back to article US forces want man-hunting robot wolfpacks

Trouser-moisteningly terrifying news broke this week, as it emerged that sinister forces within the US military are looking to develop a remorseless robotic wolfpack capable of hunting down "a non-cooperative human subject" in "an indoor environment". Yes, it's true - last month, crazed Pentagon brainiacs asked contractors to …

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  1. Yorkshirepudding
    Black Helicopters

    rotm

    the march towards judgement day continues unabated. i for one welcome our robotic overlords

  2. Dangermouse

    Wow, Lester!

    Posting directly from the pub with a strong whiskey in hand?

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Black Helicopters

    Too late for Lewis

    Sorry Lewis, you obviously forgot to grout your tin foil hat at some point. The mind-control beams have somehow managed to penetrate your defences, as your article quite clearly shows.

    You might only be displaying the early symptoms of CIA brain control, but there's no turning back, I'm afraid. Attempting to rationalise away the obvious Rise Of The Machines story here with the simple canard of pork-barrel Military-Industrial spending was a credible attempt, but those of us alert to the signs can see the smokescreen for what it really is.

    When is your appointment for cybernetic upgrading?

  4. Dave Ross
    Happy

    I for one..

    welcome our new robotic overBANG!!!

  5. Neil Shepherd
    Black Helicopters

    Have These people...

    ...never seen any of the Terminator films?

    Robotic killers will be the death of us all and, probably within minutes of being switched on, will have turned on mankind and will be trying to wipe us out.

    Given this situation I for one welcome our robot killer overlords

  6. M7S
    Black Helicopters

    They've been watching re-runs of Minority Report

    Its the spiders the police use

  7. Rob
    Boffin

    big magnets

    couldn't we surround the entrances to our undergorund septic tank bunkers with big fat electro magnets that will degauss any attackers?

  8. Farmer Hackit
    Flame

    Looks like only the educated will survive..

    the robot uprising.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_to_Survive_a_Robot_Uprising

    Fire to confuse their thermal imaging.

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Farenheit 451

    Electric Hound.

  10. cphi
    Flame

    just write your bloody novel already, Lewis

    Type your comment here — plain text only, no HTML

  11. Pete James

    Come with me if you want to live.............

    Sarah Connor!

    Anyway, the robots are already among us as proven by B3ta yonks ago. Just look if you don't believe me at the original version of the California Tourist Board advert. The end bit gives them away.....

    http://www.weebls-stuff.com/toons/California/

  12. amanfromMars Silver badge
    Alien

    Shooting for the Money

    "I for one.. welcome our new robotic overBANG!!!" ..... By Dave Ross Posted Friday 24th October 2008 15:37 GMT

    With todays modern Universal Serial Bus ConneXXXXions , what's not to Welcome and Like, Dave?

    "When is your appointment for cybernetic upgrading?" ... By Anonymous Coward Posted Friday 24th October 2008 15:32 GMT . Crikey, AC, can't you Read and See that Lewis is Pioneering Rogue Craic CybernetIQ Code for Semantically Assimilation and In House on the House Distribution ..... AIVXXXXine to the Pervasive Invaders' Perverting and Corrupted Pox.

    I concur with your welcome sentiments. ..... but then NIRobotIQs would be naturally be predisposed to tITs Support and Innovative Drive. Bravo Lester.

    "Posting directly from the pub with a strong whiskey in hand?" By Dangermouse Posted Friday 24th October 2008 15:21 GMT. ..... An Irish WMD is strong whiskey. And the Poteen stuff has the Power to blow you Right into Space with Nary a Thought about Comeback or Eventual Landing.

  13. Dangermouse

    Sorry...

    Sorry Lewis. Confused you with Lester there.

    I need a drink...

  14. Mike Crawshaw
    Black Helicopters

    If they...

    a) give the contract to a company called "Cyberdyne"

    b) decide that they want the "Model T-101"

    then that's it, stop the planet, time to get off.

  15. Anonymous Coward
    Black Helicopters

    Have these people...

    ...never read The Ice People?

    This *specifically* mentions hunting packs of slavering mutant robot killing machines shredding humans like so many cattle in a slaughterhouse!

    /off to Montana mountain bunker complex etc

  16. Kevin McMurtrie Silver badge
    Alert

    Pics?

    This story absolutely must be illustrated with your Lego kits.

  17. Flocke Kroes Silver badge

    Be wery quiet - I'm hunt wobots

    If there is a shortage of human soldiers, they should not be developing killbots that hunt humans. The other side will be short of soldiers and will be using killbots too. They should be working on a robot that hunts robots.

  18. paulc
    Alert

    we know where this all ends...

    "Defense network computers. New... powerful... hooked into everything, trusted to run it all. They say it got smart, a new order of intelligence. Then it saw all people as a threat, not just the ones on the other side. Decided our fate in a microsecond: extermination."

  19. Bad Beaver
    Thumb Up

    Excellent article

    Informative.

  20. Anonymous Coward
    Black Helicopters

    the machines are coming!!!

    lucky i have my tinfoil suit, just the thing to mask those pesky heartbeats, and the microwave raygun built out of a microwave oven. They'll never get me.

    OH NO, they're here. It's ok, i can take th

  21. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Fahrenheit 451 anyone

    Sounds pretty cool, actually.

  22. jake Silver badge

    Why not just use dogs?

    <SirHenry> The 'bots are all fagged out after yesterday's Jehovahs Witnesses, and we don't want blood all over the lawns again ... </SirHenry>

    With apologies to Vivian Stanshall.

  23. BlueGreen

    "My god - could it be - sometimes technology ...

    ... makes things better than they were before?"

    Good point. With my peaceful IT background I'd never have considered this.

    But it's irrelevant as tech is just a tool to use (as are the military?) so 'better' depends on how they are used. Another (robotic) tool is perhaps another warm paving stone down the road to another war; easy on the feet.

    Someone said (ref?) something like, wars should be bloody and horrible so people work to avoid them. This tech vapourware stuff suggests war can be easy and clean.

    It this hi-tech crap misses the point, that western societies are open and therefore vulnerable. If I was Mr Albert Quaida, I'd have gone for the easy and difficult to trace stuff, not the obvious of planes-into-buildings - why they haven't so far I don't understand. Though I am grateful. Robot soldiers become irrelevant in such a scenario (information collecting, however...)

    Sometimes war seems necessary, sometimes sending in the lads is a mistake and we should be trying to fix underlying problems. But that would involve long term statesman-like planning, so that's not going to happen izzit.

    BTW I understood that the game-theory scenarios could be broken easily by simply behaving randomly. If dog-robot can see through walls then game theory analysis becomes somewhat irrelevant though.

  24. Chris G

    Ah! The Answer is a Halitosis bomb

    If you over stimulate the sensors, for example a powerful burst of the relevant radio emission for heart signals and as mentioned extreme halitosis, with luck the things will grind to a halt. At which point it is only necessary to spray them with distilled essence of 1967Ford Escort corrosion to destroy them utterly.

    Failing that , a suit of armour, if you can't beat 'em join 'em!

  25. Kenneth Chan
    IT Angle

    IT

    All complex systems are as good as their IT department... I hope our metal overlord have such department. <BANG>

    "Hello, Helpdesk...."

    "Have you try hitting the Cap Lock?"

    "No, just once..."

    KC

  26. Mr Mark V Thomas
    Black Helicopters

    Re: Farenheit 451

    Does the Instruction manual for the (proposed) "Mechanical Hound" come in a handy comic book format, one asks...?

  27. Captain DaFt
    Unhappy

    But why?

    I mean, spend millions to develop robots that act like bloodhounds? Why not just train real dogs instead?

    Oh, grant money! Never mind!

  28. kain preacher

    Mike Crawshaw

    left out C:) they name the computer network controlling it SKynet

  29. Anonymous Coward
    Black Helicopters

    US Forces get the bot

    I really just wanted to post the title.

    While I am here I should point out that south american food gives me a bad case of vortex energy ring.

    I thought that last one was beneath me, but apparently it wasn't.

  30. Matthew Barker
    Alert

    Not just used in someone else's home...

    these kinds of tech are easy enough for a government to deploy against their own people inside their own borders, where they wouldn't want to use a missile, as they do in someone else's home.

    Still, if they used them to examine the schools full of children they've been blowing up in Pakistan, then they might be more prone to *not* killing people.

  31. Nick L

    the entire building or neighbourhood ?

    " ... or we blow up this entire planet and possibly one or two other we noticed on our way out here!"

  32. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Soulless squads of (steel) stormtrooper assassins

    Hah!

    Apart from the steel bit it reminds me of my days with Fireforce,

    But, have to say, where's the fun in doing your asassinating second hand?

  33. Anonymous Coward
    Black Helicopters

    @mike crawshaw

    "...a) give the contract to a company called "Cyberdyne"

    b) decide that they want the "Model T-101"

    then that's it, stop the planet, time to get off...."

    nah. it'll be worse than that. they'll give the contract to microsoft. then we're all fucked!

  34. Anonymous Coward
    Pirate

    unfortunately this is a VERY serious matter

    history shows that group of humans under the order

    of a government can kill large number of other humans

    ("dictatorship" or "democracy" in this respect

    being the same, compare the famous comment of

    Madeline Albright on the necessary death of Iraqi children)

    however in order to push a group humans to kill other

    group of humans there is the need to convince and to keep

    motivated the former to do this kind of task

    (with propaganda, promise of more money etc.. etc..)

    and do to this there is the need to seize and maintain power.

    Killing humans by means of other humans have therefore

    some "entry barrier".

    On the other hand killing humans by means of an army of

    robots would need just a Dick Cheney seize power once and

    then dig himself in a bunker with a joystick and keyboard...

    sorry guy, that's no laughing matter...

  35. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
    Flame

    "SHIFT JEWS, THEN PUSH THE BUTTON" X-ian hardliners better hurry...

    ...otherwise they might not be able to attain rapture before robocalypse.

    Also, it seems as if some "Minority-Report"-watching dudes, having been able to implement "precrime" (locking away people before they commit a crime), are now looking to get those Tom-Cruise-hunting robots online. Nice.

  36. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Robot Coutner Tactics?...

    Surely with the amount of advances in offensive anti-human robot technology, there must also be advances in defensive / or anti-robot technology.

    Can the register please do an article on the current state of robot defensive and anti-robot technology. I can't believe that there aren't companies out there (including DARPA) who see the opportunity or necessity in creating this tech.

  37. Anonymous Coward
    Joke

    Fembots

    Yes, I'm thinking FemBots....should take care of most of the male population in short order.

  38. Curt Eckhart
    Coat

    Tinfoil HAT?

    I'm getting rigged out for a whole tinfoil body suit. I don't need those robot dogs sensing my heartbeat when I'm hiding.

    Mine's the one with the metal lining...

  39. Walking Turtle
    Boffin

    High-tech assault?

    Low-tech defense!

    Cell phone terrorspying? Wrap phone in (yes) tinfoil - or just chuck it in the microwave oven and CLOSE THE DOOR. (Works just fine.)

    Tazerz, Bro'? Stainless fine-weave fuel screening, two layers - with a layer of (yes) tinfoil laminated w/hot-melt adhesive in between. Suggest a simple doublet to start, then greaves or chaps and arm-sleeves. Gauntlet-gloves (not mittens) too. One might employ a flannel or light denim lining. Avoid chafing while in the field.

    "Sonic" millimeter-wave voice-to-brain-thru-walls harassment/stalking got thee bugged, Brother? Or just need to know for certain between this and the infamous hallucinatory effects of hyper-stress coupled with exhaustion and the like? Tinfoil dome-shielding under the old /chapeau/ has provided useful half-split diagnosis PDQ many, many times. (If voices persist, it is likely NOT "Sonic Microwave" tech; lots of B vitamins and otherwise healthy living tend to help the other causes fade off in time...)

    Not that a full top-down assault of such magnitude affords one much time to sleep or eat at all, of course. Somalia was kept for the Somalis, one gathers, by (among other things) the use of much /dagga/ at all times... Also by fighting the invading 'Mellicans while buck-naked, with full-Spirited fearsome battlecry and lots of Just Everything At Hand.

    Like a Ninja. Dissed for the very first time...

    USDC MIL-spec Pain Rayz? Full-body coverage in the above mesh/foil material oughta' just about do it. Just leave the tinfoil out of the eyeholes in the face protector, is all. (Looks bugeyed in the sunlight, but Faraday is still Faraday, even post-noinsey-'levvensey, now ain't it?)

    Packs of killdroid dawgz? Hm. 50/50 putrescene/cadaverene oughta' swamp the stench-sensors; mebbe not so very hard to isolate from raw materials so long as no neighbor complains. Capsicum oil or plain ol' fine-ground black pepper might help too...

    Might want to spray the antipainray gear black so as to not be so shiny, but lessee 'em defy Sir Michael Faraday on that one as well.

    High tech assault - low tech defense. Live long, love well, thrive and prosper every day. Also prepare. You *know* /they/ are. And in a broad, general way, you *do* know /who/ "they" are. (Your Tax Dollars Perverted and Turned Against Us All, is all that need speak of this.)

    As for the Offensive/Invasive Microwave Gear: Any decent dent in any exposed waveguide is a good one. Any broken antenna is non-resonant. Even a semi-speedy low-tech caplock musket-ball could do a fair job of that while CyberCujo is separating the stench of rotting meat from the stench of raw sewage deep within "his" robo-snuffling olfactorization kit, hm?

    Like a word to the wise, one pin in the coax is sufficient.

    The Boffin, because *all* Junior Manufacturing Physicists tend to become a natural-born National Resource in times uv risin' tyranny, now don't we just, me beloved laddie-bucks! <Arrr-rr-r.>

    Reject ALL Terror. (You KNOW you WANT to.)

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