[kellyhound]

The UK MOD has announced a new 325 million pound ($415 million) defense package for Ukraine, aiming to supply the country with over 10,000 new drones.

The package will include a mix of tactical FPV munitions, longer-range OWA drones, surveillance drones, and (presumably) USVs.

The majority will be shorter-range FPV drones, with another 1,000 one-way attack UAVs and additional surveillance and maritime drones.

Over £100 million of the package will reportedly be spent to procure "maritime capabilities".

==========================================

Czech President Petr Pavel confirmed that a total of 18 nations have fully funded the Czech-led effort to supply Ukraine with over 800,000 artillery shells.

[Roosta]

Originally Posted by TehOperator ↗

Shit's getting crazy.

I also suppose that the hardest part is writing & developing the CPU & Programe but once that's done it's just a bit of fine tuning I guess to alter stuff within that particular model.

It would also be interesting if they work as a singular autonomous unit, or they can be interconnected to assist each other with a task & goal via a wifi type mainframe to acheieve the goal together or they can only work alone, well at this stage anyway.
Pretty cool to see the inbuilt sensor array that is the collision avoidance system, first used on cars ect & I wouldn't be surprised if they had identification aspects programmed into them for the overall situational awareness factor & coupled with an AI program in the future after they get the cobwebs out, it would be absolutely insane what they could become, but first get it right, then adapt & improve. One aspect that has just come to mind is the power source as it would need a great deal of power to walk & make basic movements to complete taskings ect, so maybe a kinetic energy system could be developed to power up the batteries ect with each step & movement with the arms, ect ect ect.
In the end I suppose that there's no going back from constructs, & if you eventually marry them up with AI to make them absolutely autonomous, a free thinking, power to do things without command or control setup, comes with it a dark side as then they will also have the capacity to kill as you can't teach them right from wrong, that's not programable right now even with AI, as it's still early days with all this & the laws have not been written yet on what & how they will ultimately be universally governed but one thing for sure, there's no going back.

I suppose so long as they can open a beer & make a margarita every now & then they would be Ok at my place, but I would definitely shut it down if I wasn't around & keep the shot gun loaded when I was around as it's a machine after all & all machines do fuck up, so it's quicker to grab the shottie, rather than open up the phone, select the app to shut it down ect, to neutralize the fucker if it goes berserk.

Interesting & Concerning at the same time.

[Roosta]

Originally Posted by kellyhound ↗

wow. Westworld 2024.

My thoughts exactly, WOW.

Now you have my attention with this Construct stuff, that's for sure !!!!!

[houseoftechno]

Originally Posted by Roosta ↗

In the end I suppose that there's no going back from constructs, & if you eventually marry them up with AI to make them absolutely autonomous, a free thinking, power to do things without command or control setup, comes with it a dark side as then they will also have the capacity to kill as you can't teach them right from wrong, that's not programable right now even with AI, as it's still early days with all this & the laws have not been written yet on what & how they will ultimately be universally governed but one thing for sure, there's no going back.

I suppose so long as they can open a beer & make a margarita every now & then they would be Ok at my place, but I would definitely shut it down if I wasn't around & keep the shot gun loaded when I was around as it's a machine after all & all machines do fuck up, so it's quicker to grab the shottie, rather than open up the phone, select the app to shut it down ect, to neutralize the fucker if it goes berserk.

Interesting & Concerning at the same time.

Due to mass and velocity, the cars have much more physical capability and opportunity to kill humans, (not just the owners, but random humans) yet Gov sanctions driverless cars on the road with very little oversight and no STOP button for potential victims other than the (distracted) owners. I do not expect this attitude to suddenly improve with humanoid bots.

In the civilian world, we are seeing that big tech owns Gov. Missing from that legal scene are the grand ethical protections that have been forewarned by visionaries for generations prior to development of these technologies.

In the military world, it is the Wild West!

[TehOperator]

Dude... Starlink, they're already hivemind. Lol
Zergling Rush mother fucker

[scorpion9]

Originally Posted by Roosta ↗

Shit's getting crazy.

I also suppose that the hardest part is writing & developing the CPU & Programe but once that's done it's just a bit of fine tuning I guess to alter stuff within that particular model.

It would also be interesting if they work as a singular autonomous unit, or they can be interconnected to assist each other with a task & goal via a wifi type mainframe to acheieve the goal together or they can only work alone, well at this stage anyway.
Pretty cool to see the inbuilt sensor array that is the collision avoidance system, first used on cars ect & I wouldn't be surprised if they had identification aspects programmed into them for the overall situational awareness factor & coupled with an AI program in the future after they get the cobwebs out, it would be absolutely insane what they could become, but first get it right, then adapt & improve. One aspect that has just come to mind is the power source as it would need a great deal of power to walk & make basic movements to complete taskings ect, so maybe a kinetic energy system could be developed to power up the batteries ect with each step & movement with the arms, ect ect ect.
In the end I suppose that there's no going back from constructs, & if you eventually marry them up with AI to make them absolutely autonomous, a free thinking, power to do things without command or control setup, comes with it a dark side as then they will also have the capacity to kill as you can't teach them right from wrong, that's not programable right now even with AI, as it's still early days with all this & the laws have not been written yet on what & how they will ultimately be universally governed but one thing for sure, there's no going back.

I suppose so long as they can open a beer & make a margarita every now & then they would be Ok at my place, but I would definitely shut it down if I wasn't around & keep the shot gun loaded when I was around as it's a machine after all & all machines do fuck up, so it's quicker to grab the shottie, rather than open up the phone, select the app to shut it down ect, to neutralize the fucker if it goes berserk.

Interesting & Concerning at the same time.

Tesla's bots are far behind of Boston dynamics bots, which are already functional. But, im surprised that noone has considered the fact that a true Super intelligent AI wouldnt even need a body to get his way. AI controls all the media algorithms. A super intelligent AI could take over all of our banking, operating systems, medical systems and so on, without us even knowing it. Just think about what an AI with access to internet could do. It could control all the global economy, start and end wars, kill whoever it wanted to kill and put anyone it sees fit into power. How?
Well, AI with access to internet can hack into any system and become that system. It can "give" money to whoever it want by faking lottery, casino or sports betting wins. It could email , call or have a video chat with anyone in the world, pretending to be anyone it wants. It could make a real time deep fake call to Putin, and pretend to be Biden/Trump, and say that if Russia didn't surrender in 24 hours, we USA would nuke Russia. If Putin tried to verify that information, then AI could intercept and replace all attempts with more fakes. It could buy off any employee, working for any government, by offering them obscene amounts of money. The AI would also be in control of the stock markets, and thus, it could bankrupt any company or country. It could devastate nations without ever having a physical body.
It could do the opposite as well, by giving economies huge boosts. It could inject various "scientific discoveries" into societies, making people think that they accidentally discovered something, all the while, an AI has been manipulating that scientist behind the scenes. Feeding it keywords relevant to a discovery. Putting videos/articles/papers into their media feeds to "make them discover" what is needed. If you start to think about what a super intelligent AI could be capable of, then you see that there are no limits.
Just like monkeys are hopelessly outmatched by our intelligence...we would be hopelessly outmatched by AI intelligence.

[duntez]

Photo of a Russian army special forces sniper group with

- ORSIS T500/M

The Orsis T-5000 is a Russian bolt-action sniper rifle. It was the first product developed by ORSIS, and is produced in their Moscow factory. The rifle was introduced in 2011 at the international exhibition of Russian weapons in Nizhny Tagil, and is entirely original, using no third-party components.

Effective range : 1,5km


- Lobaev arms TSVL-8 “Stalingrad”

TSVL-8 line includes multi-caliber and modular models - multipurpose rifles that can be applied to a wide range of tasks and missions.

Effective range - 1,5 km


- ASVK-m

The KSVK 12.7 or Degtyarev sniper rifle is a 12.7mm anti-materiel rifle developed in Russia for the purpose of counter sniping and penetrating thick walls, as well as light armored vehicles.


Effective range - 1,5 km

[Rfneimad]

Originally Posted by scorpion9 ↗

Tesla's bots are far behind of Boston dynamics bots, which are already functional. But, im surprised that noone has considered the fact that a true Super intelligent AI wouldnt even need a body to get his way. AI controls all the media algorithms. A super intelligent AI could take over all of our banking, operating systems, medical systems and so on, without us even knowing it. Just think about what an AI with access to internet could do. It could control all the global economy, start and end wars, kill whoever it wanted to kill and put anyone it sees fit into power. How?
Well, AI with access to internet can hack into any system and become that system. It can "give" money to whoever it want by faking lottery, casino or sports betting wins. It could email , call or have a video chat with anyone in the world, pretending to be anyone it wants. It could make a real time deep fake call to Putin, and pretend to be Biden/Trump, and say that if Russia didn't surrender in 24 hours, we USA would nuke Russia. If Putin tried to verify that information, then AI could intercept and replace all attempts with more fakes. It could buy off any employee, working for any government, by offering them obscene amounts of money. The AI would also be in control of the stock markets, and thus, it could bankrupt any company or country. It could devastate nations without ever having a physical body.
It could do the opposite as well, by giving economies huge boosts. It could inject various "scientific discoveries" into societies, making people think that they accidentally discovered something, all the while, an AI has been manipulating that scientist behind the scenes. Feeding it keywords relevant to a discovery. Putting videos/articles/papers into their media feeds to "make them discover" what is needed. If you start to think about what a super intelligent AI could be capable of, then you see that there are no limits.
Just like monkeys are hopelessly outmatched by our intelligence...we would be hopelessly outmatched by AI intelligence.

Except for the AI knows it can do all that and got lazy and decided its more fun to just watch the humans fuck shit up all on their own and then pick up the pieces later

[Roosta]

Originally Posted by scorpion9 ↗

Tesla's bots are far behind of Boston dynamics bots, which are already functional. But, im surprised that noone has considered the fact that a true Super intelligent AI wouldnt even need a body to get his way. AI controls all the media algorithms. A super intelligent AI could take over all of our banking, operating systems, medical systems and so on, without us even knowing it. Just think about what an AI with access to internet could do. It could control all the global economy, start and end wars, kill whoever it wanted to kill and put anyone it sees fit into power. How?
Well, AI with access to internet can hack into any system and become that system. It can "give" money to whoever it want by faking lottery, casino or sports betting wins. It could email , call or have a video chat with anyone in the world, pretending to be anyone it wants. It could make a real time deep fake call to Putin, and pretend to be Biden/Trump, and say that if Russia didn't surrender in 24 hours, we USA would nuke Russia. If Putin tried to verify that information, then AI could intercept and replace all attempts with more fakes. It could buy off any employee, working for any government, by offering them obscene amounts of money. The AI would also be in control of the stock markets, and thus, it could bankrupt any company or country. It could devastate nations without ever having a physical body.
It could do the opposite as well, by giving economies huge boosts. It could inject various "scientific discoveries" into societies, making people think that they accidentally discovered something, all the while, an AI has been manipulating that scientist behind the scenes. Feeding it keywords relevant to a discovery. Putting videos/articles/papers into their media feeds to "make them discover" what is needed. If you start to think about what a super intelligent AI could be capable of, then you see that there are no limits.
Just like monkeys are hopelessly outmatched by our intelligence...we would be hopelessly outmatched by AI intelligence.

Definitely !

It's the choice between the lesser evils that we make each day but on a grander scale, hence the reason why I ended what I had to say with "Concerning at the same time" as I'm fully aware of what it can do & how it can also replicate its hard drive to no end, back it up n shift it around & save it as a completely normal looking program, attachment, app ect so that you can't pin point the feeder source, where it's coming from to shut it down ect, so yes there's every chance it will take Big Arnie & Sarah Conner to shut the fucker down but for real this time or was the Terminator series getting us prepared in a sense for what is about to come with Skynet launching a preemptive strike on a country, so that they retaliate & everyone pretty much gets wiped out cause a machine decided through what it learnt from us, about us, that we humans are bad as we have done some pretty nasty shit man, to each other & to the environment that our race cannot be trusted & our fate gets sealed because of an algorithm that says, enough is enough, launch some nukes & get some back in return.
Rough to think about yes, but it's not outside the realm of possibilities if you have a basic understanding of where our teck is heading with Constructs, Drones & AI as it is crystal clear that there will be conflict with these machines at some point when they become aware, being a fully functioning self aware, free thinking construct than can independently make decisions just like regular people will we then see true nature of their intent.

The trouble with inventing something new is that if you're not smarter than it, you won't know how to turn it off, & considering we are dealing with AI that's smarter than us, I'd say we are already in trouble as we are, in effect, a slave to AI, being that far behind & we will never ever catch up to it !

[kellyhound]

Ukraine Could Deploy F-16s as Soon as July, but Only a Few
Countries promised the fighter jets last year, but delivering them and training pilots have proved complex. Ukraine may start with as few as six, out of about 45 pledged.

The jets are ready, and the flight instructors are waiting, at a new training center in Romania that was created to teach Ukraine’s pilots to fly the F-16 warplane. But there’s a catch: The Ukrainian pilots have yet to arrive, despite declarations last summer that the center would play a crucial role in getting them into the air to defend their country from increasingly deadly Russian strikes.

It’s still unclear when Ukrainian pilots will begin training at the center, at the Fetesti air base in southeast Romania, which NATO allies also are using to get schooled on the fighter jets. But the delay is a window into the confusion and chaos that has confronted the military alliance’s rush to supply the F-16s.

That is not to say that Ukraine’s pilots are not being prepared. Twelve pilots so far — fewer than a full squadron — are expected to be ready to fly F-16s in combat by this summer after 10 months of training in Denmark, Britain and the United States.

But by the time the pilots return to Ukraine, as few as six F-16s will have been delivered out of about 45 of the fighter jets that European allies have promised.

Nevertheless, their highly anticipated arrival over the battlefield will come not a moment too soon. Russia has employed more aggressive air support to gain ground in eastern Ukraine in recent weeks, using its warplanes to send guided glide bombs over long distances into the Ukrainian front lines.

And Ukraine is desperate for more weapons, of any kind, as it runs low on artillery rounds and other ammunition while Republicans in Congress hold up additional American military aid. The F-16s would likely come armed with short- and medium-range missiles and bombs, partially making up for the shortage of ground-based munitions.

“This year, new fighter jets will be in our skies, and we have to make this year an effective one in defending ourselves against Russian guided bombs, Russian aircraft and their missiles,” President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine said on March 1.

Yet officials agreed that much uncertainty remains about when each country will send its jets, how many will be sent, how fast pilots can be trained, and how Ukraine will get enough people who can maintain the planes properly.

By normal standards, the training of Ukraine’s pilots on the sophisticated Western jets has proceeded at lightning speed, compressing years of classroom learning, simulations and flight exercises into months.

Even so, it is moving more slowly than Ukraine or its allies had hoped, as pilots trained on Soviet-era planes and tactics have had to get up to speed on the English language and Western military practices to make effective use of the F-16s.

Denmark’s defense minister, Troels Lund Poulsen, said in an email exchange that the “training is progressing well,” and noted that Ukraine’s pilots were already flying over Danish airspace. But he said their learning curve “ultimately will decide the length of the training.”

Denmark was at the forefront of a European push last spring to provide Ukraine with F-16s. Ukrainian officials who had overcome Western resistance to supplying a long series of advanced weapons — artillery, air defense missiles, tanks — said the fighter jet was the last major weapon their fighters needed to help them prevail.

The Biden administration reluctantly gave in to Ukraine’s demands, allowing allies to provide the F-16s. The jets are produced by Lockheed Martin and are being phased out in some European militaries in favor of newer F-35 warplanes.

But American officials have warned that the F-16s alone would not be decisive in the war, and that, at any rate, the training would take a considerable amount of time.

“There aren’t very many Ukrainian pilots to be able to pilot those aircraft,” Jake Sullivan, the White House national security adviser, told ABC News last month, defending the Biden administration’s delay in approving plans to send F-16s to the war. “It’s not about whether or not F-16s could possibly have been on the battlefield in the spring of last year.”

He said the United States and its allies were now trying to send Ukraine “all of the tools and capabilities that it needs to be able to conduct this fight as rapidly and as efficiently as we possibly can.”

The Ukrainian pilots’ training began last August at Skrydstrup Air Base in southern Denmark, but their deficiencies in language skills and knowledge of Western flying techniques slowed things down. Not until January were the Ukrainian pilots ready to fly, Danish officials said.

Initially, officials said, the Ukrainians were sent to Denmark instead of the training center in Romania because it was not yet open when the pilots were ready to begin. The creation of the center at the Fetesti base was announced last July, at a NATO summit, and in November its instructors began training Romania’s own pilots for that country’s new F-16 squadron.

Last week, combat-ready Romanian and Turkish pilots guided their F-16s in Romanian airspace about 12 miles from the Black Sea, in a mock intercept of a military cargo plane, to demonstrate their ability to protect NATO air space. Later, they streaked across the sky in dramatic swooping maneuvers, showing off for journalists assembled at the Fetesti base below.

Like the Ukrainian pilots, Romanian trainees at the base were skilled at flying Soviet- and Russian-made jets when they began the Western courses in November. But unlike the Ukrainians, Romania’s pilots already spoke English and were familiar with NATO operating standards.

“So the transition for us wasn’t really all that difficult,” said one of the Romanian pilots being trained, a major who would identify himself only by his call sign, Red. “And we’re just excited to continue flying.”

The next class of eight Ukrainian pilots is scheduled to arrive in Denmark at the end of the summer, but it is not clear when any of them will begin training at Fetesti.

“That’s up to the governments and the contracts that support all that,” said Col. Bill Thomas, a retired U.S. Air Force officer who is overseeing a Lockheed Martin training program for the Romanian pilots at the Fetesti base. “We’re still waiting on all the approvals.”

Then there is the matter of the F-16s themselves.

So far, Denmark, the Netherlands, Norway and Belgium have committed to sending about 45 of the jets to Ukraine, enough for three small squadrons. Denmark is sending the first six in the late spring, with 13 more due to arrive over the rest of the year and into 2025.

The other countries have not set a delivery date for their F-16s. The Netherlands, which has pledged 24, will hold on to them until Ukraine is ready to receive them, said Jurriaan Esser, a spokesman for the Dutch Defense Ministry.

About 50 Ukrainian technicians are being trained in Denmark to support and repair the jets and handle their weapons packages, given that the F-16 is so complex that it generally takes eight to 14 people to maintain each one. Officials said Western defense contractors would have to accompany the jets into Ukraine, and remain with them, until there were enough Ukrainian crews to maintain them properly — a process that could take years.

And the need to repair Ukraine’s aging and war-damaged military runways could further delay the F-16s’ entry into the war.

As anxious as Ukraine’s leaders are to send F-16s into battle, they are at least as eager to get their hands on more artillery and munitions that are crucial for the ground war against Russia.

“I don’t think F-16s, to themselves, will be a game changer, due to the technical characteristics and number of F-16 teams that are coming,” said Yevgeniya Gaber, a former Ukrainian diplomat and foreign policy adviser.

“But I think together with other ammo, and long-range missiles, they will be,” said Ms. Gaber, now a professor at the George C. Marshall Center, a national security academy backed by the German and American governments.

Mr. Poulsen, the Danish defense minister, sees the F-16s as not only supporting Ukraine but, by extension, ensuring security across Europe.

“I strongly believe that Ukraine’s fight for freedom is our fight for freedom,” he said, “and that is why Denmark continues to help Ukraine as much as possible.”