The Rise of Autonomous Weapons (2024)
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 28 มิ.ย. 2024
- These are the autonomous military vehicles and AI-powered weapons that are transforming modern warfare. Highlighted is the Racer Heavy Tank, a 12-ton vehicle capable of navigating rugged terrains autonomously, and the Manta Ray drone, designed for long-duration underwater missions with stealth capabilities. The X-62a Visita, an AI-powered fighter jet, showcases impressive aerial combat capabilities, emphasizing the shift towards smarter, more tactical systems.
As global tensions rise, the US is focusing on AI-driven military technology. DARPA's 20-year Racer program, Northrop Grumman's Manta Ray, and the Air Force's Collaborative Combat Aircraft initiative illustrate this strategic shift. The Replicator Initiative calls for rapid manufacturing of affordable, unmanned drones to maintain a strategic edge. While these advancements promise to reduce human risk in combat, they also raise ethical concerns about autonomous weapons and the implications of AI in warfare.
Anduril Industries, an American defense technology company specializes in advanced autonomous systems. It was founded in 2017 by Palmer Luckey who is outspoken about how a low cost AI-first strategy is the right direction for the future of American Defense.
Chapters
0:00 Intro
0:43 Racer Heavy Tank
1:50 Manta Ray
2:51 X-62A Vista
3:29 Collaborative Combat Aircraft Initiative
4:06 Anduril
5:19 Defense Spending Issues
6:11 Replicator initiative
6:38 Are AI Weapons A Risk?
7:37 Defining the Game - วิทยาศาสตร์และเทคโนโลยี
terminator fans: oh yeah, it's all coming together
“As written” 😂
Great video buddy! Keep them coming!
Thank you!
Ngl, I thought the thumbnail was an over exaggerated ai pic. But to my surprise, damn thats a cool one. I'd say i know a bit of the new weapon systems, but some of these I've never seen. Good vid!
Really glad to hear that, thank you!
super interesting video
Glad you think so, thank you!
I don't see any point of having tanks at all. A drone or two can easily destroy a tank at a fraction of cost.
😂 Smell the coffee ☕.
RPGs came : tanks obsolete
Anti tank missiles on helicopter : tanks obsolete
Drones came : tanks obsolete
Swarm drones and Carl Gustav : tanks obsolete
Stop this debate of aircraft carrier is obsolete because of hypersonic cruise missile, and tank is obsolete because of this and that.
Weapons will be developed against then and counter weapons will be deployed, this will go on. And you'll have the same attitude if you follow defence longer.
Definitely seems like things are trending that way. Thanks for leaving your thoughts!
The cycle always continues.
Simplify It Down: Something has to be able to move faster than a man while carrying more stuff if it's going to be survivable on the battlefield. If it's already doing that, then it is a fair guess to say that 'stuff' could be armor and a weapons system.
By definition, that is an Armored Fighting Vehicle. Aka a Tank.
Does the tank have to cost 8.9 million dollars like a new M1A2 SepV3 Abrams? No.
Will a golf cart sized tank that costs 200,000 dollars be tougher than a human and thus save you the 100,000 dollar life insurance, 40,000 dollar training cycle and 12-24,000 infantryman salary? Sure will.
Is there a happy medium, somewhere inbetween, that allows the AFV to absorb the recoil of a large tank cannon? Probably.
Now, throw in the basics of what makes a tank specifically vulnerable in Ukraine. Right now, that's Drones, RT, Mines, ATGW.
FPV Drones have a range of 2-10km and a flight time of under 20 minutes. Jamming often reduces this _much_ further to only a couple of miles. A drone is easy to shoot down, it's the reaction times that are hard for a human to handle. We have new, Terahertz, radars which can be sized to the equivalent of a chip video in your cell phone and provide super high def 'vision' in the upper end of the MMW band, where jamming is limited.
Millimeter Wave is a type of radiation which All Things emit. It behaves partly like radar and partly like IR and so it can be tuned to the specific mass density of the target you want to track while it's very short wavelength of just fractions of a millimeter means that even a small antenna on a tiny radar generates a VERY fast scan of skyspace in a limited hemisphere above a tank, simply by stacking several, chip-sized, antenna on each front/back/left/right top sector of the vehicle.
Combine this with Metal Storm (stacked shotgun shells in a predrilled cubbyhole box) that can fire at up to 1 MILLION rounds per minute. Use the same RWS technology that rapidly and precisely steers modern machine guns atop tanks, using remote aiming from inside the vehicle.
Now you can get the computer to literally shoot down inbound drones which only average ~120mph. Kind've like skeet.
RT will kill you if it hits you. 100lbs of go-bang does that. But if drones or mines don't stop you with a dead engine or blown tracks, the RT has a hard time striking you, on the move.
So don't be where the drones and mines (and anti-tank guided weapons) are because they are manned by humans and human are what call down the artillery. A modern tank gun can shoot rounds out to 10-12km, thanks to its mile per second muzzle velocity. However, APFSDS dart penetrators is only accurate out to 4,000m. That is, by definition, Line Of Sight at 2 miles or less.
So, you fit a small set of steering fins (PGK, Precision Guidance Kit) to the nose of the shell, where the airburst radar altimeter fuse normally goes. And if the target is a mover, add an IIR seeker atop that. Use your own, bigger, drones to spot enemy targets and pass them, as traverse and elevate coordinates, pointing the main gun.
PGK costs about 13,400 dollars. An MRM Seeker raises this to about 90,000 dollars. The FGM-148 Javelin costs 120,000 dollars for the missile and 100,000 dollars for the CLU launcher. APFSDS costs 10,100 dollars. The cost of a modern, Hellfire class, missile like the AGM-179 JAGM is around 200,000 dollars.
So the gun on the tank is cheaper than any other option and carries (42 on the M1A2) more shots.
The different between LOS and non-LOS static target engagement is a few thousand dollars and a few tens of thousands of dollars for the homing version. While the ability to fire over a hill means you aren't seen by enemy observation posts, drones or ATGW teams and mining that far away from a nominally protected target is also not practical.
Add to this that a tank costs by weight.
And weight is driven by the size of the MANPRINT volume for a driver/gunner/commander/loader, under armor. Remove as many people as you can, down to say two or even 0 and the armor becomes much thicker on the roof of a much smaller box.
Which means upper deck armor protection of key vulnerabiity zones like the engine and turret ammunition stowage blowoff panels is better in a cheaper tank.
Both sides are losing tanks in Ukraine because the concept of operations around using them has not changed from the last days of WWII when 68 ton Tiger Bs duked it out with 47 tone IS-2s. If you acknowledge that this is a dumbass way to fight, that only employs about 1/3rd of the ballistic reach of the 120mm main gun on a modern Abrams or 125mm T-90 tank to put a vehicle designed for 2D warfare at great risk to 3D threats on an ICU shared horizon, everything can be fixed in literally a couple of years of proper engineering.
Comparatively, in Ukraine, they are saying somewhere between 150-500,000 men have died on the Ukrainian side and somewhere between 50,000 and 150,000 on the Russian side. Compare this to around 500-1,000 Ukrainian AFV and 2,600-3,000 Russian equivalents.
Mostly to the same threats which kill tanks, only in vastly greater numbers. Because people are irrecoverably slow and soft as targets.
That tells us that the real weapons system which has become obsolete is the infantryman because his ability to heft armor and NLOS weapons systems has fixed limits which do not respond to automation as Active Protection Systems or NLOS capable gun rounds which are carried, 20-40 at a time, on the tank.
If you fight like we did in WWII, you're going to lose, buckets of blood style. This is because, if the enemy is in range to your direct fire weapons system, so are you, to his.
So don't be in range to be detected and shot at.
P.S. The difference between a tank and a self propelled howitzer (as another kind of indirect fires platform) is angle of fire. At very low angles and with high speed and decent armor, a tank can both fire under the counter battery radar horizon and so remain hidden from other artillery firing back at it and penetrate dangerous areas, filled with mines and ATGW teams, which a lightly armored, huge, SPH cannot break through.
And thus the tank remains able move up quickly to support infantry (assaulting an objective) with direct fire support, if it has to.
Tanks are not obsolete. The 60 year old generals who employ them in a tactically inefficient manner, like they are reading chapters from _Panzer Battles_ are. Fire/Retire the grey goats and let young people design vehicles they want to survivably use to win wars with.
The US won't be able to match Chinese manufacturing when it comes to Combat Robotics.
That’s definitely one of my biggest concerns after seeing how quickly they’ve been able to grow their navy
Taiwan is none of US concerns. Mind your own business.
👍🏽