Prep for our military robot overlords …

… any day now. I’m not holding my breath.

Only a few troops, perhaps 1 percent, will actually direct aimed fire at the enemy with the intent to kill. These troops are treasured, and set apart, and called snipers.

Armed robots will all be snipers. Stone-cold killers, every one of them. They will aim with inhuman precision and fire without human hesitation. They will not need bonuses to enlist or housing for their families or expensive training ranges or retirement payments. Commanders will order them onto battlefields that would mean certain death for humans, knowing that the worst to come is a trip to the shop for repairs. The writing of condolence letters would become a lost art.

No human army could withstand such an onslaught. Such an adversary would present the enemy with the simple choice of martyrdom or flight. So equipped, America’s military would be irresistible in battle.

I found the above link at the Unreligious Right (a great blog, by the way) and this sums up my sentiments.

From the second link:

There are many problems with Pike’s theories that just leap out at the reader. Pilotless drones and other unmanned vehicles are not the same thing as self-directing robots capable of replacing humans. Unless Pike has classified information on these robots not available to the general public, the technology for the type of robot army he describes simply does not exist, and is unlikely to appear in the next few years. His entire article appears to be based on the military equivalent of vaporware. But even if such technology did exist, his other assertions are also way off-base. Pike argues that “no human army” could stand against a robot “onslaught,” and that anyone facing such a force would have a “simple choice of martyrdom or flight.” I find it difficult to believe that someone like John Pike, with his knowledge of military affairs, would make such a ridiculous unfounded assertion. Any weapon system has weaknesses and can be defeated by human ingenuity, or other factors unforseen by the creator of the wonder weapon. And the idea that the U.S. could suddenly deploy a completely irresistable robot army, of the type Pike envisions, doesnot even qualify as good science fiction, let alone a reasonable real-world military prediction.