Prosthetic Conscience

Jason McBrayer's weblog; occasional personal notes and commentary

Mon, 16 Jul 2007

Flying killer robots bound for Iraq

Apparently, flying killer robots are bound for Iraq.

There’s a lot of science-fiction resonances in this story. The Yahoo article refers to the “Reaper” aircraft as “hunter-killer drones,” which is unpleasantly reminiscent of the Terminator series. Never mind that the British forces will be using a satellite communication system designated Skynet.

However, the US hunter-killer drones are not autonomous, but remotely-operated, so they actually have more in common with the “soldierboys” and “flyboys” of Joe Haldeman’s Forever Peace. This is not surprising considering that Forever Peace is more-or-less based on the first Gulf War in the way that The Forever War was more-or-less based on the VietNam War.

[ Posted: 19:43] | [ Category: ] | Permalink | Comments: 0 ]