Great. Just fucking great. Beside the "Terminator" stuff and the need to start studying up on how to survive a robot uprising, I sure hope the Army has considered this:
One fine day, we may be at war with a force that is not comprised of Koran-spouting illiterates with AK-47s. Anything that is controlled by a radio signal may be either jammed or possibly spoofed. In this context, "spoofing" would be acquiring control of it and using against our own troops.
ARSS? Sure you haven't been had?
ReplyDeleteWell, it wouldn't have been the first time,
ReplyDeleteOkay, spoofing isn't possible with modern encryption protocols if they are properly designed (as an encryption engineer I'll 100% guarantee that), and jamming is difficult with modern spread-spectrum technology (but still possible -- it just requires one helluva lot of power to raise a ruckus on all available frequencies that the widget is listening to for instructions). Spread-spectrum radio communications is 1980's technology. We're not exactly talking science fiction here.
ReplyDeleteThat said, control technology is still pretty primitive because we don't really have a full-resolution way of getting full sensory exposure to the remote operator. Adding autonomous features to a combat system is definitely a good thing, but right now the state of the art there is not reassuring...
- Badtux the Radio Robot Penguin