Did you read today’s Straits Times? As I was reading this article, I thought to myself, isn’t this the ultimate solution to the perennial problem of manpower shortages to staff our army? This could be a great way to reduce the national service liability for Singaporean men. In particular, the so-called years or cycles of “operational ready” national service could be reduced once there is less pressure on manpower demand.
We should start to make use of dummy soldiers and dummy tanks! That’s what Taiwan is reported to be doing. While we’re doing that, think about the many different kinds of dummy thinks we could deploy.
I’ve heard about dummy policemen stationed in dummy police cars parked along highways in the US to deter speeding. But this is something interesting to also do in the army. Taiwan said the idea was to confuse the enemy. Yeah, makes the enemy think we have more people than we really have.
Let’s take some tips from Home Alone. How about making the dummies move? Make the dummies do some action. Make the dummies look like they are really alive. The bad guys may think they’re real!
There must be many things we can pick up from the robotics industry to help make the dummies more real and more intelligent. Are you thinking “I, Robot”? This is really getting exciting.
Let’s say for guard duties: Instead of 4 humans at a guard post, maybe 1 of them could be a dummy? 25% reduction in manpower. If this can be applied across the board, 10 years of “OR NSmen” liability can be reduced to 7 or 8 years.
Afterall, *ahem*, NS doesn’t really require all that much thinking. Don’t you remember your officers telling you “do, don’t think”? Or that, just because you don the green “no 4”, you are “excused thinking”? It seems robots are more suitable than humans with wandering minds.
The “excused thinking” is really funny. The mind slows down when you go back for ICT. When my colleagues from work call me to consult about a variety of things… I am thinking like “can we just settle this when I’m back, I don’t feel like thinking about it right now”… Haha.
View Comment Policy