Where are the robots? Human replacement on the battlefield

[C7]

Hey everyone.

I've been thinking a lot about human replacement on the battlefield, at least up to a point. I don't expect anything from Terminator any time soon, but it'd sure be nice to have some of those remote-control flying saucers with a grenade or two strapped to them. They look like they could dump a good payload into a high-floor window, or a house a ways away, with you behind cover the entire time.

For those of you who don't know what I'm talking about, check out this video: http://youtube.com/watch?v=vlnrX4_BE-Y

Does anyone else have any ideas about human replacement, or know of anything like that that's happening?

 

[Seyek]

I know the Americans have a bunch of ground based combat robots (not sure if they're dedicated for combat, but they come with machine guns and all the necessary 360 degree sighting and targeting systems). I also read an article in the paper about a new robot (it doesnt move, so you could call it an automated turret if you wanted) the US/South Korea is deploying along the DMZ, not sure about the specific sighting/sensor systems but it can differentiate between people, animals, etc, and will challenge people for a password, if the password is incorrect, it fires (both live and rubber rounds, I think it had two seperate ammo loads and could choose between them).

As for robots replacing people, not anytime soon, a robot can't make the judgements a person can and might end up hosing down a school with machine gun and rocket fire while the jihadists sitting in the house next door get off scot free because of damage to the robot's systems or programming error. However, a remote-controlled system would work well. It wouldn't be that far of a strech to throw together a simple and cheap wheeled or tracked base, give it some sort of turret-like mechanism, and mount a machine gun or rifle or whatever weapon system you want and give it some cameras with night-vision and thermals. Wrap it up with some armour and have a soldier nicely tucked away in the rear lines with a joystick and computer screen. Use some heavier ones to supplement infantry in urban situations. Down the road when walking models are more stable and reliable, a bipedal or quadrupedal chassis could be rigged up to storm into buildings. The whole system wouldn't be to complex, though making it solidly reliable and combat-capable would take a bit of work. You could have a simple and cheap infantry support platform that doesn't risk casualties (simple and cheap being relative to a combat capable robot).

 

[boondocksaint]

Robots hehe

We were doing security one day while an EOD guy in full gear was pulling up an IED with a robot. One of the ANP with us had never seen such a contraption. After much deliberation ( we couldnt understand them ) one of the ANP walked right up to it and started prodding it and examining it while it was doing its thing.

The EOD guy nearly had a heart attack

 

[Steve 1 RNFLDR]

Back when I was at the Association of the US Army's annual general meeting (and trade show, I guess you'd call it) when we were sent down for the 2004 Army Ten Miler in DC, an M 249 SAW (C9) on tracks caught my eye.  I'm afraid I don't have a photo of it in digital form, however.  This stuff looks similar, though.

http://www.defensereview.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=657