Robots are the not-too-distant future of war

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• More seriously though: "The next generation of military hardware might be able to think and act for itself."

  I think Arnold Schwartzeneger warned us about this.

  • More seriously though: “The next generation of military hardware might be able to think and act for itself.”

    Which puts it miles ahead of all liberals and most politicians.

    • i xpect the permutation on our side will be nanobots, vs. http://www.designboom.com/cms/images/fiona/robot0001.jpg or maybe even somethin like this: http://img.hsmagazine.net/2013/11/ultraman.jpg type person period

• Hey, I know that guy!

  • Yes, I knew you did. How is Penny these days?

    • http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/3/33/Angela-Cartwright-Nov-2005.jpg

      http://angelacartwrightstudio.com/magento/index.php/collections/

  • Yep. Time to dig up a copy of "Forbidden Planet" - when girls were girls and men were men and robots weren't as scary as the 'creature from the Id'.

    • I've got a model of the Forbidden Planet robot (Robby), that's all in chrome! http://pennyrobinsonfanclub.files.wordpress.com/2013/10/100_0820.jpg?w=560&h=420

      And yes, Robby also guest - starred in two episodes of Lost In Space, once in the early ep, "War of the Robots," where he is pitted against our faithful Robot (above), and in the 3rd season opener, "Prisoners of Space," where he is the guard aboard a deep-space prison ship.

  • that guy made me smile.. i caught a lot of those reruns as a kid in the 70s

    • I've been catching a lot of those reruns over the last 2 years!

      • I don't think I ever saw Forbidden Planet.. I was assuming it's the Lost in Space robot. Are they supposed to be the same or even related somehow?

        • Two different robots. Robbie did make an appearance on Lost in Space once. "He" played a differently named robot, however.

        • Twice, see my below.

        • I gotta watch it again. It was all about the boy and the robot for me. I remember hating the professor guy, thinking he had an evil face, like he was always trying to get the kid killed or escape by himself on the ship. My memory is full of holes

        • I believe you're thinking of Dr. Smith. The "professor" was John Robinson, husband and father of the clan, and archetypal good guy.

          Speaking of whom . . . and of sci-fi in general . . . the last episode of the first season, still in glorious black & white, involved him being possessed by an evil alien intelligence. When I saw this one segment for the first time in decades, it strangely reminded me of another segment from a later, more famous, and more highly regarded movie.

          Sorry, I can't link to the clip directly but go here:

          http://pennyrobinsonfanclub.net/new-video-gallery/

          and scroll down to the last clip, with "FTL" on it. ("Follow The Leader") Resist the temptation to read my notes following until you've watched it, it's only about 4 minutes long.

        • hahahah I remember that mask!!

          Yeah you're definitely right, twas Dr. Smith i was thinking of. I guess I just remembered the dad as a military/explorer type

          ESB observation spot on.. even the abyss is being view from the same perspective. I never heard this theory before, nice catch

        • funny, he didn't sound bronxish.

        • It was originally Robbie the Robot then used on Lost in the Toilet as we used to call it.

        • Hey! I'll have you know that you are in the presence of the proprietor of the Penny Robinson Fan Club, and that some of those episodes were QUITE good!

          Unfortunately, a lot of the others . . .

        • YEAH PD!

          http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_l9_M3jYn25I/Sasf7tBLzQI/AAAAAAAAFCg/NMiHBSQWJqI/s320/new+friends.JPG

        • Lol Lost in the Toilet? So are you saying I missed the good stuff and only saw the bad when I was little?

          There was always Star Trek and Twilight Zone reruns too

• Two words: Electromagnetic Pulse. Robots, pfffft, they enter the battle field in battalion or brigade strength type numbers and ZAP we are back to Civil War technology.

  • i always wonder why this hasn't been deployed against, say, a carrier group.. what a disaster that could be.

    I've got to think that military hardware might include shielding at some point.. Could make the hardware even heavier

    • There's always the large electromagnet and car crusher that they have in the junkyard.

• I have this image in my head of 20,000 Al Gores marching across a Mongolian plain to engage the communist Chinese hordes in battle. But that's probably not what they mean by "robots."

  • The way the debt is increasing, in the not-too-distant future, the Chinese are not going to attack itself with its own American army.