[Preacherman]

The pace of military technology is scary... DARPA is busy developing a self-healing minefield. Their overview describes it thus:
The Self-Healing Minefield is an antitank landmine system that does not rely on antipersonnel landmines for dismounted breach protection. Instead the Self-Healing Minefield employs a novel breach response mechanism that can determine both mounted and dismounted enemy assaults on the minefield and respond to maintain obstacle integrity. Contrary to the current mixed minefield systems (Volcano, RAAM/ADAM, and Gator) which require antipersonnel landmines co-located with an antitank minefield to complicate dismounted breaching of the antitank minefield, the Self-Healing Minefield employs intelligent, mobile antitank mines alone to defeat all enemy breaching.
View more details at http://www.darpa.mil/ato/programs/SHM/index.html. There's an interesting Flash display of the concept there: click on "Flash" under "View SHM Concept Demo".

[Orthonym]

This reminds me of the Nuclear Sleeper Torpedoes Robert Rimmer mentioned in one of his books; they'd lie on the bottom until they had "probable cause" to believe that one's cabin cruiser sounded just like a Russki missile sub, fire up the motor, chase it and blow it up. On a smaller scale, what about those burglar alarms for cars , with motion sensors and the ability to make rude remarks? ("You are standing too close to the car!" :fire: ) I haven't noticed any of the latter lately: Do you think it was, well, _counterproductive_? (Possibly too many people yielded to the temptation I resisted, i.e., put a boot-toe shaped dent in the sheet metal of the rude car.)
Seriously, though, this is serious!:) I think a case could be made for trusting a well-programmed robot over your average flaky human in some situations, but who programs the robot?

There must be dozens of SF stories on this theme going back 70 years or more, at least one of which had theological implications- something about the generals not allowing the humans to participate in Armageddon because the robots were so much better at it and we'd just get killed quickly without accomplishing anything. In that one, the Lord decided to save the robots and let all the humans go straight to Hell!

[roscoe]

MOBILE mines?

"I am a friend of Sarah Conners. Could I speak to her please?"

[benewton]

From and earlier time, I once saw a movie of a test firing of a TRIDENT missile from a land pad.

Engine ignites, rocket clears pad, then does a 180 directly into the ground.

Seems that the last line of the launch software turned off the guidance computer....


Also saw a NASA film of one of the glider test flights of the space shuttle at an IEEE dinner.

Got to watch the bird, landing, bounce from main gear left to main gear right to main gear left to....

Seems that the computer interfacing the sidestick to the aerodynamic control system didn't offer sufficient authority to the pilots sidestick, and so wouldn't recognize anything but major lateral inputs....


And I've my own (professional level) software errors, some of which I've caught before somebody else found them, but while they're really funny, I've no time to explain the whole deal.


Just remember, DARPA funds large numbers of projects, most of which fail, and you only hear of the good ones. I think this idea falls under the failed section.

[Triad]

I can't help wondering what this minefield would do if ten guys with Barrett M82 rifles and a bunch of ten round mags started shooting it to pieces from 1,000yds away.

[El Tejon]

Some techie read "Starship Troopers" one too many times.:D

[Spark]

Nothing new here, it's the next step in landmine warfare. Next step after this is mines that actually chase their targets.

[cordex]

Some techie read "Starship Troopers" one too many times.
Or watched Screamers.

[Deadman]

"We are the mines that say NI!'



:p

[Duncan Idaho]

MOBILE mines? In the Navy we have been using mobile mines for 30+ years. I'm not sure what the big deal is.

[Kharn]

I wouldnt be surprised if the military began production on T-1-style robots (if you've seen Terminator 3, they're the ones with the dual gatling guns) in the next 20 years. Its only a matter of time.

Kharn

[geekWithA.45]

Aw, hell...I've got a robot that vacuums my house, and another that does my lawn.

The lawnbot's pretty cool: I've been thinking of bungie cording my (unloaded and disabled) AR to it just to frighten the neighbors.

I suspect I'll think about that for a real long time, and never actually do it. I like my AR, and wanna keep it. I also happen to like my neighbors, despite their unarmed state. (They can load mags when the aliens come :eek: )

Yeah. That's it. That, and the whole goto jail thing for living in the Constitutionally forsaken PRNJ.


Maybe I'll do it briefly just to take some pictures, when the neighbors aren't looking. :)

[Orthonym]

Your "mobile mines" were what I referred to in my post as "Nuclear Sleeper Torpedoes." It goes back farther than that; think of the early acoustic homing torpedoes of WWII. I'm willing to believe that at least one of those turned around and blew up the sub or DD which launched it. Shoot, even a "dumb" torpedo could suffer from stuck- gyro disease and circulate back to the launching sub! (This famously happened to one USN boat, Harder,maybe?) Ever see a photograph of one of those OTO-Melara gun mounts so common in foreign navies? They all have this legend painted on them: "Warning! Gun may fire at any time!"
Now, that would be fine if it were justified by performance, as we all know that modern weapons arrive WAY too quickly for human monkey wetware to deal with them. I have, however, a horrible monitory counter-anecdote. Remember the sinking of (I think) HMS Sheffield in the Falklands War? The story I read had it that the fatal Exocet had been tracked since launch by the ship's fire-control computer, which was continuously solving the gun solution and pointing/training the guns accurately. How_ever_, it seems that said computer thought it was smart enough to know the difference between enemy missiles and friendly missiles so as not to shoot at the latter. Yep, you guessed it, no one bothered to tell the poor machine that France had left NATO years ago. Further, no one had bothered to tell the programmers that it's more important to know a weapon's coming at you than to know who's shooting it!

[Ol' Badger]

I thought "Mobile Mines" where when they are picked up by the locals while farming?