SWORDS
The SWORDS robot is a 200 pound UMV (Unmanned Ground Vehicle) that looks a lot like a tank, but on a much smaller scale. It has a max speed of 4 miles per hour, and it wields an M249 light machine gun.I have no idea what SWORDS stands for, but I assume one of the S's stands for Skynet.
Italian or French?
I'm not quite sure whether to believe that this device is italian or french. Italian because it changes sides with very little prompting, or French - because the program that launched this device has surrendered at first challenge.I suppose you could postulate that it is swiss - having exhibited qualities of both the French and Italians and once having sniffed the battlefield it packed up and went home.
What Happened?
Apparently, as soon as these little guys hit the ground in Iraq, they began pointing their guns at friendly soldiers - something the soldiers didn't like very much. The bright side is that the program was immediately killed - being that no soldiers were willing to accompany these things into an unfriendly area.The flip side is that it's cousins - devices like Warrior X700 and the MAARS UGV are either slated to hit the ground soon or are already deployed, as well as a series of drone aircraft like the Reaper. These devices have not yet shown a predication to shoot at friendly warriors, but they could just be biding their time :).
I like the idea of having robots fight our wars for us, but if there are two things that have become abundantly clear to me - programmers rarely do their jobs as well as they should, and governmental entities rarely choose their developers wisely. It just seems like a recipe for disaster.
Discuss The Terminator Lives
