When robots attack

[raj]

"We're not used to thinking of them this way.  But many advanced military weapons are essentially robotic -- picking targets out automatically, slewing into position, and waiting only for a human to pull the trigger.  Most of the time.  Once in a while, though, these machines start firing mysteriously on their own.  The South African National Defence Force "is probing whether a software glitch led to an antiaircraft cannon malfunction that killed nine soldiers and seriously injured 14 others during a shooting exercise on Friday.""

http://blog.wired.com/defense/2007/10/robot-cannon-ki.html

I, for one, welcome our new robot overlords.

[Rev. Powell]

We complain about the robots now, but we'll be glad we built them when the dead start rising from their graves.

[Mr_Vindictive]

Looks like it's time to take Sam Waterson up on his Robot Insurance:

[youtube=425,350]http://youtube.com/watch?v=xVnkd7ot_pw

[Andrew]

I was going to complain that they didn't do one, very common thing:  install right and left lateral limit stakes.  It appears that they did, but the steel poles were not sturdy enough to prevent the gun from knocking them down and killing the personnel.

See, when you set up a position, even just a fighting hole for two Marines, you pound stakes (usually we use large sticks) into the ground to prevent yourself from swinging the barrel far enough to the right or left that friendly positions are in danger.  The goal is to keep it from happing when you are souped up on adrenalin or during periods of limited visibility, like nighttime, fog, smoke, etc.  Anyway, you always put these stakes in deep enough so you cannot knock them out when you really smack the rifle or machinegun against them.

They did that, put needed sturdier poles or mountings.  Lesson learned is to make sure your mechanical safety mechanism is capable of withstanding the force(s) is might experience.