SCIFI-BABE.COM - "Target Drone Accident" News Story

Target drone accidentally destroys manned spacecraft:

A robot target drone accidentally destroyed an entire squadron of the Cotch Orbital Defense Force during a simulated attack exercise, held one week ago. A spokesperson for the Cotch Armed Forces told us, "These target drones are designed to lay down a field of weapon fire that simulates near battle conditions. They are programmed to detect incoming fighters and alter their angle of fire when it is apparent that a fighter might be straying into it - so we don't have an accident. Unfortunately," he added, tersely, "that is not what happened today. The drone failed either to recognize the squadron as a manned unit, or simply failed to adjust its firing pattern." He went on to confirm that eighteen members of the Orbital Defense Force had been killed before the drone was destroyed by a sub-orbital missile, launched from Cotch's northernmost fire base, at Nicotet.

The manufacturers, the Omnidyne Corporation of Kliscut City, Cotch, use the Scafe Systems - of Silicon Canyon, Caliphates - "EasyMake Robotics Rule Generator" product for encoding the behavioral sub-routines for their wide range of target drones. A Scafe Systems representative acknowledged that the drone software had clearly violated the first, second and, possibly, the sixth and eighth rules of 'best practice' behavioral control, as outlined in the product literature, but said his company would not accept responsibility for the accident. "Our initial investigations have highlighted the fact that the target drone programme was way over budget. Omnidyne were losing a bundle on every one they shipped, and had decided to cut costs by implementing our software - which is widely and reliably used, by tens of Other World Governmental Agencies (OTGA) - on an 'open source' operating system. 'Open source' is fine for pocket calculators and tooth brushes," he went on, "but not top of the line, mission critical, military applications. That's why we recommend using Calisoft, of course."

No representative of the Omnidyne Corporation was willing to accept our invitation to make a rebuttal of the charge made by Scafe at the time of going to press.