According to Geekosystem (who, admittedly, credits Kotaku, but there's no way in hell I'm linking to that terrible site), two members of Japan's Liberal Democratic Party, Tadamori Oshima and Bunmei Ibuki, plan to discuss the plausibility of building a real, fully operational giant robot. Now, you may recall that the Japanese have previously built a 1:1 scale model of a Gundam, but building a Gundam that is capable of actually moving, nevermind operating in a live-fire combat environment, is a significantly more difficult challenge.
Now, don't get me wrong - I love my 'Mechs. My desk currently has a pair of BattleTech miniatures on it - a Clan Jade Falcon Loki and a Clan Nova Cat Shadow Cat, to be precise - the vast majority of my PS2 games have "Armored Core" in the title, and in high school, any time not spent at the FLGS playing MechWarrior: Dark Age was spent at home playing MechWarrior 4: Mercenaries online. You dig giant robots, I dig giant robots, we dig giant robots, chicks dig giant robots. It's an unavoidable part of being a nerd.
Unfortunately, in real life, giant robots (hereafter referred to as 'Mechs, because I grew up using the BattleTech term) are...well, stupid, especially those that are bipedal. Really stupid, in fact. There's a number of issues with the concept from both engineering and tactical standpoints that make the idea of Atlases serving in the future U.S. Army ridiculous.
