A robotic weapons race is gathering steam

We very well could be entering the next military arms race, says British computer scientist Noel Sharkey of the University of Sheffield.

People familiar with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan know about our Predator drone planes. But that’s just the tip of a growing iceberg.

Several nations are developing robot weapons, with the United States in the lead, Sharkey said. He cited a U.S. Defense Department report last December stating the country plans to spend some $4 billion by 2010 on the innocuously-termed “unmanned systems.”

Over 4,000 robots are currently deployed on the ground in Iraq and by October 2006 unmanned aircraft had flown 400,000 flight hours, added Sharkey. Today there’s always a human involved to decide on use of lethal force, he added, but he predicted this will change as there’s a growing emphasis on “autonomous weapons” that decide where, when and whom to kill.

That’s the scary part, especially if there’s a computer malfunction. But, we’re not alone. There’s an arms race on here:

Canada, South Korea, South Africa, Singapore, Israel, China, some European countries, Russia and India are also getting in on the robot-weapons act, Sharkey added, with these last two developing unmanned aerial combat vehicles.

And, it could have fallout:

Military technology expert James … Canton acknowledged concerns that robots could make the United States “trigger happy” because the nation will not be risking lives. “That’s a disturbing scenario,” he told the magazine, but he added that robot armies are costly and and some soldiers would still be at risk.

Imagine Preznit Bush 20 years from now waging pre-emptive war after war with these weapons, but the other side retaliating with a cruder, but biologically armed, counterversion.