Robowar: The next generation of warfare revealed – a general’s dream, but are they also humanity’s nightmare?

More disturbingly, this six-tonne, six-wheeled monster developed for America’s Department of Defence and otherwise known as the Unmanned Ground Combat Vehicle, or UGV, can pounce without the intervention or say-so of a human operator. It is an ability which, in theory, can stretch to firing the machine-gun mounted on its roof.

The UGV is a forerunner of what many in the defence world believe is the next quantum leap in warfare – a generation of fully autonomous weapons which would be capable of crossing one of the great Rubicons of modern conflict by “deciding” for themselves when to take human life. In the words of one US general, they are the harbingers of an age where “death by algorithm is the ultimate indignity”.

But as a result of a decision taken in a Geneva conference room today, Crusher and its cousins – dubbed “killer robots” – could now be equally on the road to extinction after a vote by the United Nations Convention on Conventional Weapons (CWC) which would pave the way to a global ban on autonomous weapons.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *