WHAT IS IT?
War zones crawl with semiautonomous killing machines armed with missiles, machine guns, and powerful metal claws. They are used for reconnaissance, bomb disposal, search and rescue, air-to-ground assault, and cargo transport. Half a dozen models are in service now, and half a dozen more are currently in development. The next wave of warfare will be done by remote control, and the wave after that will be fought by machines while we sit at home and watch on television.
The robots currently in the field range in size from the friendly, man-portable Packbot, weighing in at just over twenty-four pounds and just under three feet long to the enormous forty-four-foot, seven-ton Global Hawk reconnaissance drone. On the ground, the unarmed Packbot is just the smallest of a growing family of remote-operated tracked vehicles that will eventually range in size from a rich girl’s purse dog up to the scale of a tank. Aerial drones already in service include the toy-sized FQM-151 Pointer and the Predator—famous as the preferred method for delivering Hellfire missiles through the windows of Pakistani mountain huts.
The TALON (a tracked robot similar to PackBot) can be configured to carry machine guns and grenade launchers, though it has yet to terrify live opponents with steely doom. PackBot and TALON are primarily used to search for and dispose of bombs or for reconnaissance. High-quality video cameras that can see in infrared and pitch darkness and deft robot claws make them ideal for dealing with an IED without putting a soldier in harm’s way. Both robots can climb stairs, crawl through sand and snow, live underwater, and operate up to a kilometer away from their controller. The top speed of these robots is around six miles an hour—slower than a running man, but your sprinter’s pace doesn’t matter when the robot has a rack of rifle grenades.
The Predator has been in service since 1995, first as a recon tool and more recently as an air-to-ground assault vehicle. It is whisper quiet and has a maximum altitude of about five miles. Using military satellites as relay stations, a Predator drone can be controlled by a pilot anywhere in the world. It can see through clouds, smoke, and sandstorms from its perch in the sky. It can be programmed to fly on its own, following a preplanned route and circling in a holding pattern once it arrives, where it can stay for nearly a full day before needing to land and refuel. Up to fourteen Hellfire missiles—each one capable of melting through tank armor—can be racked under the wings for delivery to an unsuspecting target’s tea party. It is a smart, quiet, highly dangerous little aircraft with scores of kills to its name.
The defining characteristic of all of these robots is that they have a human at the wheel, and more importantly, holding the trigger. When it comes time for a robot to score a kill, a human being is the one making the decision. But that may change in the very near future. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA—the agency that pays geniuses millions of dollars for coming up with insane new ways to wreck people’s faces) has several projects in the works to put little robot brains in everything from bullets to helicopters. Current DARPA solicitations and projects include:
• Funding for sniper bullets that can find their own way into the brains of insurgents
• A semiautonomous HUMVEE that turns into a helicopter
• An unmanned variable airborne weapons platform (read: a small robot helicopter armed to its gnashing metal teeth) that follows soldiers around and dumps white phosphorus or missiles on the heads of anyone who shoots at them
• Expert systems that can analyze visual intelligence (like satellite videos and photos from recon drones) better than humans
• Rubber robots flexible enough to squeeze through keyholes and angry enough to strangle a dude
• Probably the most terrifying warfighting innovation since the smallpox-infected blanket—a robot that eats what it kills for fuel
Projects being developed independently of DARPA include little robot helicopters armed with shotguns, robotic snakes, and more.
DARPA also sponsors the DARPA Grand Challenge. Teams from all over the world send driverless vehicles out into punishing off-road or simulated urban courses. DARPA wants an expert system that can manage the chaotic and difficult task of driving from point A to point B—something most humans can barely manage to do—without asking for directions.
The goal is obvious: robots that can understand, interpret, and navigate terrain as easily and intelligently as the soldiers alongside whom they fight (or whom they replace). Someday soon, marines may not ever have to risk their lives clearing an insurgent hideout. Instead, a few small flying vehicles will zip in like a swarm of well-armed bees, scream through darkened halls shotgunning doors and clearing rooms with fragmentation grenades, and emerge into the sunlight to issue an after-action report to the commander lounging in the deck chair on the insurgent’s lawn.
I wonder if the people who build combat robots lived through the entire 1980s without seeing a single movie.