Nanotechnology in Warfare: Serious Implications

[HybridCyph3r_F1]

Nanotechnology is an expected future manufacturing technology that will make most products lighter, stronger, cleaner, less expensive and more precise.

"Not only does nanotechnology continue to attract considerable public interest and growing business investments, but more than 30 countries worldwide have launched public R&D programmes in the field. Such initiatives go a long way towards increasing the resources available to research, but do they go far enough to ensure that the full social and economic potential of nanotechnology is exploited?

Indeed, nanotechnology is likely to have a major economic impact in the years ahead. In the IT sector, it could help further miniaturise memory and logic devices as well as boost data processing and storage capacities, long after existing technologies reach their fundamental limits. Nanoelectronics, based on the exploitation of quantum effects that occur at a very small scale, could provide a way of surmounting these limits by allowing computations based on individual electrons or strands of DNA. Already, researchers are working on memory devices with approximately 40 times the storage capacity of current hard drives." Scaling-up nanotechnology Emmanuel Hassan and Jerry Sheehan

Of course, it could be used in developing countries concerning health care and possible energy investments. However that;s not the focus of the thread.

"An amazing revolution is taking place on the battlefield, starting to change not just how wars are fought, but also the politics, economics, laws, and ethics that surround war itself. This upheaval is already afoot -- remote-controlled drones take out terrorists in Afghanistan, while the number of unmanned systems on the ground in Iraq has gone from zero to 12,000 over the last five years. But it is only the start. Military officers quietly acknowledge that new prototypes will soon make human fighter pilots obsolete, while the Pentagon researches tiny robots the size of flies to carry out reconnaissance work now handled by elite Special Forces troops." Wired for War: The Robotics Revolution and 21st Century Conflict P.W. Singer

"The use of nanotechnology within chemical warfare is the most ominous of all issues surrounding this new technology. And while nano-designed chemicals for warfare have been banned in most countries, the rogue few who continue in their development pose a genuine threat to the rest of the world. The use of nano-particles to manufacture these agents requires a small supply of materials making it more difficult to monitor the amounts being imported by dissident countries. Manufacturing would take place in small, low-level production facilities that would also be harder to locate. Once compiled, the release of minuscule amounts of an agent on the battlefield may have the ability to attack specific organs and systems within the body." Nanotechnology in Warfare | eHow.com

What could this possibly mean? Could this be more devastating than the A-Bomb, H-Bomb, etc? How would Nanotechnology in warfare affect international and domestic policy?

More questions than answers. Hopefully y'all can illuminate much more on this matter.

 

[DNAz]

First thought.
1. Better than lasers!
2. Makes a good video game mechanics.
Okay now
Well first of all Grey Goo/Rouge Nanobots is a problem if you want to directly rip apart(disassemble) armies and soldiers.

Of course Warfare would change a lot. There is so much you can do with nanotech and makes a lot of other useless or uncompleted tech instantly possible.

Nanotech can improve manufacture of everything. Every military weapon can be improved in design and built batter and faster.

Also you could use Nanotech in combat on the defense and offence.
Defense. You could have regenerating armor humans and tanks. destroy bullets bombs and mines.
Offensive. Direct attack is possible and you could use those materials to fix your own armor and replenish ammunition.

Its crazy to imagine what will happen.

 

[Armoredpriapism]

I think you're asking about essentially self replicating non-organic viruses, right? Little machines that get inside a body and start replicating so as to gain great enough numbers to attack the body? That is a very scary prospect. It seems like we'd want to develop that technology in order to defend against it. I know there's a lot of interest in nanotech for the bio field. The thought is we can program little machines that act like anti-bodies so that we have control over what they do and don't do. There are limitations to our immune system that many diseases exploit, and so the thinking is if we can design our own anti-bodies we can design them to go after HIV or small pox or what have you. The advantage to nanotech over advances in conventional immunology is that if we could easily reprogram them, if there's an outbreak of virus X in New X City, once its profile is mapped the programming to counter it could be sent out all over the world once it's developed. The internet could be used to transmit the cure instead of having to produce and transport cures.
So in short, I can see this as being one of those measure counter measure things the military plans for, but hopefully the technology if its developed will be used for peaceful purposes only.

 

[joho]

most of the reasons we have fought wars up till now would become mute points
if we ever succeed in making nanobots

we would not need to fight over land or resources or food just make them we could terraform planets and moons

long term space travel would become viable

i suppose the only things left to fight over would be religion and ideologies

 

[sakarova77]

Really depends on the applications. For sure there are going to be nano-enhanced products in every army in the future. So far it can be something in line of better electronics for detection, maybe better armor on vehicles etc. For example using graphene properties to build lighter aircraft. Iam excited about that. As far as long term goes... Prospect of things like replicating nano virus sounds really scary. So my vote is maybe.