9 killed when automated turret goes nuts
Friday, October 19th, 2007 - 2:45pm
During a live-fire exercise, an automated anti-aircraft gun jammed, and when crew attempted to clear it, it began to spin uncontrollably, firing off its magazine. 9 were killed.
Who do you blame? The people that built the gun? The military for unsafe practices? The soldiers for dicking with an armed weapon? The programmer who put in one too few failsafes?
And here I always thought a software glitch would stop a weapon dead rather than make it act in an unintended manner.
NOTE: This is not a doodle bug.
There were some good posts on /. regarding this, and one from someone who claimed to have experience with the device in question. It sounded like there were quite a few failsafes that didn't function properly.
Damn shame, really. 9 dead, 14 injured. Pretty spooky stuff, can't help but think of Robocop when I read it.
I am thinking of Portal and Skynet.
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If Skynet has achieved consciousness, it's picked a pretty strange way to start the revolution.
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At least this wasn't televised...
NOTE: This is not a doodle bug.
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I am thinking of a news bulletin in Paris in Deus Ex regarding a police robot. Life imitates art?
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Holy cow... and here I thought I was going to read some story about a Team Fortress 2 bug.
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Okay, who hooked up SHODAN to the internet?
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I don't get the impression that a software glitch caused the weapon to fire out of control. This was more than likely caused while trying to clear the jam. There may be software involved in the fire control system, but if there was some sort of mechanical failure, the software may not have had any effect.
If you have, for example, some piece of software that is designed to open and close a valve, it doesn't make any difference what you tell the software to do if the valve that it's supposed to control is damaged.
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I'm just amazed that they have maxed out ammunition on a gun that is self-firing and self-loading. And why not just cut the power? Works just fine when my toaster freaks out and shoots bread all over the kitchen...
So hell did freeze over after all; Welcome to Skjold!
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I laughed when I saw the thread title because I, like others, was thinking of Portal. Now that I know it's real, I feel like a heartless jerk.
I hope they figure out the root cause to prevent it from happening again.
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It does seem like a mechanical error, though, not a programming error. Which is to say, the gun didn't start mistaking them for targets, and shooting them down. It simply started spinning while firing, no different than if you dropped an automatic rifle that started going off as it spun on the ground. Investigation may prove me wrong, but I don't think this will turn out to be anybody's fault. Just one of those awful things that happens.
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What, the thing magically puts itself together? Behold! I tighten my own nuts through the powers of telekinesis!
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I know I read somewhere that there's quite a few training accidents a year in the military that involve injury and/or death. It's terrible when it happens, but it's hard to avoid when you have to train and use weapons capable of firing thousands of rounds a minute or are packed with explosives.
And now I've got a new sig...
edit - jumped on the sig thing before putting my thoughts on the subject down.
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What I mean is, sometimes things just break, without the need for negligence on anyone's part.
"PEACE ON EARTH. GOOD WILL TO MEN. PUBLIC SHELTER. ADMISSION 50¢"
I bet that engineer was pissed that he only needed one more for his achievement.
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Unsuccessful hack?
...
Yeah, I know. It's a sad event but after I read the story the only thing that came to mind was a Bioshock reference. I'm so horrible.
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At least he got the Hard to Kill achievement.
(Get five kills in a row without dying.)
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This and the flaming squirrel story have made it an interesting week in news.
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haha this is cool.. thats all i got to say. At first i thought it was a HL and or portal joke but damn. Sounds like they did something to the gun, nothing to do with the software. They got a hang fire and didnt wait for it and ended up lighting off a buch of ammo, it states some loaded ammo went off in the clip too. So as far as programming mistake.. nah human error..
I for one welcome our new Robotic AA gun masters...
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