Comments on: In The Grim Darkness Of The Far Future There Is Only War.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Sat, 12 Aug 2023 21:46:58 +0000

I think many people get wrong the impact AI Will have on warfare in general. Many weapon systems will be autonomous, there will be a general increase in automation,but drones won’t replace all pilots; now or in five centuries from now. If there will ever be a need for combat spaceships ( likely as humanity spreads in the solar system) , they will have a very small crew, some of them will definitely be autonomous,but men of some sorts (cyborgs?) will surely be onboard. There are quite a number of reasons for this but a very simple one is that you want a limited AI to handle fighters of whatever types,cause a narrow AI works well on specialized tasks. But it doesn’t handle variables well. So you need a general AI but that brings a whole new set of issues,not to mention that (if It is even possible) a sentient AI would like the idea of ending probably as much as a human would.

By: hentzau

hentzau — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 21:48:00 +0000

The short answer would be: since you are dealing with an electromagnetic beam rather than a physical object there’s roughly a zillion ways you can attenuate it to the point of uselessless, if you know what you’re doing.

By: aosher

aosher — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 20:51:35 +0000

What, it would bounce off of things?

I would be interested in a follow-up post on the viability of traditional sci-fi weapons, actually.

By: aosher

aosher — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 20:48:50 +0000

I find combat to be the weakest bit of most TV. Probably why I hated BSG so much. Offloading the combat to drones would leave more meat for the human actors.

I accept I’m in a minority on this though!

By: Adam Benton

Adam Benton — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 14:12:09 +0000

“I don’t find machines that scary, you can always turn them off.”

“Really? How do you turn off the internet?”

*dramatic music*

By: hentzau

hentzau — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 13:58:35 +0000

We’re heading that way already; the amount of remote warfare that the US does has increased exponentially in the last decade, and there are even some (rather far-fetched) plans to take the humans out of the loop entirely. There’s a book recommended to me by an awesome friend called Wired for War which sketches a decent outline of the future direction wars are likely to take, even if the author seems to be a little bit too enamoured of the technology he writes about.

By: hentzau

hentzau — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 13:53:46 +0000

Try reading The Forever War by Joe Haldeman. Most of it focuses on a ground war being fought by men and women in power armour (or “fighting suits”) but all the ship combat is done at ranges of millions of kilometres and at relatavistic velocities by drones and computers.

By: innokenti

innokenti — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 13:08:20 +0000

Sure, but you can always have it as a background or related issue to whatever is at hand as the focus of the series. And it brings up interesting philosophical discussions to have about war and whatnot…

By: Adam Benton

Adam Benton — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 12:20:55 +0000

By arming drones you simultaneously make space battle sci-fi more plausible and skynet sci-fi more plausible.

By: Smurf

Smurf — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 12:08:24 +0000

While it might be accurate, I’m not actually sure how interesting it would be. Watching an army of drones take on an another army of drones isn’t as exciting as watching a human pilot. Take any BSG space battle for example. I you remove Starbuck or Apollo and replace them with an AI then you as a viewer have lost a lot of your stake in that battle. There’s no peril or risk involved.

As with most things on TV, excitement is always going to win out over accuracy.