“We could find ourselves in a situation where our soldiers, as talented and trained as they are, are facing an unfair fight because another country is willing to say, ‘Hey, guess what, you, male, are a good aviator. You, female, are a good aviator. You’re gonna make the best aviator babies we’ve ever seen and I don’t care that you’re not married,” he said. The other panelists laughed nervously. “That’s a thing. Are they willing to go that extra step that we are not?”

We must not allow those filthy commies to force us into an aviation eugenics gap!

they literally used a picture of master chief in some social media advertising for this panel. a man who was kidnapped as a child by a militaristic state to be made into a living killing machine stripped of all humanity he ever had. they're definitely not being subtle about it.

In the 21st century, Earth's militaries will use drugs to control their soldiers.

flooded with pain numbing stimulants

If i pull that off will you die?

Second annual Torment Nexus convention

Isn’t this the back story for the Evil Empire’s army in every FPS game?

that was a really good episode of TNG

I mean yeah this is scary, but this is also some neom ass shit

I updated my whatsapp too close to the barracks and now all my cybernetically linked super soldiers are perfectly and uncontrollably making the notification sounds with their mouths, please help

Homo Robocopus

Lamest shit I've read this week

Amar Astarte: "We have Space Marines at home."

The Space Marines at home:

If your goal is to not look like fascists and undeniably the baddies then pictures like this are not the way to go about it:

Seriously, if you want to provide complete and total moral justification to every single resistance movement in the world then this is the way to do it. Literally making yourself into a caricature of the science fiction baddies that are opposed and eventually defeated in every piece of science fiction ever.

The Pentagon is looking toward a future where the U.S. deploys “super soldiers” directly inspired by Captain America and Iron Man, officials said at a recent conference.

I think this is necessitated by the fact they have fewer and fewer and fewer people willing to do it. So what they want to do is get the same value out of fewer men.

The thing about super soldiers is also that they're just as likely to coup you as your average soldiers but you're making them significantly more capable of doing it.

soooo... special forces soldiers with bombs implanted in their heads?

"however, there are some real-world fears and ethical questions that need to be asked"

Yes, real conundrums like:

• Who is doing this research?
• Where are they?
• How long will their prison sentences be?

this is straight out of a black mirror episode

Death to America

This is like that scene in Animatrix when the UN soldiers are shoving needles into their arms before going on a drug-fueled rage and still losing to the machines.

I can only use fiction to relate to this because that description sounds like some Elon Musk level bullshit.

This is unironically something we should be encouraging. Just because they don’t feel pain and are unthinking killing machines does not make them invincible, in fact it makes them super vulnerable. Are you gonna make their bones out of titanium? gonna give them diamond skin? You’d pretty much have to. People in general are vulnerable, but the response to fear and pain are our two biggest tools to help us learn what is and is not dangerous. People who are genetically immune to pain from those rare diseases don’t usually make it to adulthood because they end up harming themselves and not realizing it’s a life threatening injury.

At long last, we have created the Torment Nexus from the classic Sci-Fi novel "Don't Create the Torment Nexus"

this is just wild conjecture, but i think that wearable technology is going to be more feasible than anything implanted. AFAIK one of the main issues with implants, especially those that have to interface with nerves, tend to be treated by the immune system as invasive bodies, and scar tissue is formed blocking the neural connections, and AFAIK we haven't made any significant progress to overcome that.

more feasible than cyborgs, i think enhanced AR equipment and wearable tech like non-invasive brain activity reading equipment will be easier to develop and deploy in a realistic way. helmets with comms, air filtration/oxygen supply, AR visuals with aimpoint tracking and display, gun-cameras linked to helmets and goggles to fire without leaving cover, even indirect vision systems (instead of goggles, the helmet has external cameras linked to an interior feed) to protect from certain weapons and systems like eye-targeting laser weapons and flashbangs. 'smart bullets' that work kinda like JDAMs maybe, able to be guided to a specific GPS coordinate after being fired into the air (like with 'plunging fire' on traditional MGs but more accurate). infantry-portable drones and drone control systems and drone defenses (thermal camouflage, EW weapons, etc.). drug injectors sure, even implanted, they don't need to interface with nerves. thats the kind of stuff i would expect, not this robocop shit.

bonus content edit: oh yeah and i also expect exoskeletons, especially non-powered or passive exoskeletons for bearing weight, to be more of a thing relatively soon. and, as much as i want mechs to be real, we are probably a few generations of tech away from that kind of thing being a mature enough field and economical enough to deploy in place of traditional equipment, and even in the unlikely even they prove to be useful tactically they are probably not going to be as large as a gundam or mechwarrior battlemech or star wars AT-AT or anything, more like a robot ATV or jeep with legs and arms, maybe something approaching the size of an armored car at most. anything bigger will have too much trouble with ground pressure compared to a tank. in fact before legged mecha i bet we will see tanks and other traditional combat vehicles with exterior mounted robotic arms to help with reloading externally mounted weapons and other tasks, like tank or armored car centaurs. we already have indirect vision systems on tanks and cars, its a natural evolution to have indirect manipulators. even given the possibilities of ground combat drones with no human crew, i don't think it will be difficult to convince militaries to strap a budding young war criminal inside to take all of the legal blame if things go wrong (to protect weapon manufacturers from liability) and to guide or override the machine software in ambiguous situations (snow, dust, tactically or politically sensitive situations, contested electronic warfare environments, etc.), after all we still put teenagers in tanks, and an automated or at least semi-autonomous remote piloted tank seems relatively feasible with todays tech, i'm sure militaries would do it if it was viable tactically/politically/socially.

If we’re gonna go down this path they better put out a consumer version of whatever this tech that floods you with pain numbing stimulants is because I will need it

great idea. i mean, what could go wrong?

Microsoft recently delivered prototype goggles for the military that displays a HUD. The military said the kids who grew up playing video games will now become soldiers, and it’s important to train them in an environment they’re used to (maps, compass, friendly indicator, etc.)

Imagine instead of promotions, you get just a pop up in your HUD telling you that you received an air strike because you killed 5 guys