Anduril's Drone Dream: More Like a Military-Industrial Nightmare?
So, Anduril flew a drone. Big deal. Another defense contractor patting itself on the back for building something that goes boom. They call it embracing “semi-autonomous military craft.” I call it the road to Skynet.
The promise? Drones that can manage flight controls and throttle adjustments without needing a human babysitter. Okay, cool. Less human error, right? Except, when the "error" is a missile vaporizing a school bus, I'd kinda prefer a human being in the loop to take the blame. We're handing over the keys to the kingdom to algorithms written by…who, exactly? Some coder fresh out of Stanford who thinks war is just a really complicated video game?
Swarms of Death
The US military, naturally, is drooling. They envision swarms of these things buzzing around the Pacific, ready to unleash hell without risking a single American pilot. Great. Just fantastic. It’s like they learned nothing from…well, history. More toys, bigger explosions. That'll solve everything.
And they’re “leaning on the private sector” to make it happen. Translation: handing over billions of taxpayer dollars to companies like Anduril, who are more than happy to oblige. I wonder how much Palmer Luckey is making off all this? Gotta keep those VR headsets coming, right?
PGZ, some Polish defense group, is getting in on the action too. They signed a deal with Anduril to develop and manufacture unmanned aircraft systems. Specifically, a Polish variant of Anduril's Barracuda-500 cruise missile. They’re even calling it the Barracuda-500M. Catchy.
Autonomous…Awesome?
This Barracuda missile is apparently "autonomous" and can be configured with different payloads and targeting modes. Autonomous. That word just keeps ringing in my ears. Like a goddamn air raid siren.
PGZ claims these missiles will help Poland and Europe “respond proportionally to large-scale missile threats.” Proportional? Is that what we’re calling mutually assured destruction these days? Sounds more like a recipe for escalation to me.
Offcourse, the US government has to approve the development of these missiles. But let's be real, when has the US ever turned down a chance to sell more weapons?
Semafor’s technology editor raises a crucial point: “We give software the power to kill…It’s worth a public conversation on hard questions like the standard for accuracy.” You think? We’re talking about automating the decision to end human lives. What’s the acceptable margin of error here? 10%? 1%? Any? As Anduril flies uncrewed jet drone for the first time, the debate around autonomous weapons is only going to intensify.
Then again, maybe I'm just being paranoid. Maybe these drones will only be used for… uh… peacekeeping missions? Yeah, right. And maybe pigs will fly.