Software glitch investigated as possible cause of deadly robot cannon incident

According to ITWeb, the South African National Defense Force is now investigating the possibility that a software glitch may have been the cause of deadly anti-aircraft cannon "malfunction" that left nine soldiers dead and 14 seriously wounding during an exercise last Friday. The robot cannon in question is an Oerlikon GDF-005 which, as ITWeb points out, was apparently "not designed for fully automatic control," yet that is just how it was operating in this case, although Oerlikon itself reportedly played no role in the upgrades. While Defense Force spokesman Kwena Mangope apparently isn't going any further than to describe the incident as a "mechanical problem," both the police and a Board of Inquiry are now looking to get to the bottom of the matter, although there's no word as to when they expect to report their findings.

[Via Danger Room, thanks David D]

[Peter @ Oct 18th 2007 4:20PM]

Sounds like something from Terminator.

[Johnathon Zirkle @ Oct 18th 2007 4:26PM]

it'll be back

[Lydon @ Oct 18th 2007 5:09PM]

Phillip that is one of the most disgusting things I have ever heard. Do you have no respect? Whether sarcastic or not it sickens me that there are people in the world with your kind of attitude. What does the fact that the people live in South Africa have to do with you caring or not?

[Typhoid Mary @ Oct 18th 2007 6:22PM]

Who the feck is Phillip?

And whats South Africa gotta do with it?

Inquiring minds want to know...

[Lydon @ Oct 19th 2007 1:05AM]

Look down and see for yourself ;)

[j.R @ Oct 18th 2007 4:26PM]

Since when is becoming self aware a "mechanical problem"?

[tmoney @ Oct 18th 2007 4:51PM]

Yeah. It became self aware...

[TIMMAH! @ Oct 18th 2007 4:34PM]

Skynet online...

[nVidiot @ Oct 18th 2007 4:39PM]

Who would have thought that robot controlled weaponry was a bad idea?

[Maff @ Oct 18th 2007 4:41PM]

that, my friend is Dumbo getting very angry!

(see picture)

[Scott @ Oct 18th 2007 4:48PM]

Or, a Scarab coming out of the ground.

[tiuk @ Oct 18th 2007 4:53PM]

Obviously a story like this makes all kinds of jokes leap to mind, but come on guys. Nine soldiers were killed and 14 seriously wounded. A little respect shouldn't be too hard to muster.

[Phillip J. Fry @ Oct 18th 2007 5:05PM]

South Africa. I'm in North America. That means I don't care.

[Fruition @ Oct 18th 2007 5:13PM]

We're not joking about the people who died, or even the way in which they died, we're joking about the machine that killed them.

Take Jeffrey Dahmer for example. People make jokes about him because he was crazy. We don't joke about his victims, we feel sorry for them. Doesn't mean we can't poke fun at Dahmer himself.

[Fruition @ Oct 18th 2007 5:16PM]

To be clearer, I refuse to show the machine any respect at all. As a result, I make fun of the machine. I do NOT make fun of the victims because I respect them.

[Fruition @ Oct 18th 2007 5:20PM]

Hmm, I posted another comment but it isn't showing up. Here's what I said:

"To be clearer, I refuse to show the machine any respect at all. As a result, I make fun of the machine. I do NOT make fun of the victims because I respect them."

[Fruition @ Oct 18th 2007 5:21PM]

Great. It appears right as I submit another one.

[deedeedee @ Oct 18th 2007 5:56PM]

Philip, i take that malfunction robot cannon and shove it up your fat ass you ignorant prick.

[Wwhat @ Oct 18th 2007 6:47PM]

Since when do we respect strangers so much? (especially on the internet)
I must have missed a recent memo.

[jay sea @ Oct 18th 2007 6:50PM]

Reality check people.

They died during a weapons test. People die. Thats life.

[Typhoid Mary @ Oct 19th 2007 1:08PM]

Bad Phillip.

Bad.

[Kris S. @ Oct 18th 2007 4:53PM]

They are taking over, slowly, but surely.

I for one, welcome our robotic overlords.

[Monte @ Oct 19th 2007 3:52PM]

“Drop your weapon; you have 15 seconds to comply”

[fontendet24 @ Oct 18th 2007 4:54PM]

Maybe machines start learning from us...
Skynet was just delayed for some years... or days.

[mlody11 @ Oct 18th 2007 4:57PM]

I agree, I hope they get to the bottom of the error/incident since people's lives are invloved. Hopefully they can do that before we have to welcome our robot overlords.

[Lydon @ Oct 18th 2007 5:11PM]

OK that reply worked....as I was saying in response to Phillip: That is one of the most disgusting things I have ever heard. Do you have no respect? Whether sarcastic or not it sickens me that there are people in the world with your kind of attitude. What does the fact that the people live in South Africa have to do with you caring or not?

[RoboDan @ Oct 18th 2007 5:15PM]

Well that's the end of human civilization...

Ah, well, we've had a good run.

Enjoy the planet, RoboMen of the future. Maybe you'll take better care of the earth than we have... or wait, you won't care since you're not organic, so you'll destroy all organic life and habitats. Anyway, enjoy.

[syke @ Oct 18th 2007 6:37PM]

To Dickhardknocks: NASA - Need Another Seven Astronauts
While in bad taste, it's been done before.

[DickHardknocks @ Oct 18th 2007 6:33PM]

with that logic, I can make fun of the Airplane "Flight 93", just not the people who died on it?

[HineyWipe @ Oct 18th 2007 5:24PM]

Was it Y2K compliant as that model was last made in 1985...

[Pomme @ Oct 18th 2007 5:27PM]

RoboCop anyone ?! ED-209 ?

[PK @ Oct 18th 2007 5:33PM]

After reading these comments, I can't get "Robots" by Flight of the Conchords out of my head...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WGoi1MSGu64

[Jerome @ Oct 18th 2007 6:18PM]

there are to many GOTO in the code!

HAHA!

[Wwhat @ Oct 18th 2007 6:48PM]

That made me smile :)

[DaveH @ Oct 18th 2007 6:05PM]

You people are animals. with the exception of one or two of you i cant believe that you guys would make jokes about 9 people dying. as a proud South African i say f*ck you to all you arrogant pricks who make fun of peoples deaths.

[Grant @ Oct 18th 2007 6:31PM]

they misused a gun.
when people misuse guns, people get hurt.
Of course it's rarely the stupid ones that only hurt themselves, but hopefully if the idiot didn't die he will learn to use non-automatic weapon as such.

People die every day. In the philosophical sense, we are all dying. If you can't except death as an everyday event you are just going to run around miserable and pissing and moaning at everyone who's feelings aren't as touchy as yours(exactly what you just did).

As a South African I would fear for my life, because your military is not competent enough to operate something as simple as an AA gun correctly. Just relax and accept your new robot overlords. Hopefully they will be more careful when operating guns.

[Wwhat @ Oct 18th 2007 6:53PM]

You want reality?
South africa, even after the end of apartheid, just continued to sell weapons to unstable nations and dictators and terrorists, for the money, that's right the same damn army, and weapons that shot back this time, are being sold for money to kill actual civilians or to protect bastards that do, very nice of you to be proud of that.
Give me a break why don't you.

[DaveH @ Oct 19th 2007 12:07PM]

@Wwhat and Grant.
Your responses to my post are typical of first world assholes who know fuck all about anywhere else but their own countries and have no respect for human life. South Africa's post apartheid policy has f-all to do with the incident and the modified aa guns that were being used have been used here safely for years without incident. the one time something goes wrong as a result of a computer malfunction and uninformed tossers like yourselves jump to conclusions and start accusing poeple of being incompetent. these are people who have dedicated their lives to serving their counrty and they dont need people such as yourselves making light of their misfortune. my feelings arent touchy, i just have respect fo the lives of others, especially those who serve to protect me. and by the way, the south arican defence force is very capable. if you knew anything about the history of warfare you would know that the south african special forces are the best in the world. our ex-reccies train american and british elite forces even to this day.
so why dont you give me a break an think before you blindly comment on things you know nothing about.

[Ethan @ Oct 18th 2007 6:03PM]

This was a true tragedy, but a gun jamming could happen with any gun, sounds like a mechanical issue, not software.

[Grant @ Oct 18th 2007 6:19PM]

it was people being stupid, thats what went wrong with it.

If you read the article you will find that not only were they mis-using the gun as automatic when it was specifically stated to not be and "They made a temporary rig consisting of two steel poles on each side of the weapon, with a rope in between to keep the weapon from swinging. The weapon eventually knocked the polls down."

temporary rig made out of a rope and 2 poles? Masters of state of the art engineering and construction.

Bottom line is when you do stupid things with AA guns, people are going to get hurt/die. Thats exactly what happened. I don't see how this is some sort of mystery.

[Fubar @ Oct 18th 2007 7:11PM]

...so the Therac-25 is still the most lethal software glitch in history?

[mike @ Oct 19th 2007 8:03PM]

@ Grant:
Re-read the story.

This accident happened in 2007 at the "SA Army's Combat Training Centre, at Lohatlha, in the Northern Cape"

The story about the poles and rope happened in the 1990's at "Armscor's Alkantpan shooting range".

[szamot @ Oct 18th 2007 6:23PM]

does anyone know if the robot was running XP or Vista? This could be important.

[DickHardknocks @ Oct 18th 2007 6:34PM]

Well I for one welcome our malfunctioning cannon equipped overlords.

[Josh L @ Oct 18th 2007 7:06PM]

Well it seems like Grant is the only person who actually read the article instead of just responding to Engadget's and Wired's sensationalist (and terrible) reporting.

The original manufacturer of the gun specifically told their customers (South Africa) that it was never intended for fully automatic use, but then SA automated it anyway WITHOUT the aid or knowledge of the manufacturer. They seem to have seen right away that it didn't work right, and would regularly go out of control. So what was their solution? Take it off automatic? Downgrade it back to software that they knew worked properly? Nope, they put up some poles and tied some ropes to it. Genius.

Add to it that budgetary constraints forced the upgrade projected to be rushed and that therefore shoddy programming was injected into the mix, and you pretty much have a recipe for disaster. This isn't a case of 'Skynet' or the system becoming 'self-aware'. Anyone who knows anything about AI can tell you that we can barely make a system that can be considered self-aware at all, and that takes much much more computing power than would be in the control system of an AA turret.

[DaveA @ Oct 19th 2007 1:09AM]

The guy they quote in the article is describing tests carried out in the mid-90s, there is nothing to say that the same conditions existed on this occasion.

[Othello @ Oct 19th 2007 1:31PM]

Unsurprisingly, you didn't read the article either as you keep misquoting it. Also you apparently don't know what a joke is, which is what the Skynet/self-aware comments are.

[octoberasian @ Oct 18th 2007 7:26PM]

Remember people: It all starts with them blaming it on a software glitch.

Next thing somewhere down the line, when more people get killed by them, and those people not being the enemy, do we still blame it on a software glitch?

I'm just saying....

*starts building a bunker before rise of the machines starts*

[suv4x4 @ Oct 18th 2007 7:41PM]

I find Terminator jokes in the face of 14+ victims tasteless.

Not that they'll be revived if we're entirely serious, but still I find them tasteless.

The problem isn't even of technology that will run doing things on its own, it's *us* using technology without proper precaution, enabling it to handle dangerous equipment, and becoming victims of our own negligence.

[trentyn @ Oct 18th 2007 10:36PM]

and i find gas guzzling 4x4's in urbania offencive, doesn't seem to stop you -> suv4x4