Robotic cannon turns killer
Nine soldiers dead and 11 injured by "friendly fire"
A SOFTWARE glitch in a robotic cannon resulted in the death of nine soldiers and injuries to 11 others.
South African National Defence Force brigadier general Kwena Mangope says the cause of the malfunction is still unknown.
According to The Star the fully loaded Oerlikon GDF-005 jammed before there was an explosion. It then opened fire uncontrollably, killing and injuring the soldiers.
The anti-aircraft weapon is designed to use passive and active radar, as well as laser target designators range finders, to lock on to "high-speed, low-flying aircraft, helicopters, unmanned aerial vehicles and cruise missiles. "
The gun's onboard computer feeds targeting data from the fire control unit a pair of 35mm guns, and reloads on its own when it has emptied its magazine.
The Star said that a female artillery officer risked her life in a desperate bid to save members of her battery from the gun.
But she could not stop the swinging gun as it sprayed hundreds of high-explosive 0,5kg 35mm cannon shells around the five-gun firing position.
All the soldiers could do was wait for the gun to empty its twin 250-round auto-loader magazines and pick up the pieces.
More here. µ
Comments
Déjà vu ?
Let's see....Good ole ED-209 from OCP corporation ?
Nice...
... and still everybody wants to automate the army... can't wait... sheesh...Robocop
Ed-209 anyone?this is nuts!
Aren't people learning something good from the SF movies??? What is going to happend to the world??? Terminator 4, 5??? With real, live targets??Come on, ditch those crap robots, software is made by people, like Gates (Me II rings any bells? ). Like someday a hacker will control those weapons, and then Armageddon will be a walk in the park !!!
WinMe
I bet the cannon was running Windows Millenium :pAutomation
I see no problem with automation in the army. As all things humans create to automate...it simply speeds up human error.But what automation could have done here was replace the soldiers as well. In that case the headlines would be much different. Something like: "Automated robot cannon malfunctions and turns 11 other robots into swiss cheese"
But who would want to read that?
NS says Jane's says it was not robotic, but just detonation.
http://technology.newscientist.com/article/dn12812-robotic-rampage-unlikely-reason-for-deaths.htmlrumour isn't good as fact, eh?
Apparently the thing is made to fire big-enough shells very rapidly, and it jammed, and a soldier set about unjamming it, accidentally slammed some cordite ( with a round in the pipe ), the cordite detonated, taking with it the cordite for the next few rounds, which blew the nose of the gun 'round, while it blew-up or continued-firing, or both, or something.
Mechanical Accident, nae Robots,
Read it yerselfs, peoples. . .
Cheers,
-me
Deja vu - the irony
The irony of this was our (South African) national public broadcaster aired ED-209 in action the same day...Life's tough in Africa as we say - but not as tough as running Vista.
Maybe...
Maybe It had Windows Vista on it...