The recent trend for using ROV‘s, or remotely operated vehicles, in the theatre of war should be a worrying development for those who understand armed conflict. In long gone days, when men fought with swords and spears, it was a bigger deal to take a life. A combatant could smell his opponent, including the scent of blood and gore of a dying man. He, or she, could look their enemy in the eye and see the fear and pain as their life ebbed away. It would have been an intensely personal experience. Guns removed that intimacy.
It became easier with such mechanized armaments to kill, and scruples became less prominent as ever larger numbers of soldiers and civilians died. In a species that prides itself on becoming more civilized, the Second World War proved that we are still savages, perhaps more so than ever. The numbers of dead, both combatant and civilian, were staggering. Those casualty figures would never have happened if the killings were done by sword.
Missiles, bombs, mines, all took the slaughter to a whole new level. With one bomb, the US military was able to murder as many as 170,000 civilians in Hiroshima on 6th August, 1945 at 08:15. That incident perfectly demonstrated the cruel capabilities of modern warfare that put all that went before to shame.
Today, the distance between killer and killed is increasing at a rapid pace. Drones can be piloted from thousands of miles away as they fire missiles at their targets. The human (inhuman?) operators have no emotional connection to the practice of killing. It therefore becomes easier not only to take a life, but also to live with it after. Targets become figures in a video game. Civilians become ‘collateral damage’.
In the next video, we can see how the Russians have created remotely operated tanks that will kill without conscience. The idea of a remote operator becomes redundant if the machine is programmed to kill within certain parameters. If it was bad before, it becomes worse when the human element is entirely removed from the death selection process. The practice of killing people then becomes factory slaughter. It could be seen as a terrible example of life imitating art as Skynet ,from the Terminator franchise, is upon us. If this proceeds as Rebel Voice believes it will, then it cannot end well for humanity.
Rebel Voice 