Drones Could Blacken Battlefield Skies

Yikes!

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/drone360/2015/04/06/darpas-swarming-drones/#.V1zwRPkrKUk

Someday, everybody fights with drones. Nobody gets hurt, humane warfare, good engineering jobs designing better drones.

My drones say your drones stink..
Del

OK, Del. I can take a hint. I'll wash them today.

But with all-drone warfare, how do you keep score? Have we already looked down that bath before?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Taste_of_Armageddon

That episode was based on an assumption, obviously by liberal minded Hollywood types, that the warring parties were very civilized and quite ready to accept a "draw" via diplomacy to avoid fighting it out to the last man standing. That is not reality, especially if you consider the radical religious zealots as we battle now. They are apparently willing to fight to their death, and probably every ones death, for their viewpoint.

But they were not accepting a 'draw,' they were fighting on and on and on, until Kirk 'helped' by breaking the system. If he had not shown up, they would have kept on fighting until one side or both were wiped out. They only agreed to talk in the face of seeing the war firsthand.

Yes and I bet a CHAFF cloud or flak fire mess them up pretty good as well. With the ability to fight wars at range with little cost of human life, warfare can be even more common.

Moving from unmanned to autonomous is a huge leap, considering that unmanned isn't very well liked (especially by current US enemies).

Using the colloquial "drone" is misleading in the sense that we apply it now to unmanned, or in the sense that the Air Force refers to them, remotely piloted (RPA).

These swarm vessels aren't "piloted" at all. This development in thinking removes the human factor.

A decent movie to watch about this new technology is Good Kill: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3297330/

The movie is worthwhile If you ignore the rating and watch for its technical and political content.

My first reaction was as yours - that autonomous was a leap closer to the point of losing control.

I don't know any of the particulars, but I'm thinking that likely the decisions made by the autonomous units are primarily navigational, similar to the type made by self driving cars, in response to commands like "surround the enemy ship".

I would hope that any combat decisions would be made by humans on board the ship.