In 2005, there was a movie about artificial intelligence being embedded into an drone aircraft, to serve as an unmanned compliment to the manned aircraft in the US Navy. The sci fi film was Stealth. The premise explored the conflict between two schools of thought: The first argues that human pilots are superior to machines in that they possess both creativity and moral judgment, whereas a machine cannot fully appreciate the ugliness of war; additionally, if robots take humans' places on the front line and no one ever died in war, then war would no longer be terrible and could end up as a sort of sport. The other view was that unmanned machines could tackle missions and conditions considered too dangerous for human pilots, flight at the maximum performance of the aircraft not subject to the physical limitations of a human pilot.
That fictional story is set in 2016.
This news story was posted today, February 4, 2011.
A bat-winged robotic jet resembling a miniature B-2 stealth bomber flew for the first time at Edwards Air Force Base in a test flight that could mark a new age in naval aviation.
Century City-based Northrop Grumman Corp.’s experimental drone, dubbed X-47B, climbed to 5,000 feet in a 29-minute flight on Friday, the U.S. Navy said in a statement.
The X-47B is being developed to take off from an aircraft carrier, drop a bomb on an enemy target and then land back on a carrier, all without a pilot.
Currently, combat drones are controlled remotely by a human pilot. The X-47B could carry out a combat mission controlled entirely by a computer.
We have already seen this in Iraq where helicopter pilots are viewing the whole thing as a big game. Just see the WikiLeaks "Collateral Murder" a decrypted military film shot from one of the helicopters. What was the public outcry? Very little if any; hey, it is OK to kill Iraqi civilians. The rules of engagement have been toss in the dustbin; both in Iraq and Afghanistan.
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