Folks have probably already seen this story from the AP:

BALAD AIR BASE, Iraq (AP) – The airplane is the size of a jet fighter, powered by a turboprop engine, able to fly at 300 mph and reach 50,000 feet. It’s outfitted with infrared, laser and radar targeting, and with a ton and a half of guided bombs and missiles. The Reaper is loaded, but there’s no one on board. Its pilot, as it bombs targets in Iraq, will sit at a video console 7,000 miles away in Nevada. The arrival of these outsized U.S. “hunter-killer” drones, in aviation history’s first robot attack squadron, will be a watershed moment even in an Iraq that has seen too many innovative ways to hunt and kill.

Me: Aside from tech-porn aspects of this story, I find this whole topic fascinating. As embryonic as this example is, it does close the gap between sci-fi scenarios and reality. I suspect there will always be a need for soldiers, but it’s becoming increasingly imaginable that we will one day let machines do a lot of our fighting for us. We already have machines doing a sizable chunk of our space exploration, not to mention bomb squad work. But, the day when a really large amount of our fighting is conducted by soulless automatons may not be as far off as it seems. Indeed, in a sense we’re further along in this regard than we may think. Long range missiles are just a crude machine-substitute for manned tanks and soldiers. Who’s to say that this process won’t become ever more refined? The sci-fi scenarios usually imagine machines fighting machines or, in the case of Matrix-and-Terminator-type-tales, smart machines fighting smart humans. But doesn’t that skip a few chapters? Obviously, one nation-state will have this capability long before others will, and it’s hard (though not impossible) to imagine that that nation-state will be anyone but us. We already are groping with how to deal with war in an age when the domestic population doesn’t need to join the effort the way it did during total wars of the past. Imagine the fascinating — and no doubt grim — ethical quandaries that would/will arise when it’s possible to go to war without even putting troops in harm’s way. Update: From a reader: Turn on the scepticism: “ Its pilot, as it bombs targets in Iraq, will sit at a video console 7,000 miles away in Nevada.” The time lapse for a signal from Iraq to Nevada and back could cause a real problem with an aircraft traveling 300 mph (roughly 450 feet a second). Although if Reid was at the controls it wouldn’t matter, he’d just attempt to fly it back to the U.S.