fourteen hellfire missiles
that can carry you know, carry a lot a lot
of heavier armaments. So it's uh, and it's it's basically
picking up and making an offensive weapon out of the
the reconnaissance technology, right It also comes equipped with some
laser ranger finders that can locate and transmit our images
of the targets. And the Reaper can also carry two bombs,
(06:37):
which is as many as the most standard fighter jets. Yeah,
and the Reapers, of course, there are currently in operation
there out there doing their job in the Middle East. Right.
I think it began flying missions back in October two seven.
So tell me a little bit about Noel Sharky, Who've
got to interview for the Discovery News article. Oh yeah, yeah,
(06:59):
no is a really cool dude. He is a professor
of Artificial Intelligence and robotics at the University of Sheffield
in the UK, and he's also the co founder of
the International Committee for Robotics Arms Control, and he's just
he's really a guru on all things um on robotics
in general. But he's he's really made it his mission
to to get out there and get information out about
(07:21):
the current state of robotic weaponry and and sort of
you know, where we're headed in the future and making
sure that we're heading in the right direction. So, I mean,
he's like I think he's been on The Daily Show,
you know. He he's and he's one of these guys.
He can just he can talk for hours on the
second Yeah, yeah, he talked to me for like half
an hour, maybe forty or five minutes, and it was
(07:41):
all awesome. We could have kept going, but you know,
I wouldn't have any place to put it. So Sharky
was making the distinction between in loop systems, specifically men
and loop systems, right and man on the loop systems. Yeah,
this is really this is really cool and apparently these
are these are industry terms for these, um, but the
systems that we were talking about just now the Predator
(08:02):
the Reaper with you know, with a command system on
the ground with guys working, and that is a man
in the loop system, all right. That means that someone
controls the applications of lethal force. And you know, it's
like other stuff will be will be automated, but but
there'll be certain key things that a person is definitely
taking care of. And likewise, it can operate on its own.
(08:25):
It can be programmed, Sharky says, to react to the GPS,
so it can go about on its own. It can
navigate itself. Um, but a pilot is still going to
step into control the heightened Yeah, and there's still there.
They're guys, you know, they're manning the thing on the ground, right,
So a man in the loop is really a hybrid
between you know, channa, So a man on the loop
(08:45):
system is really a hybrid. Then huh, but the the
next step and we're not there yet, but but like
the next step in the evolution of this would be
a man on the loop and uh. In this you'd
have a swarm of playing And when we say swarm,
don't think of like bees exactly. Swarm. It's like a
robotics term for, you know, a bunch of robots that
(09:06):
are operating in chorus with one another. So in this system,
there would be multiple planes and a you know, in
a full computerized system, but instead of having like one
crew on the ground for each plane, they'd be like
one crew for numerous planes. Um, you know, it's kind
of like imagine like a really rowdy kid at the beach, right,
(09:30):
and you have a parent like over his shoulder at
all times, making sure that he's not like eating sand
or you know, punching crabs or whatever, you know, bad
stuff kids do them. Yeah, I'm pretty familiar with the scenario.
So so that's that's that's man in the loop. Man
on the loop is like, you have a bunch of
kids that are reasonably well behaved, and somebody's just keeping
an eye on them, you know, Right, you get a
(09:51):
chance to sneak a peek at your summer reading your
trashy novel while the kids are swimming, you know, in
the ocean and jumping the waves, but occasionally step in
make sure they're right closen up to the beach. So
the next logical step in all this is just letting
the kids go to the beach by themselves, right and
and well, and you're gonna have a party. We'll see
you're concerned. And that's that's the key, because maybe the
(10:12):
kids aren't ready to go to the beach by themselves,
and likewise, neither is the technology. Yeah yeah, Likewise, do
we have the technology to send out robots on their
own to wage war or even wage reconnaissance? Um? And uh?
And should we even if we do have that technology.
I think you always need the red button. I think
you always need the executive pilot who's going to be
(10:34):
able to cancel the attack at any moment. I think
it's a predominant thinking on the matter. Yeah, So let's
talk about the advantages of some of these unmanned aerial vehicles. Um,
you found a pretty good article on this from Christian
Science Monitor writer Gregory M. Lamb new Relation. Yeah, he
did a good job of running through the panages. Right.
So obviously one of the things is that we're going
(10:55):
to be able to protect our own soldiers, our own
human soldiers. We're not going to have to put them
in interest missions, you know, whether it's crawling through caves
or uh street distrect urban combat, and ultimately we may
reduce casualties. Although I do think that there is still
a place for um, you know, infantry man in in
in combat. I don't I don't see robots entirely replacing that,
(11:17):
do you not? The current state of infantry now, And
that's the really interesting part. If we were introducing robots
into like the infantry of a hundred years ago, like
back when you had you know, clearly drawn lines, you know,
on the battlefield, and you had guys in uniform that
kind of thing, you had a much you know, as
much clearer and far more distinct, and you could conceivably
(11:38):
like send in a robot to do things like all right,
anybody in this uniform will be shot or anybody in
this area will be carpet bombed. Um. But but modern warfare,
I mean it's kind of the point where you just
don't have as much um, you know, black and white.
It's nuanced, right, I mean, you may have an area
like you all right, you can identify as like a
kill box where you know there's there's the enemy is
(12:01):
dense enough in this area that you can just unleash
full force on it. But aside from that, I mean,
you know, you have you know, you have street to
street warfare and heavily populated areas. I mean basically, the
whole situation in Iraq and Afghanistan is just not suitable
for at least you know, certainly on the ground for
a for a robotic warfare. And according to some, the
(12:23):
the neither is the the aerial scene. Right. Well, so
you could take this as an advantage or disadvantage. Um.
Some see civilian casualties being reduced with robotic warfare, especially
these unmanned aerial vehicles. But it all relies on human
information or misinformation, is the case, may be, right, right,
And that also assumes that you could introduce sufficient ethical programming.
(12:44):
According to Gregory Lamb. Yeah, there's a there's a UM
there's a project to Georgia Tech actually that was looking
into that and Ethical governor for robots. And this is
a key area UM something called the principle of distinction
UM and this is and this is something that the
International Committee for Robotics Arms Controller or or BIG I'm
talking about UM and and this is this is an
(13:06):
example that sharky uh put put forth. All Right, imagine
that you have in any war, you're gonna have people
that are immune to armed force. All right, You're gonna
have like, you know, wounded soldiers shouldn't be you know,
executed in the street. People should be able to surrender,
health workers should be able to get through. Civilians should
you know, not be harmed. Clergyman clergyman, yeah, yeah, et cetera.
(13:29):
All these people. So you're gonna have to have you
canna have a robot that's going to distinguish between all
these people. I mean that's pretty complicated. I Mean, we
have some some pretty high tech sensing equipment, but but
nothing that really replicates, you know the ability of you know,
if a human to take all that data and make
a judgment, right, the ability to interpret our definitely, Like well,
you like back to Sharky's example, It's like, say you
(13:51):
had a funeral procession, right, and if you you had
a robot that was designed to identify a funeral procession
and say, all right, I'm not going to attack those
guys because that's that's a few Well, then what would
happen the next day, right, You'd have you'd have enemy
you know, combatants UM generally marched into the street. Um.
So yeah, so yeah, it's like robots are not in
(14:13):
a position to make those kind of of choices. Now
the people are working on the Ethical Governor program. Their
argument was that, well, in some situations you could you
could create a program like not for like street to street,
you know, house to house warfare kind of a situation
where there's just too many factors. But if you had
say like if you had to say a reconnaissance robot
(14:35):
and you had a designed to respond to to UM force,
you know, even you could conceivably have it programmed to
where it could make the right decision. But but it's
still very this is a huge topic of discussion, right,
and it's not there, right, Yeah, the technologies yet not
there yet. So another advantage of using a robot might
be that they act as a force multiplier. So, um,
(14:59):
that is that you could extend your manpower farther. You
could have one soldier, one human fighter who was commanding
a squad of robots that were working semi autonomously on
the loop. Right right, right right, Okay, so you could
have much smaller army that is augmented with mechanical soldiers. Okay. Yeah,
(15:21):
And then of course, um, robots can make faster decisions
than a slow humans and that's an important advantage on
the modern battlefield where everything happens really fast. It's hard
to process all that information and you know, things like
shocks set in or their injuries and and a robot
it's just going to make that split second decision. Whether
or not it's the right one is open for discussion,
but it can make that. It does have that split
(15:42):
second capability. Yeah, and you know to that point, they're
not affected by emotion. They're not gonna get it angry
or vengeful or hungry or fatigued, tired, any of that. Yeah.
And uh, and Sharky just guts that and he said
that I think his words were a quote, and neither
does my refrigerator. But that doesn't mean I'm going to
give it a weapon until it to go kill people. Um.
(16:06):
That's an interesting perspective along these lines. Two of the
other big disadvantages are how easy robotic weaponry can conceive
if we make it make killing. You know, it's if
you're you know, you're in a little studio or a
little control room and you're navigating a robot you know,
on the other you know, miles and miles away, you know,
(16:28):
to blow up an apartment or something. You're you're you
know that that we have that disconnect from the violence,
you know, and what does that do to us? Uh?
And similarly, if you if you were waging war and
you're sending out robot soldiers, robot soldiers that you know,
they get blown up, they crash, and and a large
number of the predators, for instance, have either been blown
(16:48):
up by the enemy or they've crashed. We even had
to shoot one down, I believe, um and because because
we've lost control with it and we had to had
to take it out. So if you're sending out these
robots soldiers and and they're just you know, they're crashing
or they're blowing up and they're doing their job whatever.
You're not getting body bags coming up, right, You're not
getting you know, images on the on the nightly news
(17:11):
of of grieving mothers, etcetera. And so therefore it makes
it easier politically to wage war because where's the outcry.
You know, nobody's you know, writing folk songs about the
poor robots that are that are dying. Right, I think
you can make the argument that presently we're disconnected from
wars going on all around us. Um, you know, at
least if you don't have a husband or a wife
(17:34):
or a brother, you know, some family members serving in
one of the wars, then then I think you might
be disconnected. Although at this point we've we've been bombarded
with so many images, you know, whether it's on the
news or reading a story in the newspaper. So I
don't know if that's true anymore because the war has
gone on so long, But at least initially at the outset,
I think that, yeah, currently people can be pretty disconnected
(17:56):
from a new war. Yes, what do you think? I think? So?
I mean the you know, the same technology of course,
also allows us to see images, you know, immediately of
what you know, what's happening on the battlefield or you know,
in the streets of Flusha or what have you. So,
so you have the same technology that can bring us
closer can also distances someone. So how effective are the
(18:19):
predator in the reaper? Have you found any stats on
what they're doing to the state of warfare? You know,
how many targets they are talking, Well, they've they've been
pretty pretty successful. I mean, that's why it's such a
growth industry. I mean, you have you know, it's one
of the the ua V s are one of the
more sought after areas in the U S military and
(18:39):
various other militaries around the world are are involved in
in other ua V projects, And there's a lot of
effort to get the ground based stuff rolling um literally
um at a at a much and a much great
greater pace too because this you know, it's lags significantly.
I mean you have you know, like you know, bomb
disposal bots and those have been really used well, but
(19:00):
you don't really see robotic like weaponized ground vehicles yet,
um none, not that, not any that are actually really
working there. You know a lot of them in you know,
test phases, etcetera. So just going back to the U.
A V. Specifically, I was reading a article about drones
in the Atlantic and one of the military men interviewed
was comparing drones as a strategy. That's a lot like
(19:23):
attacking a hype of bees with a single bee and
taking out one b at a time. Do you think
that's a Do you think that's an opt to analogy? Yeah,
I mean it's a I mean the aim of it
is to be, you know, like a strategic kind of
warfare thing. You know, this one we call these a
decapitation strikes, you know, because here you're taking out supposedly
the head of something. You know, you're be at a
(19:45):
you know, a military leader, you know, taking a nap
on his rooftop or you know, or an arm some
sort of armament, et cetera, cash of weapons. Yeah. I
think that's the real take on is that we we
have to to keep our eyes on where this technology
is now and it's going. And that's that's what the
International Committee for Robotics arm of Control is really into.
Um not as much saying we shouldn't have robotic you know, soldiers,
(20:08):
or that we you know, we should just we should
use them all the time, but rather we should really
think about what we're doing as we proceed, and we
should proceed with a full knowledge of what the technology
is and what it isn't um because it's uh, you know,
and we've we've talked about this before. It's really easy
to to trick yourself um into into thinking robots are
(20:29):
doing things that they're not, like like attributing them with
with wisdom that they're not capable of our judgment, et cetera.
Um and just and like I say, keeping in mind
like how changing changing the way we wage war changes
the the changes how easy it is to partake in
it right right, So if you guys are curious about
(20:49):
Amanda aerial vehicles, we have some pretty good articles at
house to first dot com. Now yeah, yeah, we have
a really good one on on the Predator and a
really good one on the Reaper h and a number
of artic was about like the like future war and
robot soldiers. So you can just dropping in that stuff
into the search bar and you'll get a load of
cool stuff. And we've covered those this kind of thing
(21:09):
on the blogs a lot too cool. What you got
in front of you? Oh, I have some listener mail here, Oscar,
do you remember, Oscar. He wrote us a rather exhaustive
um passionate. I mean, I loved it. I've read the
whole thing. Um. He admitted that. He even admitted though
(21:31):
that he was a bit long winded in it, but
I'm just gonna read a part of it. And he said, quote,
let's start by saying, I found your podcast interesting, although
in a different way from the other podcast. And which
podcast was he talking about stuff in the science which
podcast episode? Oh? Um? Well he was talking about too.
He was talking about our robots a lot, and the
one we did about aliens destroys. Yeah. And he says,
(21:55):
while stuff you should know, tech stuff and stuff you
missed in history class deal mostly with facts, you guys
tend to deal with abstract issues where personal opinions it
counts a lot, and that always brings up great conversations.
So thank you for that, um, which you know. And
then he went on to discuss his own thoughts about
the nature of humanity, um and how that plays into
our expectations of alien life and uh and and also robotics. Um.
(22:20):
So it was a really cool email, thanks, Oscar. Yeah,
thanks for sharing your thoughts, Oscar. It's really great to
hear from listeners. We we read every single one and
we appreciate it more than you guys know. And then
I got a really cool one from this guy named
Mark and uh and and this is awesome too because
he's he's a former sailor, so excellent. So I always
love to hear navy stories. Um, he says, I just
(22:42):
started listening to your podcast and his skyrocketed one of
my faves. I had listened to your podcast about the
virtues of venom, and it reminded me. When I was
in the Navy, I had a drink in Japan called habusaki.
We were officially warned about the drink from my chief.
Haboo is a Japanese cobra which is added to saki,
which is rice wine. The bottles had the whole snake
(23:04):
coiled at the bottom of the bottle. It was explained
to us that the venom shuts off the liver and
all the alcohol is sent into the bloodstream. Nothing is filtered.
Help I of course had to try it. As a
season sailor, I developed a very high tolerance for alcohol,
and after my first shot, I hadn't felt anything. I
was extremely, extremely smooth. Now it was extremely smooth and sweet,
(23:25):
like a good saki usually is. After my second shot,
the room got very warm and I broke out into
a sweat. I stopped drinking after that and made it
back to the boat. Others did not have the same
discretion and had a much harder time finding their way
out from under the table. So he's referring, of course,
to some of our discussions in that podcast about alcohol
that has been infused with with typically snake venom, right
(23:48):
the Cheese of Venom podcast. And I'm really interested in that.
So I really enjoyed hearing people, you know, tell us
about their own experiences with crazy snake wines. So hapusaki
is not gonna be on your happy hour cat Deilist, No,
but it's I would love to have just a selection
of it, you know, like you know people have a
little mini bars, Like what if you had a mini bar,
it would be most impressive, ye had it only had
like venom liquor, you know. Um and then he uh.
(24:12):
Also he also added that he says, my uh, my
senior year of high school, I was part of the
robotics team and we competed in the in the first competition.
This is the first robotics competition that we also did
a big road trip podcast about I didn't actually build
a robot. Part of the competition when I participated was
a three D animation short about the robots movement capabilities.
(24:33):
I work with two of the guys to make an
animation of our robot loading a cannon with a big
rubber ball and shooting a flying car out of the sky. Awesome.
The flying car and cannon had nothing to do with anything,
but we spent most of our time animating the explosion,
which always got a lot of cheering when it was
played at the competition. I also met my now current
wife and the robotics team, so this nerdy club did
wonders for my social life as well. Keep up the
(24:55):
good work. So that's great that he is a former
sailor who drank snake wine and and it's lovely white
man after our own heart. Yeah yeah, Well, like I said,
we do love hearing from you guys. So what do
you guys want to tell us about how you met
your spouse, how you build a robot, or what your
thoughts are on unmanned aerial vehicles. Send us a line
(25:15):
at Science Stuff at how Stuff Works Dot com and
be sure to check out the blogs. You can access
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(25:36):
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