“Ellsworth Has Just Directed A Drone…To The Enemy Position”

An excerpt from Spencer Ackerman’s Wired article about a brand new touchscreen war-planning tablet by the AAI Corporation, which makes lethal combat “easier” than ever:

“[Chris] Ellsworth provides a quick demo. On the massive tablet is a map of a hypothetical warzone. Blue icons represent the positioning of Team America assets — ground troops and overhead aircraft. Red icons show the enemy. When a new red diamond pops up, Ellsworth taps his finger on it, and then drags a bluish character over it.

It looks a little bit like a ghost from Ms. Pac-Man. But Ellsworth has just directed a drone — in this (fictional) case, one of AAI’s tiny Aerosonde-1 spy robots — to the enemy position. Whoever’s sitting miles away in an air conditioned Ground Control Station, wielding the joystick that controls the drone, has now received her new orders on an equivalent device — perhaps the smartphone that the Army might one day put in her pocket.

Either way, an IM confirming that the order is understood pops up on an adjacent flatscreen TV repurposed as a computer monitor. The drone above our fictional warzone should be on its way to its new position imminently.”

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A piece about the increasing digitization of warfare, featuring AAI: