US Army gets robot idea from shitty movie.

The Army is not the place one should look to for practical innovation. In fact, it's been the object of unbridled ridicule in the past. What I read today only goes to show that not only is the Army out of ideas, but they've reached the bottom of the barrel of where to steal ideas from.

2007, a story surfaces about a robot with a machine gun mounted to its chassis preparing to be deployed in Iraq. A few people made jokes about terminator, a few more realized that mounting the ever-shitty M249 SAW to an RC car is the biggest waste of tax dollars imaginable, and then there was me that saw the true intent of this project... project "SWORDS".

1995, the movie "Evolver" is released to the public. This piece of shit is about a robot that goes crazy and kills people so it can win at laser tag. At one point, the two protagaonists/high school students of the movie break into a military research facility (!) and watch a video about a top-secret government project for a futuristic military robot. It was called project "SWORDS".

The two acronyms and purposes of the robots are plain to see. It's painfully obvious to me that the Army stays up late and flips back and forth between demiporn on Cinemax and the horrible movies on USA. I can only imagine a researcher dropping his can of "Da Beast" to realize that, yes, there *has* to be a project SWORDS and a killer robot.

One should realize that I am not calling Army engineers "stupid", I'm just saying they're unoriginal. That's why they will likely study from the mistakes of the robot in the movie Evolver and create a more adequate killer robot.

1995: Evolver is based off of a video game robot and as such behaves like Arnold Schwarzenegger if Johnny Five is Jerry Lewis. Evolver is equipped with a number of weapons such as an inexplicably pain-inducing laser and a foam-ball shooter. Another feature is that it is anthromorphic from the waist up. However, it's obvious that the designers of the robot in the movie said "fuck it, it doesn't need legs" and gave it treads instead of trying to figure out bipedalism.

2007: The US Army commissions ARDEC and Robotic System-Joint Project Office to produce more robots for the SWORDS program. Instead of a foam-ball shooter and a potentially annoying laser weapon, the robot is equipped with an M249 SAW. Given a robot can't clean a gun that fouls very easily, I can see why some people are skeptical of the Army's new toy. Driving your damn RC car back to home base to clean or reload it has to be humiliating. I would almost rather mount the laser to it and just piss off insurgents. So, in this case, it seems like the Army dropped the ball in comparison as they could not mount a duty worthy gun to it and were too damn lazy to include a torso and the voice of William Macy.

1995: Given that one of the protagonists is not female and a nerd, he decides to instruct the robot to go on a panty raid into the girl's locker room at his local higschool. The robot takes refuge in a laundry basket full of the girls' undergarments and begins observing the slew of silicone-breasted girls. Evolver blows its cover with an innuendo pulled from its battle-oriented vocabulary which pisses of one of the many topless, athletic girls into revelaing herself enough to push the laundry-cart-with-a-robot-in-it out the swinging backdoor of the locker room. Six hours later, the robot kills somebody.

2007: The Army realizes that horny robots are practically useless. So, they put a human operator behind the controls. This was a bad idea on their part as demonstrated in this link.

1995: The robot "evolves" after getting its ass kicked again. It's laser can now set stuff on fire and it decides steak knives make the best munition for its foam ball shooter after figuring out that ball bearings are not as good at fucking shit up.

2007: The US Army determines that an evolving robot is, frankly, a stupid idea. Especially since it would probably get blown up anyway by a gym bag packed with C4 so actual personnell wouldn't have to.

1995: One of the skeptically attractive girls from high school falls in love with the painfully horny leading man-boy. They break into a military research facility (wtf?) and view a video that explains the origins of the SWORDS project to build a robot that kills people. It should be noted that it uses an extremely annoying laser to kill people.

2007: The Army, not wanting to face the humiliation of teenagers breaking into a research facility, throw out the concept to every nerd on the internet to jack off to. The Army did itself a favor.

1995: Evolver imprisons the mother and daughter of the show with a curling iron that shoots out eight or so lasers around its prisoners. The laser has the power of setting teddy bears on fire and making bath robes burst into flames.

2007: Shiznas.com, asked the Army for a comment on any laser-jail capabilities of this new robot. In a prepared statement by Captain J. Whillakers of the Army Corps. of Engineers, he said, "... the Army has no intent on using the robot to take prisoners... ...it is designed for high-risk combat situations. Besides, a laser prison is just gay."

1995: The protagonist finally destroys the robot by pushing its fat ass into the swimming pool. Top-heavy robots are prone to falling into things, especially swimming pools.

2007: There are no swimming pools in Iraq.

Even with its failures, the Army's new robot will no doubt be used in the US's occupation and probably save some lives as insurgents laugh at the implausability of the robot and even take turns riding it to see who can stay on the "infidelbot" the longest.

Link to the Army's shitty robot

Link to the shitty movie "Evolver"