AUTOMATIC MACHINES OF DEATH

Professor of human geography Stephen Graham is worried by developments in military technology:

War is about to change, in terrifying ways. America's next wars, the ones the Pentagon is now planning, will be nothing like the conflicts that have gone before them.

In just a few years, US forces will be able to deal out death, not at the squeeze of a trigger or even the push of a button, but with no human intervention whatsoever.

Graham does seem a bit behind the information curve, however:

Many fighting soldiers - those GIs in tin hats who are dying two a day in Iraq - will be replaced by machines backed up by surveillance technology so penetrating and pervasive that it is referred to as "military omniscience".

The Kevlar helmet replaced the steel helmet in the 1980s.