Armed and dangerous: robot soldiers.AT FIRST GLANCE, THE robot looks like a cross between a high-tech toy truck and some kind of space invader. It is four feet tall, rolls around on tractor treads, and has a zoom-lens camera that sticks up like a Cyclops eye. The robot also has a unique feature that will keep it out of the stores: a machine gun that fires real bullets. What is it? You can call it the Special Weapons Observation Reconnaissance  This article or section needs copy editing for grammar, style, cohesion, tone and/or spelling.You can assist by [ editing it] now. Detection System (SWORDS, for short). If the U.S. military has its way, SWORDS will be among the first in a series of robot soldiers. The Pentagon Pentagon Huge five-sided building (1941–43) in Arlington, Va., that is the headquarters of the U.S. Department of Defense. Designed by George Edwin Bergstrom, it was, on its completion, the world's largest office building, covering 34 acres (14 hectares) and offering is set to pour billions of dollars into these mechanical warriors. "By 2015, we think we can do many missions," Gordon Johnson Dr. Gordon Johnson is a prominent British historian of colonial India. He is the general editor of the New Cambridge History of India, and the President of Wolfson College, Cambridge as of 2006. Johnson was born in 1943. of the Pentagon's Joint Forces Command told The New Fork Times. "The American military will have these kinds of robots. It's not a question of if, it's a question of when." Already, robots are digging up bombs in Iraq and serving as scouts and sentries [guards] in other locations. Also heading to Iraq is a version of the bomb-disposal robot that fires 1,000 rounds a minute. A soldier with a laptop computer A portable computer that has a flat LCD screen and usually weighs less than eight pounds. Often called just a "laptop," it uses batteries for mobile use and AC power for charging the batteries and desktop use. Today's high-end laptops provide all the capabilities of most desktop computers. controls the machine. The $127 billion project, called Future Combat Systems, will develop robots for different functions. Machines will be designed to search buildings and caves, haul weapons, search people, and spy on enemies--as well as shoot. Pentagon officials hope that these robots will help reduce casualties--and cut way down on other human costs. "They're not afraid," said Johnson. "They don't forget their orders.... Will they do a better job than humans? Yes." But many people raise concerns about using robots as soldiers. Bill Joy, the co-founder of Sun Microsystems Sun Microsystems, Inc. (NASDAQ: JAVA[3]) is an American vendor of computers, computer components, computer software, and information-technology services, founded on 24 February 1982. , worries that powerful robots could cause "whole new classes of accidents and abuses." Others think that having a "bloodless blood·less adj. 1. Deficient in or lacking blood. 2. Pale and anemic in color: smiled with bloodless lips. 3. " army would be a terrible temptation to invade in·vade v. in·vad·ed, in·vad·ing, in·vades v.tr. 1. To enter by force in order to conquer or pillage. 2. other countries. What of the basic judgments of logic and morality that every soldier must make? Said one robot maker: "We are a long way from creating a robot that knows what that means." |
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