Editing 652: More Accurate

{{comic
| number    = 652
| date      = October 21, 2009
| title     = More Accurate
| image     = more_accurate.png
| titletext = We live in a world where there are actual fleets of robot assassins patrolling the skies. At some point there, we left the present and entered the future.
}}

==Explanation==
This comic spoofs the {{w|Terminator (franchise)|Terminator}} series, in which a super-intelligent machine from the future time travels back in time to kill {{w|Sarah Connor (Terminator)|Sarah Connor}}. As could be expected from a movie, the antagonistic robot is a human-like android.

However, we currently have military "robots" (actually vehicles controlled remotely by people) that are completely unlike anything in the movie. Originally, {{w|Unmanned aerial vehicle|UAV}} were only used for surveillance and reconnaissance. But, now more than ever, they are used for attacks. And most importantly, they are not walking humanoids but flying machines. They are not restricted to carrying human-intended guns as in the movie but are armed with powerful explosives and long-range missiles. Thus the name of the comic: Randall points out being attacked by a flying plane-like drone -- such as the {{w|General Atomics MQ-1 Predator|Predator drone}} shown in the last panel (heavily used for offensive operations by the USAF and the CIA in Afghanistan and Pakistan) -- is a much more accurate outcome should the robots rise up against humans. 

It is important to note that, in the actual {{w|The Terminator|Terminator 1 movie}}, this substitution would not actually be so simple. The terminator sent back in time knows Sarah Connor's name and city of residence, but not her appearance or address; it locates her by looking her up in a phone book (and ends up killing a number of other women with the same name, as well as its intended target's roommate, before finding the ''correct'' Sarah Connor.) Additionally, the terminator regularly operates inside buildings and rearms itself by picking up human small-arms. A Predator-type drone, while a superior killing system, would be unable to do any of that.{{cn}} A drone which could interact with and operate in the human environment with the ease the terminator displays (let alone successfully disguise itself as a human) would be a major accomplishment which no real-world project has yet come close to.

Yet another consideration is that Skynet didn't know how Sarah Connor looked like. All they knew is that she had metal stud in her leg. It would be ''incredibly'' hard to identify Sarah from other humans from such high altitude — and it would be hard to land  in the middle of a city, even if a landed drone could then do anything useful. Multiple other Sarah Connors were killed by mistake; it's likely a UAV would run out of missiles long before humans run out of Sarah Connors.

One thing that keeps us short of a Terminator scenario is that most of the unmanned aerial vehicles are either pre-programmed or flown remotely by members of the military, and are not left to their own devices.

The title text emphasizes this by pointing out that we have entire fleets of these drones, and notes that at some point, we entered the future.

Similar buildup and Terminator reference are to be found in [[1177: Time Robot]].

10 years after this comic was published, almost to the day, a movie in the Terminator franchise called ''{{w|Terminator: Dark Fate}}'' came out which includes a scene very similar to this comic involving a Predator drone being used by the super-intelligent machine to take out its target. Also, shortly after that movie came out Randall published [[2222: Terminator: Dark Fate|a comic about it]] with the same name.

Yet another possible error is that Predator/Reaper-like drones are going to be outdated in the future; while they will be used as reserve or surplus weaponry, Skynet would never send something as outdated to such important mission. Actual state-of-the-art aerial UAV of said time period would resemble modern UAV about as much, as Cold War-era tanks resemble World War 1 tanks. The Terminator movies do actually use [https://terminator.fandom.com/wiki/HK-Aerial aerial hunter-killer drones], and versions of these ''are'' seen (and used) in the 'present day' scenes of {{w|Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines|at least one of}} the sequel films. However, these are prototypes that are not yet openly deployed (and only do so, in that film, under the influence of the future's 'bad' terminator and for the benefit of the rise of the nascent Skynet). Under the general circumstances of the first film, especially, there's no indication that there's any opportunity for Skynet (not yet existing in the 'present', and constrained by what nature of machines it can send back in time from its future) to employ a futuristic Hunter-Killer of any kind. Indeed, at the time of the first movie, even a future terminator would be hard pressed to hack into the 'semi-autonomous drones' that effectively did not exist.

==Transcript==
:[Cueball with a shotgun approaches a woman carrying a tray with glasses.]
:Cueball: Sarah! Come with me if you want to live! A robot assassin has been sent here to kill you!

:[Sarah holds her hands over her mouth. She has presumably dropped the tray, as it lies on the floor.]
:Cueball: I'm here to save you. I may not be as strong or fast as a machine, but I'll fight to keep you-

:[There's a huge orange and yellow explosion. The two are disintegrated and Cueball's shotgun goes flying.]
:''BOOM''

:[A flying robot assassin is above the bomb site.]
{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Comics with color]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Terminator]]
[[Category:Robots]]
[[Category:Time travel]]
[[Category:Drones]]