Inconvenient Truth #26: The Rise of the Machines

In Terminator, the movie starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, machines reached “Singularity”, the point where they became “Self-aware” and were more capable in thought and action than humans. They then rise up against humans, and the battle for humanity versus machines began.

In 2009 the Air Force released a strategic planning document, “Unmanned Aircraft Systems Flight Plan 2009-2047,” that outlines their vision for robot aircraft that HAVE NO HUMANS INVOLVED DURING THE FLIGHT AT ALL. This is unlike today, where human’s are not IN the plane, but FLY the plane remotely.

That is bad enough — murder and carnage are a lot easier to perform by human’s when they are sitting in a small room, playing out their murder and carnage from a “video-game” like experience, flying an aircraft thousands of miles away, then returning home just in time for dinner.

Now, however, the Air Force plans to “up the ante”, and utilize “fully autonomous” aircraft, that make their own decisions, striking against targets with NO HUMAN INTERVENTION.

True, they claim that there will be a “Man ON the Loop” (Note their play on “Man in the loop”, attempting to show man will still be in control), however the following facts from the document are disturbing:

An unmanned aircraft is not limited by human performance or physiological characteristics.(ref: para 2.2, UAS Characteristics)
- My contention is that’s exactly why we don’t want an autonomous “Rise of the Machine” mentality…If a machine can kill indiscriminately for days on end, what moral lesson does that say about us? Also, HUMANS are HUMANS because they have emotion, reason and intellectual ability to distinguish between right and wrong. A machine will kill indiscriminately, not bothering about ethical considerations.
As technologies advance, UAS automation and hypersonic flight will reshape the battlefield of tomorrow. One of the most important elements to consider with this battlefield is the potential for UAS to rapidly compress the observe, orient, decide, and act (OODA) loop. Future UAS able to perceive the situation and act independently with limited or little human input will greatly shorten decision time.(Ref: par 2.2, UAS Characteristics)
- “rapidly compress the observe, orient, decide, and act loop” means kill as quickly as possible. Again, bad enough we have troops on the ground who will “shoot first and ask questions later” (Haditha, where 24 men, women and children were murdered by throwing grenades into bedrooms, then spraying it with gunfire WITHOUT looking to see who was in the room), now we have machines that will compress that down to micro-seconds…how many people will die from this technology, and more importantly, WHO maintains the responsibility when a “war crime” has been commited? The MACHINE? The Commander? The Manufacturer? How can an inanimate object be charged with a “war crime”?
advances in computing speeds and capacity over time will enable systems to make some decisions and potentially act on them without requiring human input. Policy, legal considerations, CONOPS and doctrine will determine the level of human input required for specific aspects of missions.(Ref: par 3.5)
- Policy? Legal Considerations? That rings hollow after the “policy” and “legal” decisions that were made to justify the torture and water-boarding of civilians post-911. We now must assume that someone, at some time, will decide that it is “legally justifiable” to allow these killing machines to unleash hell…
This table from the document (ref: Annex 3: Current Programs), shows that as of the date of publication, there were at least 29 different types of robot aircraft IN SERVICE:

75% of ACC and 100% of AFSOC organizationallevel flight line maintenance requirements are performed by contractors (ref: Par 3.4).

- Although the paper says the goal is to have all military maintenance, history shows that this will not happen. So, the corporations, who will be motivated by profit to expand as much as possible, will be right in the thick of the day-to-day operations.

The near-term concept of swarming consists of a group of partially autonomous UAS operating in support of both manned and unmanned units in a battlefield while being monitored by a single operator. Swarm technology will allow the commander to use a virtual world to monitor the UAS both individually and as a group. A wireless ad-hoc network will connect the UAS to each other and the swarm commander. The
UAS within the swarm will fly autonomously to an area of interest (e.g. coordinates, targets etc.) while also avoiding collisions with other UAS in the swarm. These UAS will automatically process imagery requests from low level users and will “detect” threats and targets through the use of artificial intelligence (AI), sensory information and image processing. Swarming will enable the UAS network to deconflict and assign the best UAS to each request
- Now, in human-speak: What they are saying is, they want a group of robot planes to be able to fly together, avoiding each other and attacking or reconning without human intervention. When reaching the target, the “machines” will automatically determine the best way to attack and assign themselves to the targets. Do you understand how incredibly dangerous this will be? A group of aircraft, launched against a city, would autonomously decide how to attack, assign itself targets, hit them (with no discriminating civilians and innocents), and return to base, ALL WITHOUT HUMAN INTERVENTION…
Authorizing a machine to make lethal combat decisions is contingent upon political and military leaders resolving legal and ethical questions. These include the appropriateness of machines having this ability, under what circumstances it should be employed, where responsibility for mistakes lies and what limitations should be placed upon the autonomy of such systems. The guidance for certain mission such as nuclear strike may be technically feasible before UAS safeguards are developed. On that issue in particular, Headquarters Air staff A10 will be integral to develop and vet through the Joint Staff and COCOMS the roles of UAS in the nuclear enterprise.
- They are talking NUCLEAR STRIKES here, folks, with a non-human controlled robot bomber…now we are in the most dangerous area…nuclear bombs being dropped by aircraft where no human is involved! They also state “To achieve a “perceive and act” decision vector capability, UAS must achieve a level of trust approaching that of humans charged with executing missions.” You know you are deep into it when they are saying the robot’s have to “earn” the human’s trust…
And if you aren’t concerned YET, check this little nugget out: “By 2015 every state will have UAS flying sorties supporting DoD missions. As our nation brings home the forces deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan, a JCOE study estimates that it will take 1.1 million UAS flight hours annually to stay prepared for future conflict”
- This is saying that every state in our nation will have this robot planes flying in them within a couple of years, and flying a LOT (1.1 Million hours a year)…Now you should be concerned…
“Congress has determined that UAS have become a critical component of military operations and are indispensable in the conflict against terrorism. UAS must operate in the NAS (National Air Space) for training, operational support to the combatant commands, and support to domestic authorities in emergencies and national disasters”
So, it took almost to the end of the report to say it, but there it is…it’s all because of…”TERRORISM”, that great catch-all phrase used to complete the deal…

Read the report at it’s original location: http://www.govexec.com/pdfs/072309kp1.pdf

If it’s no longer available, read the report archived here:

Examples of what this is about and what it might lead to from the movie “Terminator”:
(Note: In Terminator, the network used to control the machines is called SkyNet; in the Air Force Report it’s called the GIG Network)

Why it was developed and what happened: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6HNpsKtNif0

Cybernet Systems Commercial in the Terminator movie: