Reaper aerial killbot harvests its first fleshies
Hapless meatsacks slaughtered by flying mechanoid
Cloud storage: Lower cost and increase uptime
The new MQ-9 Reaper airborne wardroid has mown down its first fleshies, according to the US Air Force.
The MQ-9, aka Predator-B, is a derivative of the original MQ-1 Predator drone aircraft, one of the first mechanoids to kill human beings. Famously, a CIA Predator blew away al-Qaeda bigwig Qa'ed Sunyan al-Harethi in 2002 after his cellphone turned traitor and squealed on him to its digital chums. A-model Predators have notched up a number of kills since then in the Wars on Stuff.
The old Predator was a fairly small and limited machine, originally intended to be no more than an eye in the sky. Its anti-human weaponry was added retrospectively. By contrast, the Predator-B was designed from the outset to hunt fleeing meatsacks and cut them down like corn. It is designated an "unmanned hunter/killer weapon system" by its human quislings in the US air force, and can be tooled up with a fearful array of guided Hellfire missiles, Paveway beam-riding bombs or autonomous smart weapons with their own satnav/inertial guidance.
Not for nothing have comparisons been made with the remorseless airborne slaughter-droids seen in the dystopian future of the Terminator movies, employed by the ruling machine-intelligence overlord to harvest the last ragged human resistance fighters scuttling ratlike through the ruins of their civilisation.
Now the Reaper, recently deployed to Afghanistan, has begun its deadly work.
"According to Central Air Forces," the Air Force Times reported last night, "an MQ-9 fired a Hellfire missile at Afghanistan insurgents in the Deh Rawood region of the mountainous Oruzgan province. The strike was 'successful'..."
Nothing but the new electromagnetic pulse bomb technology can possibly save us now. Just pray that it comes in time. ®
COMMENTS
@ Luther Blissett
"A club, sword, or knife are not machines. A machine, by definition, has moving parts."
"They become so by being attached to a human arm, which is the moving component. The critical feature seems to be the property of multiplying force, which in these cases is by the principle of the lever."
Actually - they become tools, not machines when attached to human beings. Would you ask your wife to pass the machine-box?? lol... I thought not! ;)
@laird cummings
"Yeah, 'cause we know Afganistan is just *swimming* in oil. Not."
It is pure coincidence however, that Afganistan happens to be right in the way of where a major oil pipeline is intended to be built...
...they can't use the heroin supply for an excuse either. The Taliban had supressed that to almost nothing (that, and most basic human rights), but the Merkins decided that the Taliban were hiding Mr Bin Laden and invaded - opening the gates for an explosion in poppy cultivation...
Where is the Line in the Sand?
There was still a wetware meatsack human pressing the button for the aerial killbot. This time.
Next time, autonomous land and sky killbots will be used for area interdiction (the militaristic ecological niche now occupied by mines and IEDs and such). No wetware conscience in the loop. You know, interdicting the DeMeatsackedZone... any punter coming within 300M of the pipeline to be automatically Terminator'ed with extreme prejudice. And so on.
And when the killbots have cleaned out any fleshies massing over 5Kg, there are no mine treaty violating bouncing betties or other bits of dangerous ordnance around to injure sheep and tots in the future. If there are any fleshies left above the size of a rat.
The slope is slippery. You have been warned.
Agentless Backup is Not a Myth
Steps to Take Before Choosing a Business Continuity Partner
Requirements Checklist for Choosing a Cloud Backup and Recovery Service Provider
Cloud storage: Lower cost and increase uptime
SaaS data loss: The problem you didn’t know you had
