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First, read this scenario.
Second, questions. Is the timeframe and the tactics realistic? I have a few doubts about the robot rats, mostly due to the problems of the power systems and the fact that explosives are not as powerful as the scenario presupposes.
Also: if the laws that this paper predicts come to pass, I will engage in nonviolent disobedience by taking a baseball bat to your fuzzy dogbot.
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How exactly do the North Koreans special ops forces infiltrate South Korean society for long enough to place these special robot rats at good overwatch positions near highway junctions? And what kind of transmission technology do they use to broadcast the information from their positions without revealing their positions, and without needing a giant battery? If they use the South Korean civilian cell phone network they are toast.
And yes, the lethal explosives. I am not a demolition expert, but I assume that current high explosives are probably more dense than ordinary building bricks. Just how does one design a special robot rat that can carry a solid brick? Nature's rats can squeeze themselves through tight spaces, but they are not optimized to carry high explosives.
Suggest most effective use of the rat vector would be to return to traditional biological agents, like plague. High level officials are just as dead if they are bitten by an infected rat as blown to pieces by a tiny explosive-hauling robot.
Posted by: Jonathan | February 26, 2014 at 10:28 AM
First answer. No.
Ignores counterbattery fire.
Ignores radio limitations within a structure for UGVs (nontrivial!).
Ignores ISR, big time.
Likewise, airpower seems to be completely ignored as well. ...unless the Chinese are going to give air cover which case this is a whole different war!
This reads like a bad combo of a spy thriller and a real-time strategy game someone played.
The sense I get - including with the robomosquitos - is the fear of unstoppable assassination, right?
Posted by: Will Baird | February 26, 2014 at 12:50 PM
Will: I suspect yes, it's exactly that.
There is something creepy about the robot swarm idea, which also attracts attention. It is coming to future war, of course, but not that soon and not to the obsolescence of all previous tactical and operation art.
Posted by: Noel Maurer | February 28, 2014 at 08:15 PM