The Terminator Files Forum

http://news.ninemsn.com.au/technology/7 ... us-marines

T-Fans are everywhere.

Cool. Even the metal underneath looks like a T-800 model. Robotic mannequins on segways wearing hoodies...what will we think of next?!

The blob-like robot that plays after didn't look right for some reason, but the video that played after that one, South Korea deploys killer robots, reminded me of the Skynet promotional video that plays in the lobby right before entering the T2:3D ride. Samsung = Skynet

Thanx! Will be posted in Terminator Weekly Review, next sunday.

Okay, so we have no new jobs in the US, the highest unemployment in decades, and the highest deficit of any country in the world, yet we have money, $57 MILLION DOLLARS to spend OUTSIDE OF THE COUNTRY for "Pop-Up Terminators" we don't even need?! Well the hell is wrong with orange cardboard pop-ups? Reading shit like this just pissing me off, and it's not a very pratical use of a Terminator at that!

Skynet had it right the first time, Humonoid Endoskeleton design for Urban Infiltration Search and Destroy tactics.

Hmm... Are you sure you read the article and watched the video? We're not talking about pop-up targets. It's about robots that "walk" along city streets and mimic moving pedestrians. The whole idea is to have moving targets that act human, including the somewhat unpredictable patterns of human movement. They can scatter when the shooting begins, to simulate panic. They are meant for sniper training, to provide snipers with more realistic training than static targets or targets on rails. Hitting a moving target is a lot harder than hitting a stationary one--especially when the target does not move along a fixed path at a fixed pace. Short of shooting at actual humans, those targets are about as good as it gets for training snipers to handle real-world conditions.

All the more reason to create a computer simulation environment to save costs. It just looks like a complete waste of our money. Technological advance is great, but not when you continue borrowing against your own country's future.

I say we just remove humans from strategic defense and install one supercomputer, a defense network computer, and trust it to run it all. I mean, you could always unplug it if something went wrong, right? Wouldn't that be a much better allocation of funds?

A simulation isn't necessarily cheaper. If anything, it introduces a lot of additional expenses. In that robot scenario, the targets are the only technology in use. The humans still have to perform real physical tasks in a real physical environment with a real gun shooting real bullets affected by real physics. How much is the cost going to skyrocket when the entire training environment has to be simulated in minute detail? The snipers would need VR gear to perceive the virtual environment, the guns would need sophisticated motion sensors to track movement, and force feedback would have to be simulated or disregarded. How would the simulator accurately simulate the effect of forcing a locked door open, climbing up three flights of stairs, and opening a window to fire from an improvised position? You'll still have to build a physical environment, otherwise the snipers aren't performing the actual physical actions they would perform in reality. It's even worse that way because the VR then has to match the physical environment the snipers are moving through. VR isn't automatically cheaper, and it simply cannot come close to simulating the effects of dirt, wind, temperature, glare, weight, and more that constantly affect people in real-world environments. Practicing against real-world moving targets means that the sniper can become proficient with the exact firearm that he/she will use in the field--not some idealized virtual approximation.


Unarmed targets that simulate moving pedestrians are the least of our concerns, considering the sorts of autonomous machines that already exist, but that's pretty funny.

It wouldn't be a Virtual Reality simulation. Not where you would wear all the VR gear, like helmets, and gloves. It's not like that. Basically it's just a rear-screen projected environment that accurately pinpoints where you are aiming just like they presently do with laser tag weapons in the military. You save a tremendous amount of money in ammunition spent, time to build real-world sets, but also it's a controlled environment that doesn't have the soldier covered in dirt, rain, and mud. Yes it is true that soldiers need to have actual touch and feel training areas, but that's not something that can always be acheived or needs too. Someitmes, it's simply not practical to go all big budget movie for a training arena. Now, the military currently doesn't use the lastest Battlefield Bad Company graphics, hell they barely use Armend Assault graphics. The kind of processing they use for their simulations is more akin to 8 or more year technology, like Delta Force or Operation Flashpoint: Cold War Crisis. It's usually something that doesn't take a lot of effort to graphically design and input into the training but rather something that is manageable.

I still say the "Wargames" situtation would work. Never did finish that movie, W.O.P.R. seemed to worked great. Lol, just kidding!

Projection screens are still inadequate, as they don't allow for practicing the maneuvers necessary for setting up a good position.

The military already has some very extensive training environments for other purposes, and some training environments are actually pretty cheap to pull off. Abandoned housing at George AFB has been used for training exercises, and there's no shortage of decommissioned military facilities. Even if a training facility has to be built from scratch, it's not all that expensive to mock up buildings. They don't need to add electricity, plumbing, or high-dollar furniture and working appliances. They already do that sort of thing anyway for other sorts of training exercises. Just look up 'MOUT Training'.

Also, we're talking about sniper training. They're not going to burn through ammo the way belt-fed machineguns do. Even the "laser tag" done by the military requires the use of blanks with their MILES gear, so they're not actually saving on ammo costs.

Considering how much the military spends on all sorts of other things, $57 million for high-quality sniper training doesn't sound so bad. After all, the robots are reusable and could conceivably be used for other types of training.

Until you pierce thru one of their weak points and damage the interior circuitry. And you're, 57 million isn't a lot compared to other "projects." However, I don't have 57 million on hand, and I consider it a tremendous amount of money. That's where the divide is for me.

When you go to the grocery store and you have a budgey planned out before you go, you find out that what the store ad says (which is what you were given the mail and used it to sell your purchases to your wife, lol) is lower than what it'll scan for in the store because they found out after they printed it that it'll cost more money to package the product. You don't just go, "well, okay, my wife(the American people, Congressmen and women) said it was okay to buy it at the price in the ad, and seeing as how she said it was okay she really wants the product at any cost so we'll get it." And even though it's more than what was budgeted, just because you "think" you have "overdraft protection(hope that your country will survive long enough to pay all the bills)" is not a good reason to buy something that'll have cost overruns. This happens with every little thing that gets tacked on. And in a project like what we're discussing, and it has far more better applications than just for sniper training(even if that's what they're selling it as), we can already see that, and I would almost guarantee that it'll end up costing more than $57 million dollars.

Even it's just $63 million at the end, then how do we account for the extra $6 million more than they quoted us? How do we justify that? $57 millions dollars for a targeting system that isn't even going to last past it's planned operational goal.

How do we justify that when we go home to our wife and say, well honey, I know you're sick and hungry but we can't grow, or allow you to purchase any food because of the security training system we installed around the house. We need the money for the maintence and upkeep of this system. I'm pretty sure a divorce(revolution/civil disorder) would be in the cards for that marriage.

The part they're shooting at is on the top, and the part with the sophisticated electronics is at the bottom. It would take a seriously shitty sniper to accidentally damage the equipment, and potential breakage will be an issue with just about anything. Those robots are not unique in that regard.


This applies to just about everything the government does. It applies to everything from office equipment to billion-dollar airplanes. I hate cost overruns just as much as the next person, but if it has to happen, I'd rather it happen on a comparatively small project with obvious training benefits and potential for other applications, than on a multi-billion dollar project of questionable utility. At least I can be certain that quality sniper training will benefit grunts in the field.

A sniper in training for sure, lol!

Orange cardboard pop-ups have more limited tactical mobility. 57 million USD is quite small for US military purchase. When it comes to military equipment purchases from foreign country, especially allied one that purchases lot more of US stuff than US buy their kit. Often military equipment sales come with offset trades, those are bit less common now when compared how it used to be in past, but when country X buys stuff from country Y for amount A, Y usually agrees buy stuff from X for amount B. I wouldn't surprised if this would be connected to Australian purchases from USA, quite recently they have bought M1A2 tanks, S-70 helicopters, F/A-18E/F fighters and MLU's and additional weaponry to older A/B-model Hornets in their inventory.



I agree fully. Training isn't definitely place any military should skimm on costs. It isn't the equipment that decides the battles most of time, it's quality of folks that crew that equipment.

Training aids are one of those things you need for training soldiers. Live fire exercises is one of most motivating and challenging parts of military training, virtual reality and computer games doesn't simulate sleep deprivation, exhaustion, weight of equipment, noise, recoil, back blast of recoilless rifle/rocket or missile launch, cold/heat/rain and hunger as well as real thing. This isn't going to replace blank rounds, blank firing adapters and miles gear, but it adds to realism of more traditional live fire exercises. Probably group that is going to benefit most from this are snipers, rest of troops to will get more realistic training possibilities. You can't add blank firing adapter on many sniper rifles, might have something to do with muzzle devices used on those and keeping muzzle of rifle intact, it has quite effect on accuracy. Muzzle brakes and flash hiders of assault rifles are quite different in their design, those are meant for attaching stuff like quick release silencers, rifle grenades and blank firing adapters amongst other things like accuracy and recoil suppression, snipers rifles comparable part is designed purely for accuracy and recoil management. Besides laser doesn't have ballistic drop and isn't effected by weather like bullet is.

There is difference between costs of real bullets and blanks, it just might not be much on volumes individual customer would buy... military buys ammo in production lots of millions of rounds, private citizen usually buys anything from couple dozen to couple hundred rounds at one time. When it comes to recycling used brass, standards for blanks are lower when it comes what kind of pressure case must withstand. Case that is not suitable for reloading live round, might be used to reload blank round.



I find little ironic that OpF and ARMA are technically very much related to VBS that very many western armies use as training aid. OpF, ARMA and VBS use same engine, different development generations of it and are made by same firm. VBS just is less entertaining and more realistic in it's content. Many armies also use Steel Beasts as tank simulator. Those aren't only computer games that have ended up forked development to training simulators.