Caltrops - Dead or Alive: Xtreme Beach Volleyball





	[quote name="Senor Barborito"][quote name="Senor Barborito"][quote name="E. L. Koba"][quote name="Chairman Mao"][quote name="Ray, of Light"]Explain, please, to me the lack of unmanned ... anything in the modern battlefield. Crewless tanks or aircraft would permit designs and tactics that aren't otherwise feasible, and (it seems to me) would offer more offense per dollar/hour/cu.ft of carrier space/litre of oil/whatever.[/quote] That's one of the plans for the FCV/FCS. It will supposedly consist of a system of a manned armoured vehicle, small robot drone vehicles of various locomotion, and possibly several large semi-autonomous gun carriages. To what extent all of that will materialize is anyone's guess, but its <a href="http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/land/fcs.htm">coming.</a>[/quote] I'm not sure the infantry (or the human tankers for that matter) will be too keen on working in close quarters with a AI controlled machines with large weapons. Do you really want Superfly and Mikiko to be your backup when your life is on the line? At least with human operators, if your radio is jammed or broken you can waive (we still learn all our hand and arm signals for everything), or, god forbid, get of your tank to go talk to someone. They don't just default to crush-kill-destroy mode. I think it's good research, but most of it won't see the light of day. The marines are already using a battalion level drone (Dragon eye?) to scout out ahead of the forward elements. And the 10th mt and Rangers were using the iRobot pakbot dealie in Afganistan also as a scout in the villages. Don't know if they got much use in Iraq though. The problem with any sort of robot is that it's very very very hard to even manuver on the ground compared to the air, and the Army can't dedicate a whole satelite to each drone like the airforce can. One of the Airforces big coups during Iraq was that they managed to fly <b>two</b> predators at the same time! The Army couldn't give a flying fuck about only 2 of anything. They need 200 or 2000.[/quote] The best answers are the obvious ones: a) Redundancy - have multiple backups for every communication system and have multiple methods of communication installed b) Good Defaults - don't go into attack mode unless confirmed by a human operator or until the upcoming Robo-4-Star-General 9000 (don't laugh, it'll happen) gets the 'Go' signal. c) Frequent Inspections - routine carrier/no carrier checks on every communications link - every 10ms, maybe d) Testosterone-Free Crisis Management - Have one of the other communication systems inform the repair bots the MINUTE one antenna for Type A communications goes out. Have it Red-Flag when they all go. When all ability to communicate is lost, go into a passive 'get the hell out of there' mode (IOW Heroes sold seperately) - this also requires navigation by non-GPS means e) Modularity - Make repair easier and faster for those repair bots. Communications Subsystem Type A Transmitter 1 AND its armor plate snap in, snap out except in the case of major hull damage (warping of frame) --SB[/quote] f) Commonality - Make all communication systems the same between different vehicles (obvious exceptions for special-purpose vehicles excluded) so that the drone tasked to the squad can steal one transmitter from the Heavy Killbot 9000 which hasn't lost any and swap it with one of the two broken ones the Medium Killbot 9000 has. --SB[/quote]