Robotsneg

GDI 2006 ROBOTS NEG
MAURER/POINTER/MEICHES
1/22
Robots Negative
Negative Topicality -- Increase........................................2
Negative Inherency.....................................................3
Solvency takeout: expertise............................................6
Solvency Takeout: Technology...........................................7
Solvency Takeout: Generic..............................................8
Solvency Takeout: Technology...........................................9
Solvency Turns: Vision................................................10
Micro Air Vehicles (MAVs) Advantage: Solvency Takeout.................11
Micro Air Vehicles (MAVs) Advantage: Solvency Takeout.................12
Unmanned (Combat) Aerial Vehicle’s (UAVs and UCAVs) Adv: Negative
Solvency Takeout......................................................13
Unmanned (Combat) Aerial Vehicle’s (UAVs and UCAVs) Adv: Neg Ans –
Pilots better.........................................................14
Unmanned (Combat) Aerial Vehicle’s (UAVs and UCAVs) Adv: Neg Ans –
Pilots better.........................................................15
Skynet Disad..........................................................16
Link: Skynet.........................................................17
Link: Psychoanalysis..................................................18
Link: Militarism......................................................19
Link: Militarism......................................................20
Link: Robots = Fascism***.............................................21
Link: Spending........................................................22
GDI 2006 ROBOTS NEG
2/22
Negative Topicality -- Increase

Robots decrease troop numbers
Lopez-Calderon 2006
(Michael, “A Soldier-Free Battlefield?”, TCS Daily, February 8, accessed 7/16/06,
http://www.tcsdaily.com/article.aspx?id=020806D)
Since robotic transformation will greatly reduce troop numbers, and because those filling the ranks will
consist of an older, wiser, and elite warrior population, the days of the naïve eighteen-year-old who entered
the military either for adventure, economic security, or character development may go the way of colorful
battlefield uniforms and horse-cavalry.
GDI 2006 ROBOTS NEG
3/22
Negative Inherency
Robots already receiving funding for necessary technology development
McMains ’04
[James, U. S. Marine Future Naval Capability Coordinator, ONR, “Marine Corps Robotic Revolution,”
Marine Corps Gazette, Vol. 88, Issue 1, Jan. 2004, p. 34]
President George W. Bush has recently called for increased investment in unmanned systems.1 Secretary of
Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld stated that, "As we change investment priorities, we have to begin shifting
the balance in our arsenal between manned and unmanned capabilities. . . ."2 Secretary of the Navy Gordon
R. England stated, "Unmanned systems are now on the threshold of delivering on the promise of
transforming our military, and likely, our society."3 These statements make it clear that there is an
escalating level of awareness and commitment at the highest levels of government to increase the quality
and quantity of unmanned vehicle use within America's Armed Forces.
Budget reorganization will pay for Future Combat System now

Jen DiMascio 7/17/2006
(Inside the Army, “HEADLINE: OFFICIALS: ARMY BUDGET CUTS SHORTCHANGE LEAN SIX
SIGMA IMPLEMENTATION”)
The service has already promised the Pentagon that it will save money on Harvey's program of
"business efficiencies." In a Defense Department document called program budget decision No. 753, the
Army said it would save $14 billion in "business efficiencies" that would help the service pay for plans to
transform its force structure and pursue modernization programs like the Future Combat System.
The Pentagon is trying to increase research funding to make killer robots

Veseley’05 (Milan, P.H.d. and lecturer in herpetology, Microscopical techniques, Biological techniques,
General zoology Middle East, April 2005, pg 22-25)
The cost of purchasing new weapons systems for the US military is

scheduled to rise some 52% next year, up from $78bn to around $118.6bn
at the very least. The projected increase in funding for robot-soldiers
is based on two assumptions; one already proven, one tantalisingly in
sight. Following the success of track-mounted robots in Afghanistan
where they have been successfully used to clear caves of booby traps
and ambushes, US military planners believe that robot soldiers that
think, see, and react increasingly like humans are possible. Advances
in nanotechnology — the science of miniaturisation — make this goal
achievable, they argue; crude examples are already able to mimic the
walking gait of a normal human being. Battle-ready robots able to
transport ammunition, gather intelligence and/or search and blow up
buildings are already being tested, the first such thinking machine
mounted on miniature tracks is expected to arrive in Iraq this month.
GDI 2006 ROBOTS NEG
4/22
Negative Inherency
Army currently incorporating FCS technology into combat

Jen DiMascio 7/17/2006
(Inside the Army, “HEADLINE: ARMY TO SPEND $2.5 BILLION FOR FUTURE COMBAT
SYSTEM'S FIRST SPIN OUT”)
The Army plans to spend nearly $2.5 billion to add Future Combat System equipment under what is
called "Spin Out 1" into the service's current force, according to a service report.
The report, dated April 2006, was part of a package recently delivered to Congress to fulfill a mandate
in the Fiscal Year 2006 Defense Authorization Act and was one of several required for the FCS program to
receive full funding; the authorization act pledged to withhold 30 percent of program dollars until the
service provided the reports.
The language asked for "the level of research, development, test and evaluation and procurement
funding to support planned technology insertions into the current force brigade combat teams through the
future years defense plan."
Funding for Spin Out 1 grows over time. In FY-07, the cost is $6.4 million, increasing to $153 million
in FY-08, $436.4 million in FY-09 and $653.3 million in FY-10. By FY-11 the price then nearly doubles to
$1.2 billion, according to the report.
In 2004, the Army restructured FCS by adding a number of platforms and two years to the schedule.
Starting in 2008, the program planned to provide an initial package of capabilities to an evaluation brigade
combat team. That team would test the equipment, and two years later those technologies would be inserted
into Army units. Successive spin outs would start in 2010, 2012 and 2014.
The robot arms race is beginning, India, Pakistan, and South Korea are pressing ahead with combat robot
development
Blass 2006
(Evan, “India announces plans to develop robot army”, May 18, engadget.com,
http://www.engadget.com/2006/05/18/india-announces-plans-to-develop-robot-army/, accessed 7/16/06)
In an announcement that you can probably expect to be repeated by rival Pakistan in the next few days,
Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has claimed that his South Asian nation will be the latest country
to pursue technologies for developing a robotic army. Singh's remarks came during the inauguration of a
new building for the Defence Research and Development Organization, and were part of a larger speech
outlining the country's future plans for military research, where he also mentioned interest in developing
next-gen propulsion, camouflage, and precision guided munitions systems. Unlike South Korea's planned
army of killbots (pictured), the Indian program is pretty light on specifics so far, although we do know that
the impetus for the project comes from the realization that "trans-national actors and unconventional
forces" pose a growing threat when compared to the risk of a traditional inter-state conflict.
GDI 2006 ROBOTS NEG
5/22
Negative Inherency
The army desires unmanned vehicles to replace humans on risky armed recon and attack missions.
Lopez and Sparks, ’03

(Ramon and Heather, Aerospace and Defense writers for Popular Science, The Revolution Will not be
Piloted, Popular Science,
http://proxy.foley.gonzaga.edu:2048/login?url=http://search.epnet.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=mth&a
n=9838401, 7/17/06
The lowdown The UCAR is the Army's desired unmanned combat air vehicle. This futuristic, robotic
vertical-takeoff-and-landing aircraft would perform armed recon and attack missions, alone or with piloted
rotorcraft. It would extend the reach of manned helicopter gunships and take their place on risky missions.
The UCAR, which could be controlled from the cockpit of Army helicopters, will be designed to carry
rockets, missiles and guns, as well as nonlethal and directed energy weapons.
GDI 2006 ROBOTS NEG
6/22
Solvency takeout: expertise
Robot technology is too complicated for military personel and is technologically menacing for use.
Zepko and Bernal ’06 (Capt. James Zepko is the CO, Company B, 1st CEB.
GySgt. Ruben Bernal is the Company Gunnery Sergeant, Company B, 1st CEB. The company is currently
deployed to Iraq in support of Regimental Combat Team 5. “The Expanding Role of Robots and the
Combat Engineer”. Marine Corps Gazette. June 2006. Vol.90, Iss. 6; pg. 22, 3 pgs.)
The only negative aspect observed with the PackBot family of robots is its initially menacing technological
nature-a bit complicated at first. With its futuristic look and overwhelming OCU display, military members
may find it a bit intimidating. This system takes more hands on instruction in order gain proficiency. The
PackBot EOD system robot was probably the most difficult and demanding robot to master during the short
duration of the course. As the name-PackBot EOD system-states, it is primarily utilized by EOD personnel.
Marines in the 1371 military operational specialty will most likely not operate this type of robot in their
day-to-day operational routine until/unless it becomes implemented within the Marine Corps Engineer
School's curriculum.
Killer Robots break the Geneva convention code

Questions over the Geneva Convention and its rules of conduct during warfare undertaken by robo-soldiers
are now being raised. As history shows, every breakthrough in military technology leaves the ethical laws
scrambling to catch up, the arrival of the longbow, the tank and the atomic bomb being some more obvious
examples. Trusting robots with life and death decisions at a roadblock is sure to raise issues and questions
of responsibility, especially in the event of so called "friendly fire". "The lawyers tell me there are no
prohibitions against robots making life or death decisions," Johnson says. "I have even been asked what
happens if the robot destroys a school bus rather then a nearby tank." In a statement sure to be challenged
by human rights activists Johnson states: "We will not entrust a robot with that decision until we are
confident they can make it." Others, like Bill Joy — a co-founder of Sun Microsystems — are not so sure
that the trend to robots making their own decisions is all that smart. Writing in Wired magazine, Joy says:
"As machines become more intelligent people will let them make more of their decisions for them. A stage
may be reached at which the decisions necessary to keep the system running will be so complex humans
will be incapable of making them intelligently. At that stage of development the machines themselves will
be in effective control."
GDI 2006 ROBOTS NEG
7/22
Solvency Takeout: Technology
Robotic advancements are limited to small-scale research
Gibbs, 2004
Title: From Finish to Start, by Wayt W. Gibbs
Source: Scientific American; August 2004,
Vol. 291 Issue 2, p33-34, 2p, 2c
The 56-year-old Whittaker sees the Grand Challenge as worthwhile mainly because it is helping to push
robots out of the lab and into the real world. That has been a theme in his career. "I was tempered early by a
culture around robotics that bordered on the irresponsible," he says. "Our field was strongly influenced by
science fiction. There was a tremendous amount of speculation and extrapolation that lacked the integrity
of implementation." Most robotics experiments were limited to individual sensors, computer-simulated
robots, or machines that only worked in tightly controlled situations. Whittaker focused on bigger pictures.
GDI 2006 ROBOTS NEG
8/22
Solvency Takeout: Generic
TRAINING OPERATORS TO USE ROBOTS WILL BE TIME CONSUMING AND DIFFICULT
THORTON 05
(Robert Thorton is an operations officer in the FCS Unit of Action Experimental Element (UAEE) in the Unit of
Action Maneuver Battle Lab (UAMBL) at Fort Knox, Kentucky. Infantry. 2005. The Case for Robots in the SBCTS
(NOW). Vol. 94 Issue 1, p33-41.)
There are collective, leader and operator/Soldier training issues. At the operator Soldier level, the operator
must be technically and tactically versed in robotics in order to maintain the robot, operate the robot, and
employ its payloads IAW with the needs of the unit. The operator is essentially the crew. At the leader
level, the training requires him to know capabilities and limitations of the platform, its payload and the
operator in order to best complement the tasks or scheme of maneuver. At the collective level the issue is
integration, collective tasks, rehearsals and TTP need to account for robotics on the battlefield.
ROBOTS WILL NEGATIVELY AFFECT DEPLOYABILITY

THORTON 05
(Robert Thorton is an operations officer in the FCS Unit of Action Experimental Element (UAEE) in the Unit of
Action Maneuver Battle Lab (UAMBL) at Fort Knox, Kentucky. Infantry. 2005. The Case for Robots in the SBCTS
(NOW). Vol. 94 Issue 1, p33-41.)
Unit deployability and mobility will both be changed. While the smaller UAVs and UGVs don't amount to
much at the mounted levels, they do add up to a dismounted Soldier, but what they add to the fight may
reduce other burdens. Big platforms such as SPINNER will change deployability. At 9 tons such a platform
would probably take one C130 per two robots. Long road marches to training areas such as Fort Lewis or
Yakima, Washington. Would either require a PLS or be towed by a manned platform. Again it's a trade off
about what this platform would bring to the fight.
GDI 2006 ROBOTS NEG
9/22
Solvency Takeout: Technology
Robotic Technology is nowhere near being ready to use
Gibbs, 2004
Title: From Finish to Start, by Wayt W. Gibbs
Source: Scientific American; August 2004,
Vol. 291 Issue 2, p33-34, 2p, 2c
Of the 15 vehicles wheeled into the starting chutes at sunrise on March 13, just nine were able to take off,
and none got anywhere near the finish line. A modified SUV built by students at the California Institute of
Technology crashed through a fence less than two miles down the road and got hung up on the other side.
A 14-ton, six-wheeled Oshkosh truck automated by a group based at Ohio State University got flummoxed
by sagebrush, reversed, and never moved forward again. Second place went to a dune buggy retrofitted by
engineers at Elbit Systems, an Israeli military contractor. Like the Red Team, they had devoted a month to
desert testing. But their robot crashed into an embankment 6.8 miles into the race.
Sandstorm put in the best attempt. In the course of its 7.4mile run, the driverless humvee took out two
fence posts, plowed over a concrete-embedded buried-cable warning sign, was knocked off the road by a
rock, and reversed to get back on track. Finally, the robot cut a corner in a hairpin turn on the side of a
mountain, sending its left wheels over the edge and its chassis into a boulder.
That performance impressed Clint Kelly, head of advanced technology programs at San Diego-based
Science Applications International. In the last series of tests of that the U.S. Army conducted, he noted, the
best driverless vehicles required rescue by a human every 2.6 miles on average, and the median speed was
under four miles per hour. By comparison, Sandstorm went almost three times as far and four times as fast.
"And it probably could have gone much further on easier terrain," Kelly says.
Technology hasn’t progressed enough yet

To design a human replica is one of the most daunting aspects of the new technology. A four-foot high
prototype with a single cyclops eye and a gun for a right arm is already being tested. In laboratory
conditions this robot can aim and fire at a tin can, the first such machine able to identify targets and shoot at
them. "We're at the mammal stage of development now," Jeff Grossman of the Space and Naval Warfare
Systems Centre in San Diego says. "We're trying to get to the level of a primate where we are making
sensible decisions."
GDI 2006 ROBOTS NEG
10/22
Solvency Turns: Vision
Machine vision is not AI, only data analysis.
Wilson 01 (James R. Wilson Professor & Head, Department of Industrial Engineering Education
at North Carolina State University since 1991 [Rice University: B.A., 1970 Purdue University:
M.S., 1977; Ph.D., 1979] Military & Aerospace Electronics, Aug2001, Vol. 12 Issue 8, p14, 4p)
The term machine vision means different things to different people, and becomes increasingly confusing
when it relates to concepts in artificial intelligence (AI), where "we are more interested in doing more
complex efforts such as humans would do them," Schultz says. Perhaps a baseline definition for machine
vision comes from the United Kingdom Department of Trade and Industry:
"When an image is captured in an electronic form, it can be treated as a piece of data," according to the
U.K. Trade and Industry department. "Machine vision techniques use this data to simulate human vision by
recognizing objects within the image and by interpreting aspects of the scene. The raw image is now
commonly captured in a purely digital form through the use of Charge Coupled Devices, but traditional
analogue sources, such as television cameras, can also be digitally captured through frame-grabbing
techniques."
Robots won’t really know what they are looking at.

Yet while finding patterns amid hundreds or thousands of pixels is one computing task, determining what
those patterns represent is quite another, experts say. Machines, in short, need to know what they are
looking at.
"What you need to know about it depends on your goals. If you are just trying to navigate from point A to
B, it doesn't matter if you encounter a table or a chair, just that there is no empty space. If a robot is
detecting a sniper, we have the ability to look at motion, heat, skin tone, and face recognition to determine
if it is a human. But is it a sniper? AI for years has been trying to look at what is a cup -- does it have to
have a handle, is it cylindrical? What makes it a cup? It holds liquid, but that is hard to tell by just looking
at it. That's a problem with AI that hasn't been solved yet."
GDI 2006 ROBOTS NEG
11/22
Micro Air Vehicles (MAVs) Advantage: Solvency Takeout
Engineers haven’t created a method to make the MAVs fly and without the fundamentals – MAVs
won’t solve for years
Wilson, 2001. (Jim, journalist for Popular Mechanics magazine, Popular Mechanics: MICRO WARFARE.
Feb 2001, Vol. 178 Issue 2, p62, 4p, 1 diagram, 6c, 1bw MICRO WARFARE. July 17, 2006.
n=3958955)
Creating lift, the force that keeps flying machines aloft, and maintaining control once airborne, involves a
host of aerodynamic factors. The most important characteristics can be summarized in what aerodynamics
experts call a Reynolds Number. Large, fast-flying commercial aircraft--a Boeing 747, for example--have
high Reynolds Numbers, well exceeding 100 million, says Thomas J. Mueller, Roth-Gibson Professor of
Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana. As planes shrink and
move more slowly, their associated Reynolds Numbers decline. A fixed-wing, 6-in. MAV cruising at 30
mph might have a Reynolds Number of about 130,000, says Mueller. As a consequence, it becomes more
difficult to control. Reducing an aircraft to the size of a large insect reduces the Reynolds Number to below
20,000. At a number this low, fixed-wing aircraft need turning radii that would be too large to make the
kinds of sharp right-angle turns needed to navigate tight spaces like ventilation ducts.
To be a fly on the wall, MAVs will have to fly like flies--in other words, flap their wings.
"The size and the Reynolds Numbers of MAVs correspond to very small birds," says Mueller. "We have
very little information on the performance of these airfoils and wing shapes, but there has been a long
history of natural flight studies with insects and small birds that may be helpful." In June, Mueller invited
the leading experts on bird and insect flight from around the world to meet with MAV designers for a
conference titled "Fixed, Flapping and Rotary Wing Vehicles at Very Low Reynolds Numbers." One of the
most important messages for MAV designers was that even though insects flap their wings, they don't fly
anything at all like birds.
The technologies for the MAV flying mechanisms haven’t been discovered. The MAVs are only an
idea, not a real solution.
Wilson, 2001. (Jim, journalist for Popular Mechanics magazine, Popular Mechanics: MICRO WARFARE.
Feb 2001, Vol. 178 Issue 2, p62, 4p, 1 diagram, 6c, 1bw MICRO WARFARE. July 17, 2006.
n=3958955)
The biggest challenge facing MAV designers is the same problem encountered by early pioneers of manned
flight: finding a sufficiently lightweight powerplant. Piezoelectric motors are efficient, but still require
electricity. Wings covered with photoelectric materials work to a degree, but ultimately reach the point at
which they have too little light-capture area to produce enough power to flap wings or run electronics.
Batteries can provide power for short flights, but are too heavy for missions extending beyond a few
minutes.
The consensus among experts interviewed by POPULAR MECHANICS is that MAVs will need to
produce their power on board. There are three possible technologies. The most powerful is the 13mm
Microjet demonstrated by the British Defence Evaluation and Research Agency (DERA) at this year's
Farnborough International 2000 air show. "By mixing hydrogen peroxide with kerosene or a similar fuel,
we've achieved flight duration times of up to 1 hour," says a DERA spokesman. "Starting and stopping the
engine is very simple and is achieved by a simple on/off valve, making it reliable and simple to operate in
the field."
GDI 2006 ROBOTS NEG
12/22
Micro Air Vehicles (MAVs) Advantage: Solvency Takeout
Even though the design has already been made, it is estimated that it will take two years before
anything is finally completed.
Koerner, 1998. (Brendan I., Senior editor of US News and World Report. U.S. News & World Report;
09/14/98, Vol. 125 Issue 10, p48, 2p, 1 chart, 1 diagram, 1c. July 17, 2006.
n=1033989 )
Robotic conundrum. Backed by $1.7 million from the Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects
Agency (DARPA), Garcia and a Vanderbilt colleague, Michael Goldfarb, are designing such insect-
inspired spies. This summer, the duo built their first crawling bug prototypes, and they aim to perfect the
design within two years. Insect-shaped "micro aerial vehicles" are next on the slate. Along with providing
the military with state-of-the-art scouts, the researchers hope their project alters the way engineers approach
the long-vexing problem of robotic locomotion.
"In most robotic systems today, people think if you want to move one joint, then you need to attach a motor
at that joint," says Garcia. "That makes for large, bulky, energy-hog robots." It also reduces robots to the
ranks of expensive toys. Motors are only about 60 percent efficient in turning electrical power into
movement. So though robots may impress with their futuristic looks, most motor-driven devices have
ranges limited to only a few dozen yards, rendering them useless for practical applications.
When the Vanderbilt pair bid for the DARPA grant last year, they beat out 50 competitors by
recommending a far more energy-efficient approach. They proposed to use piezoelectric ceramics--thin,
ceramic-coated metal wafers that bend when an electrical current is applied to their surfaces. Such
materials already are used commercially to make silent pagers vibrate or to make zoom lenses move.
Many obstacles before any MAVs actually get into war – power systems and commanding all the
robots.
Koerner, 1998. (Brendan I., Senior editor of US News and World Report. U.S. News & World Report;
09/14/98, Vol. 125 Issue 10, p48, 2p, 1 chart, 1 diagram, 1c. July 17, 2006.
n=1033989 )
Before the bugs can be unleashed on the battlefield, however, a few major hurdles remain. Chief among
them is a power problem; though the robots will require around 60 volts to start vibrating, the watch-size
batteries being considered can provide only 3 to 6 volts. To get the bugs moving without the aid of
chargers, circuitry must be developed to amplify the current, and it must be small enough to fit the 2-by-
3/4-inch bugs. Still, the design's voltage requirement is impressively low; rival efforts to create locomotive
robots of comparable size have needed well over 1,000 volts.
Another lingering question is how a robotic swarm can be controlled. With thousands of bugs roving at
once, commanding each individual unit would be close to impossible. Garcia thinks that a battalion leader,
outfitted with a remote control, would only have to control a "mother ship," an insect at the fore that would
then relay instructions to other members of the swarm. In the event of the mother ship's destruction, the
leadership role could be shifted to a surviving robot. The exact details of this control, however, have yet to
be worked out.
GDI 2006 ROBOTS NEG
13/22
Unmanned (Combat) Aerial Vehicle’s (UAVs and UCAVs)
Adv: Negative Solvency Takeout
Human pilots are most effective.

Brasher in 05
[Nathan-, US Navy Academy graduate, U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings; Jul2005, Vol. 131 Issue 7, p36-
39, 4p, 2c, 1bw, “Unmanned Aerial Vehicles and the Future of Air Combat,”
n=17701700 , accessed 7/16/06]
The battlefield is ever changing. To survive requires fluid thinking and the ability to adapt to the evolving
situation. Fifty years ago the United States and the Soviet Union were developing guided air-to-air missiles.
Proponents of the new technology argued that air-to-air missiles would render air combat, and dog-fighting
skills, obsolete. No longer would fighter pilots engage at close range, maneuvering their aircraft for a gun
shot. Fighters would simply launch their missiles at standoff distance and destroy the enemy. Air combat
during the Vietnam War exposed the utter futility of this thinking. In his book And Kill MiGs, author Lou
Drendel writes:
"One of the most significant military lessons of the Vietnam War was that control of the air over an
enemy's homeland must be wrested from him by men specifically trained for that purpose. On the face of it,
that would sound like a redundant statement. After all, hasn't the same lesson been learned from all the
previous wars of the twentieth century? Of course it has, but recent technological preoccupations somehow
seem to have blinded us to the importance of the man in the cockpit, and to the fact that air-to-air combat
boils down to the man and his tactics against the other man and his tactics."
The programmed thinking of a robotic aircraft cannot match, or even approach, man's ability to adapt and
reason on the fly. Some would argue that having a remote controller mitigates or even eliminates this
problem. The vehicle, however, can communicate to a controller only what it detects with its limited sensor
package. One fighter pilot, First Lieutenant Jeff Mustin, told Aerospace Power that remote piloting of a
UAV in air-to-air combat is "like having a knife fight in a phone booth looking through a toilet-paper tube.
You can try and flail all you want, but eventually you are going to die." UAVs cannot deliver the
situational awareness of a pilot in the cockpit. Until artificial intelligence can match the human ability to
think fluidly, or a pilot's ability to assess combat situations, UAVs will play a secondary role in air-to-air
combat.
GDI 2006 ROBOTS NEG
14/22
Adv: Neg Ans – Pilots better
Pilots Key in Operating Aircrafts
Talbot, 05
(David Talbot, Technology Review’s Chief Correspondent, Technology Review, “The Ascent of Robotic
Attack Jet”, March 2005)
The first and most obvious challenge is how to enable increasingly autonomous operation. This
may seem like a problem nearly solved. After all, for years even the most mundane commercial
jets have included autopilot features that maintain trim and course during long nights and that can
also perform essentially automated takeouts and landings. Importantly, though, ordinary planes
still, of course, have pilots sitting in the cockpits. Pilots make countless decisions to handle little
breakdowns on the plane—and decide whether or not it’s appropriate to engage automated
systems at all. “It’s not so easy when you don’t have a pilot in there to take care of mishaps, faults,
failures, and all that jazz,” says Eric Feron, an aeronautical engineer at MIT who is not connected
to the current DARPA program. “It’s unbelievable how much the human is able to act as the glue
between the technological gaps. The human covers so many nitty-gritty things, from frequency
switching to target acquisition and recognition.”
Unmanned Aircrafts Face Communication Problems

Talbot, 05
(David Talbot, Technology Review’s Chief Correspondent, Technology Review, “The Ascent of Robotic
Attack Jet”, March 2005)
Then there is the problem of constructing what amounts to an Internet in the atmosphere. On the
ground, mobile communications networks are fast expanding, thanks to cellular and Wi-Fi
networks. But when you get up to 10,500 meters at speeds of 700 kilometers per hour or faster,
new challenges arise. To pick one technical example: today’s airborne radio links incur one bit
error in every 10,000 bits sent. That’s far too unreliable for an airborne Internet. In fact, it’s 100
times worse than what’s needed for the ground-based Internet to provide even minimal service,
says Dave Kenyon, an information architect at the air force’s Electronic Systems Center in
Bedford, MA. The center is developing satellitebased networks that will be used by all kinds of
military planes, including future unmanned planes.
Robots Still Rely On Human Skills

Ames, 05
(Ben Ames, “Sandia Researchers Set Sights on BattleField Robots”, Military & Aerospace Electronics,
March 2005)
In Sandia's new approach, the robot has much more independence. It asks for help from its driver only for
the most "human" skills, such as distinguishing between an object and its shadow, or locating the hinge of a
briefcase. Humans make these intuitive judgments
almost instantly, while a robot could take hours to reach the same conclusion methodically, Harrigan says.
"Common sense is involved in the simplest jobs," he says. "If we send the robot out to place a sensor; it
doesn't even need to articulate anything but it must know how to place the unit right-side up." Using the
new method, a robot could
drive near a suspicious briefcase automatically, and use sensors to test the handle and seams for explosive
residue. Lacking common sense, however, a robot needs help to locate those parts. To this end, a human
controller sitting in a remote truck or trailer can use a pen to circle the briefcase handle and four corners on
a touch-screen display. With those parameters, the robot can interpolate the dimensions of the briefcase and
return to autonomous operation. It can test the suitcase, x-ray it, then use a shotgun or water cannon to cut
the triggering circuit before it detonates.
GDI 2006 ROBOTS NEG
15/22

Adv: Neg Ans – Pilots better
Unmanned air vehicles are extremely inefficient and have limited payoff for the missions that they perform.
Lopez and Sparks, ’03

(Ramon and Heather, Aerospace and Defense writers for Popular Science, The Revolution Will not be
Piloted, Popular Science,
n=9838401, 7/17/06
Larger than minis, tactical UAVs perform similar intelligence-gathering and target-acquisition missions but
have greater carrying capacity and endurance. Whereas minis typically have a 1,000-foot ceiling, a tactical
UAV like the Shadow 200 can soar to 15,000 feet and fly for up to four hours. The downside: Deploying
tactical UAVs can require a major investment of time and equipment. Take the Shadow 200 system. In
addition to its four air vehicles (they're flown one at a time), the system includes two ground control
stations, two ground data terminals, a portable ground control station, four remote video terminals, a
hydraulic launcher, a landing system and arresting gear. Twenty-two operators and maintenance personnel
are required to operate the system.
GDI 2006 ROBOTS NEG
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Skynet Disad
Automated soldiers are the first step toward a new wave of atrocities and the dominion of machines over
human society.
Weiner 2005
(Tim, “A New Model Army Soldier Rolls Closer to the Battlefield”, The New York Times, February 16,
http://cndyorks.gn.apc.org/news/articles/robot_soldiers.htm, accessed 7/16/06)
Despite the obstacles, Congress ordered in 2000 that a third of the ground vehicles and a third of deep-
strike aircraft in the military must become robotic within a decade. If that mandate is to be met, the United
States will spend many billions of dollars on military robots by 2010. As the first lethal robots head for
Iraq, the role of the robot soldier as a killing machine has barely been debated. The history of warfare
suggests that every new technological leap - the longbow, the tank, the atomic bomb - outraces the strategy
and doctrine to control it.
"The lawyers tell me there are no prohibitions against robots making life-or-death decisions," said Mr.
Johnson, who leads robotics efforts at the Joint Forces Command research center in Suffolk, Va. "I have
been asked what happens if the robot destroys a school bus rather than a tank parked nearby. We will not
entrust a robot with that decision until we are confident they can make it."
Trusting robots with potentially lethal decision-making may require a leap of faith in technology not
everyone is ready to make. Bill Joy, a co-founder of Sun Microsystems, has worried aloud that 21st-century
robotics and nanotechnology may become "so powerful that they can spawn whole new classes of accidents
and abuses."
"As machines become more intelligent, people will let machines make more of their decisions for them,"
Mr. Joy wrote recently in Wired magazine. "Eventually a stage may be reached at which the decisions
necessary to keep the system running will be so complex that human beings will be incapable of making
them intelligently. At that stage, the machines will be in effective control."
GDI 2006 ROBOTS NEG
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Link: Skynet
The robots will be as autonomous as possible.
At the same time, Fish says, researchers are making every effort to reduce the level of human involvement
outside that final decision-making role.
"We're trying to implement a system that reduces the amount of human operator involvement," he Says "In
the timeframe of PerceptOR, I doubt we will get to the point of just tasking the robot and not having to hear
back from it until the job is done. We don't expect to get a single answer to handle all environmental issues.
How autonomous we can make these vehicles depends on the environment in which they will have to
operate. They may be able to operate in a desert with little user input, but in a woods, the robot may have to
call back for help along the way."
Killer Robots can be hacked into and turned against the US

Many of the robo-soldier's advocates are not so sure that machines can ever replace the fighting human
being however. "War will always be a human endeavour, one with death and disaster ever present," Robert
Finkelstein, president of Robotic Technology in Potomac, Maryland, says. "It could take up to 2030 to
develop a robot that looks, thinks, and fights like a soldier. The Pentagon's goal is there, but the path is not
totally clear yet." And what of the insurgents; how will America's enemies counter a machine capable of
spewing death while at the same time being protected by the latest advances in armour-plating? Will they
turn its capabilities to their own advantage, much as they have countered the jamming signals used to
disable their IED's in Iraq? "Will they decipher the operating codes; turn a robot's lethality back onto the
operators via electronic hacking, or even capture a robot and re-programme it to recognise the US military
as the enemy?" some computer experts wonder. One thing US military observers are certain about; it won't
be long before counter-robot techniques surface and possibly even crude counter-robots appear to take on
the real thing on the battlefield. "After all, a child's radio-controlled toy vehicle filled with explosives could
disable the robo-soldier if it explodes close by," one military expert says. "Such items are now commonly
sold at toy stores, the larger ones capable of carrying up to 10 pounds of high explosives." As has been seen
in Iraq, technology is not the preserve of the US military alone. Each gruesome killing or deadly attack by
the insurgents is shown on the Internet within minutes. The world is able to view the terrorist's actions even
before any official announcement or CNN report is broadcast. Computer savvy, the younger insurgents are
certain to take the arrival of the new soldiers as a personal challenge, certain to test their skills against the
computer and wireless guided robo-soldier, much as they have against the radio jamming devices now used
to protect US convoys on Iraqi highways.
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Link: Psychoanalysis
Continued development of military robots will encourage further US invasions of other countries and
further the culture of death and love of Thanatos
Whitehurst 2005
(Dr Teresa Whitehurst is a peace activist and frequent contributor to Antiwar.com, “Soulless Soldiers”,
February 22, http://www.antiwar.com/whitehurst/?articleid=4911, accessed 7/16/06)
Let us never forget this moment, and let no future generations look back with fury and despair at the path
we have followed, thinking that nobody noticed or cared that the Pentagon was building an army of
metallic soldiers for the War of Terror. We shuddered when we saw the unstoppable robotic killers, devoid
of faces and free of compassion, in Attack of the Clones; but that was long ago and far away, or so it
seemed. The most fearsome thought imaginable – and we were so glad it was only science fiction – would
be an army of storm troopers devoid of human eyes, hearts, or souls.
But as the New York Times explains, "robo-soldiers" are already a reality:
"A prototype, about four feet high, with a Cyclops eye and a gun for a right arm, stood in a workshop at the
center recently. It readied, aimed and fired at a Pepsi can, performing the basic tasks of hunting and
killing."
"Within 10 years, [an Army robotics expert] said, convoys of robots should be able to wend their way
through deep woods or dense cities."
"The technology still runs ahead of robot rules of engagement. 'There is a lag between technology and
doctrine,' said [Robert] Finkelstein of Robotic Technology, who has been in the military robotics field for
28 years. 'If you could invade other countries bloodlessly, would this lead to a greater temptation to
invade?'" (Emphasis added.)
We are living in what fundamentalists and neocons fondly call "the end times," but what psychologists and
theologians call the culture of death. In trying to understand why men delight in war, Freud wrote that
Thanatos (unlike Eros, love of life) is the love of death, a self-destructive yet powerful attraction to death's
power to bring "peace."
The Bush administration is head over heels in love with death, and American culture is changing rapidly in
response. When influential men in the U.S. military and the mainstream media call killing "a hoot" and
torture "a fraternity prank" without losing their jobs, the veneer of "moral values" and "Christian
principles" chips away, revealing what lies beneath.
Gordan Johnson, who "led robotics efforts at the Pentagon's Joint Forces Command research center in
Suffolk in 2003" exclaims,
"'They're not afraid. They don't forget their orders. They don't care if the guy next to them has just been
shot,' Johnson said. 'Will they do a better job than humans? Yes.'"
The article concludes,
"Money, in fact, may matter more than morals. The Pentagon today owes its soldiers $653 billion in future
retirement benefits that it cannot currently pay…"
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Link: Militarism
Automated troops guarantee that war will become politically acceptable to the American people,
unleashing a wave of militaristic aggression
Roboticsnews.info 2004
(“News on robots and robotics”, August 19, http://www.roboticsnews.info/, accessed 7/16/06)
The only thing that's really holding back the United States from being even more aggressive and militaristic
in the world is probably the fact that every time the U.S. declares war on a country and sends soldiers in to
do the fighting, soldiers end up being killed and we see a stream of body bags coming back from the front
lines. Of course, the Pentagon is doing its best to suppress those images, but they exist nonetheless. What
really shocks Americans is the rarely-admitted fact that inside those draped coffins are the bodies of
American boys. That's right: guys who used to be living, breathing human beings who had families, friends
and college loans to pay off. The public hates finding out that war -- can you believe it? -- actually results
in the ending of human life. Go figure...
If you recall the controversy surrounding the publication of photos of flag-draped coffins from Iraq -- the
Pentagon was terrifically embarrassed by those photos and even enacted new rules that outlawed the use of
cell phones with cameras or other digital photo-taking devices by soldiers. Their reason? They want to
cover up and bury the fact that American young men are being killed in action. Let's all imagine that war is
just a bunch of virtual targets, shall we? It all sounds so much nicer when we don't mention blood, bodies,
shrapnel and human suffering. In fact, Fox News can even make it look cool and fun, like a giant
interactive video game!
So how can the Pentagon avoid all these embarrassing images of Americans being killed in action? Easy. If
you develop advanced robotic technology to the point where robots can navigate battlefields and use lethal
weapons, then you eliminate the primary reason why Americans don't like war in the first place: that their
young boys are being brought home in flag-draped coffins. In other words, if you can send machines out to
do the killing for you, all of a sudden the war becomes more acceptable to the American people. And robots
don't carry cell phone cameras, either.
GDI 2006 ROBOTS NEG
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Link: Militarism
Robot troops will sanitize the war on terror, justifying interventions and invasions around the globe
Now, George Bush has proven that selling a war to the American public is remarkably easy. The reasons
given for justifying the war don't even have to make sense. In this case, the war was justified with all sorts
of creative distortions about weapons of mass destruction. And yet, even after a thorough investigation
revealed that there were no weapons of mass destruction, both President Bush and Vice President Dick
Cheney insisted they would have invaded anyway, even had they known there were no weapons of mass
destruction. In other words, the justification for the war didn't really matter at all. They might as well have
said, "We're going to invade Iraq because they have too much sand." And 50% of the American people
would have believed that, pitching in to help redistribute the sand to the other sand-poor nations of the
world, most notably Canada, which has almost no sand whatsoever but still somehow manages to remain
calm.
In the future, if we have robots handling the bloody reality of warfare, then wars become even easier to
justify, because the nation can say: "Oh well, our sons and daughters aren't dying on the battlefield -- it's
just a bunch of 'bots. And besides, if we don't invade with robots, the terrorists will get us. And those guys
are KILLING MACHINES!" So there's little doubt that the Pentagon is working hard to develop a system
of robotic soldiers -- you might call them Terminators -- to take over the role of on the ground fighting and,
in effect, avoid the coffin-draping / body bag issue. Nobody gets freaked out over a pile of robot rubble.
GDI 2006 ROBOTS NEG
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Link: Robots = Fascism***
Military robots will lower the threshold for engaging in war, encourage the use of force as a
solution to international disputes, destroy the ethical prohibitions against killing of civilians and
innocents, and create the potential for a new fascism.
Not surprisingly, independent inventors are drooling at the idea of being the first person in history to build
a robotic machine that actually kills another human being. I mean, who wouldn't want to go down in history
as that inventor? What an incredible milestone in the history of technology.
One of the robotic vehicles used in the race was a Hummer outfitted with vision recognition systems and
onboard computers. If they ever get the Hummer to successfully navigate a battlefield, it would be easy to
attach a 50-caliber machine gun and program the system to fire on enemy combatants. At that point, you
basically have a 2-ton robotic vehicle cruising around some city in Iraq, firing on anything that moves with
a 50-caliber weapon, and presumably controlled by U.S. soldiers who were trained on the Xbox gaming
platform. This is the vision of the U.S. military: 19 year old video game junkies winning wars around the
world by beating each others' top scores for "most kills." Any of this remind you of the book, "Ender's
Game" by Orson Scott Card?
Now, of course, vehicles can't go everywhere in a city, and thus they need robots like the Pacbot, which has
tracks. But the ultimate military robot, of course, is one that is humanoid -- think Terminator, but with an
American flag stamped on its chest. A humanoid robot can go anywhere that a human being could go. With
the right technology, it could climb a flight of stairs, squeeze through a crevice or leap over walls. It could
basically handle terrain that vehicles or tracked robots could not possibly navigate today. This way,
America can invade nations beyond those built on the plains, and we can move up to invading mountainous
nations as well.
There's little doubt where all of this is heading. Granted, we are many years away. But in the decades
ahead, you can bet that the U.S. military is going to be looking at building and deploying an army of
humanoid robotics armed with lethal weapons that go out into the world and do all of the unjustified killing
for us, instead of using young men and women that have to be recruited from the general population. The
one thing these robots WON'T have is video cameras with broadcast capability, because god knows the
U.S. population won't be shown images of the killing actually taking place. And robots can easily have
their RAM erased, as NASA has readily proven with the Mars rovers.
The whole question of armed robots brings up all sorts of ethical questions about warfare, diplomacy, the
use of technology, who's in charge, failsafe mechanisms, and so on. I'm certain the Pentagon is pouring
over the more obvious ethical implications right this minute. Stuff like: "If a U.S. military robot shoots and
kills a young civilian child in Iraq, can we still count it as a kill?" Or, "If U.S. civilians become a pain in the
ass by holding public protests about the use of military robots, can we unleash the robots on them too? Do
these also count as kills?"
Let me mention my number one concern in all of this: that a Hitler-like madman would someday gain
control of an army of technologically advanced robots armed with weapons and decide to use them for
some personal or political gain by invading yet another country for an unjustified reason. But, thankfully,
the American voters never elect power-hungry madmen to the nation's highest office, so that will never
happen. Good thing our public education system keeps our citizens smart, huh? Essentially, advances in
robotic technology will make warfare easier. It will lower the threshold of resistance to engaging in
warfare, and that makes for a dangerous recipe when the nation with the most firepower in the world
doesn't yet have the maturity to know how to properly threaten the use of force without actually unleashing
it.
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Link: Spending
Future combat systems has a $300 BILLION dollar price tag that continues to grow
UPI 07-10-2006
(“U.S. Army combat system cost doubles”
http://www.upi.com/SecurityTerrorism/view.php?StoryID=20060710-123621-9658r)
WASHINGTON, July 10 (UPI) -- Total cost estimates for the U.S. Army's Future Combat Systems
have nearly doubled in the last three years, soaring from $175 billion to $300 billion.
The money is to develop, build and operate the massive modernization program, according to a
report sent to Capitol Hill last week.
The latest cost estimate, provided by the Office of the Secretary of Defense's Cost Analysis
Improvement Group, or CAIG, comes at a particularly crucial time for FCS, which has been under
intense scrutiny from Government Accountability Office investigators and lawmakers concerned
that the program is neither affordable nor executable, CongressDaily reported Friday.
U.S. lawmakers required the review as part of the fiscal 2006 defense authorization bill and
withheld $150 million in research and development funds until it was completed. Tagged "for
official use only," the review complies with the letter of the law but provides only a broad summary
of the Pentagon's analysis of the program, an aide for the Armed Services Committee of the U.S.
House of Representatives who had seen the document told CongressDaily.
"It's two pages," the aide said. "With a program that complex, two pages isn't quite what we were
hoping for."
The report gives a look at how program costs have increased substantially since the Army was
given the green light in May 2003 to proceed with design and development of FCS, a complex
system of manned and unmanned air and ground vehicles tied together by an expansive high-
tech network, CongressDaily said.
The U.S. Army intended to spend $18 billion for research and development, but that figure grew
to $27 billion after the program was restructured more than a year ago. The CAIG, known for its
conservative estimates, puts the R&D phase at between $32 billion and $44 billion,
CongressDaily said.

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GDI 2006 ROBOTS NEG

Negative Topicality -- Increase

Budget reorganization will pay for Future Combat System now

The Pentagon is trying to increase research funding to make killer robots

The cost of purchasing new weapons systems for the US military is

Army currently incorporating FCS technology into combat

Lopez and Sparks, ’03

Killer Robots break the Geneva convention code

ROBOTS WILL NEGATIVELY AFFECT DEPLOYABILITY

Technology hasn’t progressed enough yet

Robots won’t really know what they are looking at.

Micro Air Vehicles (MAVs) Advantage: Solvency Takeout

Human pilots are most effective.

Unmanned Aircrafts Face Communication Problems

Robots Still Rely On Human Skills

Unmanned (Combat) Aerial Vehicle’s (UAVs and UCAVs)

Lopez and Sparks, ’03

Killer Robots can be hacked into and turned against the US

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