'Robot soldiers' bound for Iraq

[Iceberg]

I have to ask...because I am being serious about this.

Hypothetical: A zealot of the "Religion of Peace (tm)* dies while trying to destroy a US droid soldier, instead of an organic. By the tenets of his faith, does he still get to go to heaven with the virgins?

No. He enjoys eternity as an organic carbon source for the various heterotrophic decomposer microbes in the ground he falls on.

You apparently missed the modifier "By the tenets of his faith".

[Sarevok]

I think we will be seeing human controlled robots for a long time to come untill some breathroughs in AI technologies. It is very hard to distinguish between civilians and enemies with computers as they stand today. A autonomous robot might be built but it will shoot everything it sees. Might not be bad if you are building a primitiver terminator though.

[Admiral Valdemar]

You apparently missed the modifier "By the tenets of his faith".

I doubt it really matters what his faith says anymore. Robosoldier wins either way and has no sooouulll!

[Coyote]

Hypothetical: A zealot of the "Religion of Peace (tm)* dies while trying to destroy a US droid soldier, instead of an organic. By the tenets of his faith, does he still get to go to heaven with the virgins?

Well, theoretically, the 'infidels' that he kills serve him in the afterlife as slaves. So he'll have ol' T-101 there to peel grapes and massage his feet for him, I guess.

Not the most cuddly of companions. Especially if there's a program error and the commands for "caress my balls" and "peel my grapes" get mixed up.

[Bob the Gunslinger]

Seanbaby is going to shit his pants when he hears this.

[BenRG]

Now for a more pressing question: Say they use the killbots against a more modern military, what would ECM, or jamming the radio, or whatever, do to it? Or is there no such thing?

Given that they are totally remote control drones rather than computer-controlled true robots, I suppose that in a high-countermeasures environment, they'd just stop working.

Of course, Iraq is such a low-tech war that this isn't a problem.

Actually, I can see the gun drones becoming a psychological weapon far more powerful than their limited tactical applications. After all, you need at least an RPG to stop one; You'd need to be pretty lucky to disable it with an AK-47. That resiliance will give the little critters the same 'terror' factor that was associated with the WW1 first-generation tanks. What is more, , a robot has no soul. It doesn't feel pain, pity, fear or remorse. It can't be bargained with or reasoned with. It will absoloutely not stop ever until you are dead.

[Sea Skimmer]

maybe the fidels will counter with suicide robots?

What exactly do you think a cruise missile, or an anti tank missile for that matter, is? We've been using suicide robots in combat since WW2 on a rather large scale.

It's just the same if an islamofacist got KIAed by a helicopter. There's still a guy piloting the Hunter Kill- errr... the robot. It's just that he's like miles away.

Now for a more pressing question: Say they use the killbots against a more modern military, what would ECM, or jamming the radio, or whatever, do to it? Or is there no such thing?

Its certainly possibul to jam the control link, but doing that would be difficult to orchestrate. Military electronic warfare units almost always have more radio channels to monitor and jam then they actually can, and of course you can detect a radio jammer with your own electronic warfare units, which can then call for an artillery or air strike on its source. Because of all that, the control link for an armed robot with no armor protection is hardly going to be high on the priority list. It would probably only become an issue if the enemy began specifically manufacturing and issuing small radio jammers for that purpose (which is quite possibul, we already have hand emplaced jammer's for other jobs), but that isn't something we need to worry about for a while.