Peter W. Singer/Wired For War at The Complex Terrain Lab

[Mike Innes]

Hi All. I'd like to call your attention to another symposium coming up next week at The Complex Terrain Laboratory, from 30 March to 2 April. This one is on Peter Singer's new book Wired For War: The Robotics Revolution and Conflict in the 21st Century (Penguin, 2009). Singer's opening remarks will be posted early Monday morning.

Not all the stuff we do at CTlab is SWJ material, but I think this one will be of interest to readers. Plenty of ink has been spilled on the subject of robotics/unmanned systems, and symposium participants will be adding a fair bit of output to that over the next week.

Confirmed participants include:

Kenneth Anderson (Law; American University)
Matt Armstrong (Public Diplomacy; Armstrong Strategic Insights Group)
John Matthew Barlow (History; John Abbott College)
Rex Brynen (Political Science; McGill University)
Antoine Bousquet (International Relations; Birkbeck College, London)
Charli Carpenter (International Relations; UMass-Amherst)
Andrew Conway (Political Science; NYU)
Jan Federowicz (History; Carleton University)
John T. Fishel (National Security Policy; University of Oklahoma)
Michael A. Innes (Political Science; University College London)
Martin Senn (Political Science; University of Innsbruck)
Marc Tyrrell (Anthropology; Carleton University)

Quite a few of them are active elsewhere on the web, and several are active SWC participants. Their blogs include Arms Control, Duck of Minerva, In Harmonium, MountainRunner, Opinio Juris, PaxSims, Spatialities, Third World Wired, and Zero Intelligence Agents.

I'd be especially interested to read what the COIN/CT experts here at SWC think of what Singer's written, on the issue of unmanned systems in general, and on whatever we manage to come up during our event. For quick post tracking, proceedings will be compiled and indexed here. All comments welcome, whether at CTlab or here at SWC.

Mike

[selil]

If I finish the book this weekend I'm planning on carpet bombing the CTLAB. If not I'll drink more Tequila. Options are good.

[SWJED]

Frakin’ Cool and Winning Wars (SWJ Book Review)
by Robert L. Goldich

Frakin’ Cool and Winning Wars (Full PDF Article)

After Operation Desert Storm in 1991, there was a fusillade of remarks about how American technological superiority was the decisive factor in how we won the war. General H. Norman Schwarzkopf would have none of this. He stated that although our weapons and equipment were indeed technologically superior to those of the Iraqis, we would have won the war if we had had their equipment, and they had had ours. P.W. Singer would have done well to ponder this remark at some point in the researching and writing of Wired for War.

[William F. Owen]

As the Middle East Editor of Unmanned Vehicles, the premier journal in the field, for which Pete Singer provided an article, I will follow this with some interest.

Personally, I just don't see the complexity in applying robotics to war. The problem tends to be more ignorance and aspiration based. The operational problems are generally solvable (as I have said in print) given simple and robust conceptual guidance, which we are not currently short of.

Ground crawling robots proved decisive in very obvious ways during Cast Lead

[Mike Innes]

Bill, do you have a direct URL for Singer's article in Unmanned Vehicles? I can add it to the list of reference material we're compiling at CTlab.

[William F. Owen]

Bill, do you have a direct URL for Singer's article in Unmanned Vehicles? I can add it to the list of reference material we're compiling at CTlab.

Sorry, there is no Online Edition.

[Mike Innes]

Peter Singer's opening remarks are now up, and several participant posts should be up later in the day. From Singer:

I wanted to thank Michael, Matt, and Matthew, and all the other for putting together this symposium. It is a great honor to have one’s work looked at in this way so soon after coming out.

Wired for War is a book about how something big that is going on today in the overall history of war, and maybe even of humanity itself. The US military went into Iraq with just a handful of robotic drones in the air and zero unmanned systems on the ground, none of them armed. Today, there are over 7,000 drones in the US inventory and another roughly 12,000 on the ground. But these are just the first generation, the Model T Fords and Wright Flyers compared to what is already in the prototype stage. And, yes, the tech industry term of “killer application” doesn’t just describe what iPods did to the music industry, but also applies to the arming of our creations with everything from hellfire missiles to .50 caliber machine guns.

There's more. Looking forward to reading what develops in this SWC thread.

[Mike Innes]

I always thought that expression was a bit light - I mean, you need to have your cake, to eat it, right? Can't eat it if you don't have it, right?

Anyway.

Ken Anderson, who teaches law at American University and blogs on the laws of armed conflict at Opinio Juris, has posted a pretty provocative piece that deals in large part with the non-law response to precision targeting. Having our cake and eating it, too, is his point: increased demand for technological precision in war, matched by increasingly negative response to what that means in practice: essentially, as Ken puts it, removing the anonymity of war and replacing it with much narrower focus on well identified, high value targets. The result, I'd have to agree with Ken, is more than a little bewildering, it not downright hypocrytical.

Thoughts?

[William F. Owen]

Just looked through some of the posts on CT Lab, and a couple of points spring to mind.

Closely observing the one military to make extensive use of "unmanned vehicles" in a recent conflict, I can safely say that NO ONE is talking about autonomy, in the terms currently being discussed and especially when it comes to lethality.

The primary uses of "unmanned systems" are pretty well codified and pretty well understood, based on recent experience. None of the items raised so far are in any way much relevant to how the actual user communities see the capabilities developing.

The current areas of discussion have very little to do with law (other than ROE) and everything to do with application within the battle space, where ever that maybe.

[John T. Fishel]

such a carmudgeon. Actually, I agree with you in the main and my next post to the symposium - later this AM - will expand on what you are saying along with Robert Goldich's review of the book posted on the SWJ the other day and some sci fi for the fun of it.

Cheers

JohnT

[MountainRunner]

While I disagree that no one is talking about autonomy, this is not the real issue. We've attempted to dismiss technology-related problems through painful parsing, excuses, and legal mumbo-jumbo before. While that may ultimately succeed in the American, or even Western, court of public opinion, it doesn't work in the places where opinions really matter.

[Hacksaw]

just as soon as I can escape my four walled cell