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I think I'm still in favor of boots on the ground simply due to that decision-making element. Unmanned systems' decision-making is black/white, no grey areas.
Exploring the humanity of unmanned weapons
Posted from c4isrnet.com
Drones
Ethics
Posted 6 y ago
Responses: 3
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The use of terms like "surgical" in discussions of warfare since at least the 80s (maybe before then, as well), as produced an unrealistic expectation of a battlefield on which no innocent people get hurt or killed and their property survives largely unscathed. That's not achievable no matter how you organize or equip the military. But unmanned systems can definitely save lives, including those of civilian non-combatants. Example:
Imagine an enemy has positioned a heavy MRL next to a hospital and is proceeding to fire heavy SSMs at our forces or at civilian targets many kilometers away. It would seem difficult to destroy the MRL with systems that you want to survive, without causing unintended damage to the hospital. But what if you had a swarm of small unmanned devices, each fairly simple and small on its own, each capable of killing a human being, and you could reliable restrict them to area 10 meters around the center-of-mass of the MRL and that you could deliver this swarm to the location of the MRL by way of an artillery projectile. Furthermore, if those elements of the system not used in the initial destruction of the personnel manning the MRL could then provide a man-in-the-loop type FASCAM minefield of sorts in that they could be directed to attack enemy personnel attempting to resume operation of the MRL if a human observing the MRL, say from sensors in an aircraft (which could also be unmanned), decided that the personnel he was observing are enemy and that they are attempting to put the MRL back into operation (as opposed to evacuating their casualties). That scenario is representative of one direction in which research and development and then actual production and equipping should go.
Imagine an enemy has positioned a heavy MRL next to a hospital and is proceeding to fire heavy SSMs at our forces or at civilian targets many kilometers away. It would seem difficult to destroy the MRL with systems that you want to survive, without causing unintended damage to the hospital. But what if you had a swarm of small unmanned devices, each fairly simple and small on its own, each capable of killing a human being, and you could reliable restrict them to area 10 meters around the center-of-mass of the MRL and that you could deliver this swarm to the location of the MRL by way of an artillery projectile. Furthermore, if those elements of the system not used in the initial destruction of the personnel manning the MRL could then provide a man-in-the-loop type FASCAM minefield of sorts in that they could be directed to attack enemy personnel attempting to resume operation of the MRL if a human observing the MRL, say from sensors in an aircraft (which could also be unmanned), decided that the personnel he was observing are enemy and that they are attempting to put the MRL back into operation (as opposed to evacuating their casualties). That scenario is representative of one direction in which research and development and then actual production and equipping should go.
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