http://www.defensenews.com/articles/us-army-dusting-off-volcano-mine-dispensers

The Volcano system can turn a vehicle or a helicopter into something like a Pez dispenser for mines. Volcano was used prior to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but has laid relatively dormant during the last 15 years of war in the Middle East because the Army did not see a role for it there.

Tax dollars at work for "terrain shaping munitions systems", everyone benefits.

From 2023 through 2027, the Army will acquire terrain shaping obstacles and will field an Ottawa-compliant Gator Landmine Replacement, which is a networked munition system in development that will help deny enemy access and use non-lethal means to keep civilians away from dangerous areas.

Oh that gave me the Go Where You Wanna Go ear worm.

I find DefenseNews can be scarily informative while easy to read, but can't take too much of it at once. Like now I can imagine drones in the wild spewing dial-a-nukes because why not it is all possible.
SpaceNews: http://www.defensenews.com/space
Thanks for writing on the absurdity of war. Thanks

fully autonomous A. I. robots equipped with automatic weapons and MANPADS. Sky net saving American lives. The future is so bright my eyes turn away.

Has been pushing drones to the tune of $30 million last year.

http://www.govtech.com/fs/New-York-Makes-Massive-Public-Investment-in-Dr...

He wants a 50 mile "drone corridor" between Utica and Syracuse.

I had an interesting conversation with a military officer involved in weapons research. His attitude, of course, is that the US needs to have technological superiority, whatever it takes.

I then made to point to him that we are legitimizing a world wide race for the most destructive, lethal devices possible. I then pointed out that there is no upper limit to the power of explosive devices. These devices use energy to destroy people and objects and Einstein discovered that e = mc^2, and c, the speed of light, is a very big number and it's squared. The amount of matter in a thermonuclear bomb that is converted to energy is microscopic. The nuclear bomb is not a limit. Then I pointed out that any nation can make a breakthrough that gives them weapons orders of magnitude more powerful than our current weapons. They could, in fact, demand our immediate surrender. You can't predict technological breakthroughs.

Guess what was his response? "Yes, I agree, but don't you think that we should develop these weapons first?"

Few people get it. The development of these weapons in itself is a death sentence for H. Sapiens.

On pundit noted that an enemy does not have to be as high tech as the US. The Iraqis used cell phone detonated bombs to murderous effect. I have read where people have developed simple apps early on to hack into military drones. Hackers have been able to gain control over moving automobiles which rely heavy on distributed computers which have wifi. I believe the Russians have developed devices to disrupt GPS-based guidance system.

The deadly thing about advanced weaponery is that it gives us an sense of being invincible. During the first Gulf War US weaponary totally outmatched the Iraq army and lead to its slaughter. In the actual invasion when the resistance went underground not that effective.

Don't know why, but reminded me of this docu-drama created by National Geographic which was about how would humanity fight a hostile alien invader. It was really about how a technologically inferior war machine fights a superior war machine--answer is that it doesn't. But NG had serious experts talk about the question in insightful ways which really go back to what we have seen around us.

It is a bit long, but well done and entertaining also.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-lj2afg31oU

You are right that everything can be turned on it's head. The dialectic of power moves forward, because technology has no will of its own. When affordable and available, it can be harnessed to serve either side. Unfortunately this is also true, as you note, of dirty bombs and nuclear weapons. I was very interested to see that the water protectors protesting DAPL have been using drones to determine when the police agents were moving and whether they were preparing yet another assault.