Technically, you might want to say "robots will lower the threshold to attack". Like a cruise missile, they make it so you can act without launching an entire war.
And like other precise munitions, they are tools. There is nothing different about a robot.
People get a bit too excited about robots because of Sci-Fi. But they are just machines.
I've been thinking about warbots lately. I don't think they will be very effective, because as soon as a given model is hacked, sending a pack of robots on a given offensive will be equivalent to giving them away to the enemy, assuming the enemy is savvy enough.
If the robots are remotely sent instructions, then remote hacking will be possible. If they have the instructions downloaded to a media, then it would be possible to "reboot" the robots with the enemy's software.
It wouldn't be trivial, but it would be possible. I think a robust black market will spring up soon after the first robots go on the offensive.
The vulnerable part will be the communications. If an enemy can decipher the communication channels then they can send false instructions. Having said this how is it different to the situation today when the soldiers are for the most part human. Would it really be that hard to convince a unit to retreat or to fire artillery on their own frontline troops? As we already occasionally see 'blue-on-blue' incidents I would argue it isn't.
The danger with robots would certainly be greater but it is not a new threat.
True, but it is rather difficult to convince an e.g. blue soldier that he is, in fact, red. Not so with robots, assuming you can reverse engineer their software.
I agree that the potential consequences of a breach would be significantly greater with robots than with human soldiers.
Most of the wars I'm aware about during the past few decades have been highly asymmetric technologically or have been between technologically limited forces. In the first case the likelihood is that only the more technologically advanced force would utilise robots and would be able to secure them beyond the capabilities of the technologically inferior opposing force to compromise. In the second case neither side is likely to have robots fighting.
If this trend holds true for the future then 'warbots' are going to be increasingly used.
The US Department of Defense should be renamed to the Department of Offense.
War talk makes me sick. The only benefit I see from it is the necessary advancement of nanotechnology, which will hopefully help in bringing the singularity to speed.
This is a good, involved, and deep article on robotics in warfare. Some of the memes, like "cost to go to war" are quite frankly old chestnuts -- true for hundreds of years and just repeated here. (I'm reminded of one' historian's view of the American Civil War -- the north would have won anyway because, compared to other civil wars, the north really was never completely committed)
I began reading the article due to the cute title iamelgringo gave it -- here's a plug for re-editing titles for the HN audience.
What concerns me is what wasn't mentioned: the goal of warfare is to make the other side stop fighting. We will certainly develop and create expensive drones and such for the elimination of enemy combatants. As the Air Force lieutenant general forecasts in the article, that "given the growth trends, it is not unreasonable to postulate future conflicts involving tens of thousands [of drones]"
But that's assuming we fight wars the way we want to fight them, instead of the wars we end up with. In the article, the example is given of a little ground bot made for recon. Soldiers quickly learned that you could strap a claymore on the front of the bot and use it as sort of an intelligent roaming land mine. Cost of such a new kind of bot? About $5K.
To make the other side stop fighting, you don't necessarily have to engage his military or command centers. I can see non-state actors evolving cheap bots to attack civilians and instill fear. Instead of a smart bomb, I guess you'd call it a smart terrorist bomb -- perhaps hundreds of RC airplanes with intelligent chips and biological weapons as payloads, or RC cars loaded with C-4 that wait in storm drains for days or weeks on end to launch a coordinated attack.
Bots are coming in war, like it or not. But what concerns me isn't the big Matrix-type bots: it's the power of small, cheap, smart bots that about anybody can assemble in bulk.
Bombs are not precise, and even solders tend to be a bit too generous with the machine gun.
But robots can be much more accurate, can be mass produced, and nobody cries over them.
Less collateral damage and no risk to your own soldiers - perfect.
In the future we will very likely see an industrialized nation trying to pacify a non industrialized trouble spot with robots.
The more interesting question is, what about technological equals.
Presumably that concerns only entities cable of producing sophisticated robots.
That might actually include developing nations like India and Pakistan.
China and the US are just too economically integrated to have a full on war.
But India and Pakistan might decide to settle Kashmir with robots.
What we would have then is most likely robots pushing people off land they consider home.
That's gonna be bad.