Robot + Super Gun = 'Crowd Control'

What do you do with a robot armed with a million-round-per-minute gun? "Crowd control," naturally. For several months, Metal Storm, the troubled electronic gun developer, has been working with iRobot -- the makers of military machines and cute, semi-autonomous vacuum cleaners -- to arm some of their new, 250-pound unmanned ground vehicles. Last week, at a defense trade show, the two firms showed off the results of their joint venture.

Metal Storm's weapons fire bullets electronically, instead of with firing pins and primer. The ammunition is stacked, rather than mechanically reloaded. And the only moving parts in the weapon are the ammunition itself. Which means the weapon can fire at a rate of thousands of rounds per minute -- maybe even up to a million, theoretically.

Metal Storm's 40mm weapons mount, the company tells us, can deliver both high-explosive and less-lethal rounds. Which makes it perfect for everything from urban assaults to "border patrol" to "infrastructure protection" to "crowd control."

Ordinarily, iRobot's military bots have been used to look out for terrorists and their improvised bombs. But, in the last year, the company has made a push into armed robotics, signing deals with stun-gun maker Taser and with Metal Storm. Its rival, Foster-Miller, has already tried out its machines with Metal Storm weapons, and has three machine gun-toting 'bots in Iraq. Because of safety concerns, however, they're not seeing much action. Not even crowd control.

See photo at link.
http://blog.wired.com/defense/2008/05/metal-storm-iro.html

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Meet Mr. Tesla Coil :hi:

start building "tesla rifles" just in case.

Hell, I wonder what an EMP rifle would do.

Somewhere there's an article about it on DU.

n/t

After a Will Smith movie in which robots tried to take over the world and subjugate the human race?

Their PR firm must love their jobs.

Oh, and BTW, when they say "Because of safety concerns, however, they're not seeing much action. Not even crowd control", they might be referring to this:

"His understanding is that “the gun started moving when it was not intended to move.” In other words, the SWORDS swung around in the wrong direction, and the plug got pulled fast. No humans were hurt, but as Fahey pointed out, “once you’ve done something that’s really bad, it can take 10 or 20 years to try it again.”"

http://www.popularmechanics.com/blogs/technology_news/4258103.html

but we're talking about defense contractors here...most likely the latter.

inevitably lead to a draconian police state here at home with a continuous loss of privacy and freedom.

When a few corporations control the police or military via robots, the humans lose their power, the corrupted "leaders" don't need approval from the citizenry anymore. They won't even need to use fake propaganda to sell a war if robots are doing the fighting.

For profit prisons, for profit insurance dominated health care, The Orwellian "War on Drugs", robot warriors and the eternal war against terrorism.

I believe the American People are most assuredly becoming enslaved to corporations.

I also believe this is just the latest example of what former President Eisenhower warned against during his fare well address when he said.

"In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together."




http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x763086





Thanks for the thread, Joanne98.

No, not troubling at all.

I can't imagine that anyone on earth has enough imagination to see where this might go wrong. I mean, surely Hollywood could have come up with a story about this by now if there were any possible complications, right?

Sometimes called anti-material rifles.

It can fire at most a couple hundred rounds in a small fraction of a second, and then it is out of ammo. To reload it, you have to replace all the gun barrels. The "million rounds per minute" is a rate, not a round count, though the general public (and apparently the writer of the article) don't know that.

So no, it can fire a couple hundred rounds in a minute (or a half hour, for that matter), then it's done until serviced.