The soldier of the future will be "flooded with pain-numbing stimulants," cybernetically enhanced, and, one official sort-of joked, must be eventually "terminated."
sounds like this can only end with lobotomies to make their soliders feel nothing and question nothing
“We could find ourselves in a situation where our soldiers, as talented and trained as they are, are facing an unfair fight because another country is willing to say, ‘Hey, guess what, you, male, are a good aviator. You, female, are a good aviator. You’re gonna make the best aviator babies we’ve ever seen and I don’t care that you’re not married,” he said. The other panelists laughed nervously. “That’s a thing. Are they willing to go that extra step that we are not?”
We must not allow those filthy commies to force us into an aviation eugenics gap!
There needs to be a ban on non-biologists discussing anything related to evolution, genetics, or inheritance because it always ends up in the same dumbass place.
While we're at it, a ban on the military funding any research whatsoever.
They get so hung up on fucking when it is an incomparably more relevant question hypothetically whether some citizens are made to train from childhood.
They are literally describing the 1998 film Solider. I swear these fkers saw that movie, have probably watched it 50 times and rather than thinking it's a cautionary tale about the US direction toward militarism instead took it as a guidebook.
Movie is worth a watch if you haven't seen it. Has the trainers raising the children like chattel. When one of the 10 year old kids can't keep up during a run, the trainer has him stop then puts him down like a lame race horse. The other children hearing the gunshot after they are out of sight is motivation or something. The main character has flashbacks to various campaigns he fought in and honestly they are battlefields the US military is already foaming at the mouth to start wars on. Scenes like slaughtering Chinese settlements on the moon and planting American flags kinda stuff.
Don't bother with the squeal, it's trash like most from that era and the first movie was only okay not great. The sequel is all about the wholesome eugenics breading program soliders being morally better than the genetically engineered test tube baby soliders. American brained morality.
mfw the pilots whose grandparents I selectively bred to be good at flying biplanes suck at piloting jet fighters. Maybe that's the real reason the F35s keep crashing.
they literally used a picture of master chief in some social media advertising for this panel. a man who was kidnapped as a child by a militaristic state to be made into a living killing machine stripped of all humanity he ever had. they're definitely not being subtle about it.
: "Evil Empire? You believe in evil? Pah, morality is for the weak! This will make us better at war and that is all that matters! You're too caught up in your feelings, and that's weakness! Yes, I am a traditionalist Christian, why'd you ask?"
I've said it before and I'll say it again, the right likes to brag that they're chaotic neutral, but they're the textbook example of lawful evil.
I always get confused with these things like I understand what you’re saying, but what’s the difference between lawful evil and chaotic evil besides writing it down in the big book that says “the law” on it?
If you're in combat and your squadmate in front goes down you have to pick up their prosthetic nekomimi and tail, graft them to yourself and keep fighting
I updated my whatsapp too close to the barracks and now all my cybernetically linked super soldiers are perfectly and uncontrollably making the notification sounds with their mouths, please help
If your goal is to not look like fascists and undeniably the baddies then pictures like this are not the way to go about it:
Seriously, if you want to provide complete and total moral justification to every single resistance movement in the world then this is the way to do it. Literally making yourself into a caricature of the science fiction baddies that are opposed and eventually defeated in every piece of science fiction ever.
The Pentagon is looking toward a future where the U.S. deploys “super soldiers” directly inspired by Captain America and Iron Man, officials said at a recent conference.
I think this is necessitated by the fact they have fewer and fewer and fewer people willing to do it. So what they want to do is get the same value out of fewer men.
The thing about super soldiers is also that they're just as likely to coup you as your average soldiers but you're making them significantly more capable of doing it.
The thing about super soldiers is also that they're just as likely to coup you as your average soldiers
This is vibes based analysis, but I doubt this. How often are special forces types involved in coups elsewhere? My impression was that the tactical operator types in the US were given carte blanche to run wild and do whatever they want. Why would they revolt? Lower level grunts that are paid and trained worse, exposed to more regular danger and are lower in the military hierarchy seem more likely to do cool stuff. Again though, vibes based analysis so I'm open to being wrong.
Lower level grunts that are paid and trained worse, exposed to more regular danger and are lower in the military hierarchy seem more likely to do cool stuff.
That's not usually what happens, typically it's a group of high-rank officers that split the military while having profiles that are large enough among the rank and file for them to remain loyal as they're trusted more than the politicians that they're opposing. This kind of thing usually requires someone to have a necessarily high profile among the military in order to split the armed forces in such a way that your split is stronger than the side that remains loyal to the existing government. You don't really get that by being nobodies in the lower ranks.
This is like that scene in Animatrix when the UN soldiers are shoving needles into their arms before going on a drug-fueled rage and still losing to the machines.
I can only use fiction to relate to this because that description sounds like some Elon Musk level bullshit.
This is unironically something we should be encouraging. Just because they don’t feel pain and are unthinking killing machines does not make them invincible, in fact it makes them super vulnerable. Are you gonna make their bones out of titanium? gonna give them diamond skin? You’d pretty much have to. People in general are vulnerable, but the response to fear and pain are our two biggest tools to help us learn what is and is not dangerous. People who are genetically immune to pain from those rare diseases don’t usually make it to adulthood because they end up harming themselves and not realizing it’s a life threatening injury.
Exactly. Also the idea that after everything we’ve seen from Ukraine and how important things like artillery, production capacity, and infrastructure are to modern war they STILL just wanna make fucking Spartans from halo a reality. Infantry is important, but there’s a reason it’s not called the king of the battlefield.
this is just wild conjecture, but i think that wearable technology is going to be more feasible than anything implanted. AFAIK one of the main issues with implants, especially those that have to interface with nerves, tend to be treated by the immune system as invasive bodies, and scar tissue is formed blocking the neural connections, and AFAIK we haven't made any significant progress to overcome that.
more feasible than cyborgs, i think enhanced AR equipment and wearable tech like non-invasive brain activity reading equipment will be easier to develop and deploy in a realistic way. helmets with comms, air filtration/oxygen supply, AR visuals with aimpoint tracking and display, gun-cameras linked to helmets and goggles to fire without leaving cover, even indirect vision systems (instead of goggles, the helmet has external cameras linked to an interior feed) to protect from certain weapons and systems like eye-targeting laser weapons and flashbangs. 'smart bullets' that work kinda like JDAMs maybe, able to be guided to a specific GPS coordinate after being fired into the air (like with 'plunging fire' on traditional MGs but more accurate). infantry-portable drones and drone control systems and drone defenses (thermal camouflage, EW weapons, etc.). drug injectors sure, even implanted, they don't need to interface with nerves. thats the kind of stuff i would expect, not this robocop shit.
bonus content edit: oh yeah and i also expect exoskeletons, especially non-powered or passive exoskeletons for bearing weight, to be more of a thing relatively soon. and, as much as i want mechs to be real, we are probably a few generations of tech away from that kind of thing being a mature enough field and economical enough to deploy in place of traditional equipment, and even in the unlikely even they prove to be useful tactically they are probably not going to be as large as a gundam or mechwarrior battlemech or star wars AT-AT or anything, more like a robot ATV or jeep with legs and arms, maybe something approaching the size of an armored car at most. anything bigger will have too much trouble with ground pressure compared to a tank. in fact before legged mecha i bet we will see tanks and other traditional combat vehicles with exterior mounted robotic arms to help with reloading externally mounted weapons and other tasks, like tank or armored car centaurs. we already have indirect vision systems on tanks and cars, its a natural evolution to have indirect manipulators. even given the possibilities of ground combat drones with no human crew, i don't think it will be difficult to convince militaries to strap a budding young war criminal inside to take all of the legal blame if things go wrong (to protect weapon manufacturers from liability) and to guide or override the machine software in ambiguous situations (snow, dust, tactically or politically sensitive situations, contested electronic warfare environments, etc.), after all we still put teenagers in tanks, and an automated or at least semi-autonomous remote piloted tank seems relatively feasible with todays tech, i'm sure militaries would do it if it was viable tactically/politically/socially.
instead of goggles, the helmet has external cameras linked to an interior feed
Ironically enough, all the work done by Meta and Valve on VR headset lense technology is what has pushed feasibility on that forward. It's difficult creating a set of lenses that fit within the 1 inch zone between eyes and screens to bring them into focus, while also having it be universal for all face/eye types. Gonna laugh my ass off if Meta or Valves patents on that tech results in one of them becoming military hardware vendors.
tanks and other traditional combat vehicles with exterior mounted robotic arms to help with reloading externally mounted weapons and other tasks, like tank or armored car centaurs
Are you telling me that armored core mech with tank tread legs is actually a viable idea?
maybe if you replace the mech torso with a more traditional turret, i'm thinking something more along the lines of a normal tank with 1 or 2 arms on the outside, maybe 1 on the top or side or rear of the turret for reloading the MGs or AT missile tubes without exposing the crew, maybe 1 on the front or side of the lower hull for picking up debris, equipment, or wounded friendlies and the like, or maybe bigger arms on the lower hull for combat engineering tasks like digging, moving obstacales, EOD, etc.
in a bipedal or even quadrupedal mech the torso height could be less important, because a legged mech could hypothetically go prone or otherwise take cover/adjust posture to reduce its profile. on a traditional tank chassis however a tall torso would probably be a liability, unless it was unintuitively flat in design for what we might expect from a mecha torso
ALTHOUGH even on the AC style tank-legs humanoid-torso-and-arms mech, if we put the main weapons somehow in the arms or held by the arms and hands of the vehicle, it could hypothetically hold its weapon in such a way as to shoot without leaving cover positions, assuming the weaponry has remote camera gunsights linked to crew station screens. this is true for pretty much any mech design and is almost never considered by mecha media or fiction. but even a basic-ass 'tank with a huge robot-arm-with-a-gun for a turret' kind of vehicle could shoot 'around cover' like this without the neccesary advances in robotic legs we probably need for bipedal or quadrupedal (or even more legs) mechs. additionally putting weapons in or on robot arms would allow greater freedom of movement, allowing the vehicle to aim the cannon higher than any traditional tank turret design.
If we’re gonna go down this path they better put out a consumer version of whatever this tech that floods you with pain numbing stimulants is because I will need it
Yeah but there's a difference between doing heroin (lame, boring, difficult to acquire) and doing some cool cyberpunk drug like "Blackout" or "Oblivion" that comes in a flashy 8-pack from the nearest vending machine.
Microsoft recently delivered prototype goggles for the military that displays a HUD. The military said the kids who grew up playing video games will now become soldiers, and it’s important to train them in an environment they’re used to (maps, compass, friendly indicator, etc.)
Imagine instead of promotions, you get just a pop up in your HUD telling you that you received an air strike because you killed 5 guys
This is Sci fi shit and even if the technology wasn't magic atm it would still be a bad idea if it worked as planned. That gives you Star Wars Prequel Battle Droid soldiers. Taking away an aspect of someone's psyche generally doesn't make them better at stuff that is incredibly complex and chaotic like modern war is.
Also who would sign up for this? Maybe a few ultra chuds, maybe they could sell it to some idiots, but recruitment in general is down. Getting a mandatory emotion wipe for joining isn't gonna boost numbers.
Taking away an aspect of someone's psyche generally doesn't make them better at stuff that is incredibly complex and chaotic like modern war is.
A factor in why the Soviet Red Army, Vietnam People's Army, and Chinese People's Liberation Army proved better at winning wars of attrition against enemies like the US, Germany, and Japan. The US, Germany, and Japan since the WW2 era have dosed their frontline soliders on high doses of amphetamine. Methamphetamine was first used by the Japanese military, it was also adopted by their German allies who gave it to all their soliders in WW2. For Germany methamphetamine was a major factor in offensives collapsing, German military units would push non stop without sleeping for days, after a week their frontline units were hallucinating and having full psychotic breaks deep behind enemy lines.
The US at the same time had discovered another amphetamine, dextroamphetamine aka dexedrine and its more potent form adderall. Returning US soliders after WW2 were so addicted to it that dexedrine was sold in grocery stores and gas stations until it was finally made prescription only in the late 1970s early 1980s. It was used by most Americans and we just blackholed the fact that the US issue with amphetamine abuse started as a result of pumping all US service members full of it in WW2.
Dextroamphetamine is still heavily used by the US military for air force, navy, and special forces— discussion of it only comes up after US fighter pilots lose their shit after being kept awake flying combat air patrols for over 48 hours, start hallucinating and drop all their ordinance on Canadian ground forces. The US also feeds their JSOC forces (seals, delta, etc) a cocktail of nandrolone (19-nortestosterone) and dextroamphetamine, which goes a long way to explaining the insane violence (murder sprees, dismemberment, decapitation) that they are always getting up to when terrorizing the communities living within 50 miles of Fort Liberty (formerly fort brag). Like what do they expect after pumping already violent men full of anabolic steroids and amphetamine at the same time?
i mean they will probably do that as well, but we are a way off from completely replacing humans for things like hostage rescue, seizing infrastructure without damaging it, acting in poor visibility, operating in theaters with contested electronic warfare capabilities, and other ambiguous, complicated, or politically sensitive tasks. especially ground drones don't perform well in poor visibility and unpredictable terrain. to make a drone cheap they use cameras instead of LIDAR, so its harder to program software to interpret the visual data. with LIDAR it would have distance data as well and could compensate for things like dust and weather and lighting at least. but then the drones would be too expensive to use in many scenarios. and remote operated drones can be hacked or at least jammed and cut off from commands, resorting to preset behaviors and retreat routes, more and more militaries and groups will have more and more EW capability as the tech is cheaper to produce.
to make a drone cheap they use cameras instead of LIDAR
Can't use LIDAR in most military applications not due to cost but because it makes your vehicles and drones into a beacon that can be seen for miles through not just infrared optics but even shitty digital cameras. Most people don't realize this unless they live somewhere companies are testing self driving cars and sidewalk delivery robots. First time you see them on digital security camera, it's a real "wtf is that" moment.
You don't notice this with the naked eye because LIDAR systems all have their lasers tuned to the near-infrared spectrum (like an ir TV remote) but with a standard CMOS camera sensor it looks like the vehicle has a lighthouse installed on it. With smart phone cameras made in the last 7 or so years because they added a filter to remove it so people's pictures/video don't get randomly fkd up.