Pentagon building killer-robot hordes

By 2030 most of the U.S. military will be robotic…

Over the past few years the US military has aggressively ramped up its commitment to battlefield robots. Now the Pentagon is forging ahead with fantastic plans to build robot armies. By 2015 it’s expected that up to one-third of America’s fighting force will be various special purpose bots. And by 2030 certain fighting forces will almost be exclusively robotic.

The Pentagon is building robot chimeras that can chase humans down on a battlefied and detain, incapacitate or kill them. It has projects in the works teaching robots how to lie, to be deceptive, to trick enemy combatants. Other robots will be given the ability to recharge themselves with “organic material” found on the battlefield…like the bodies of the enemy.

The master plan is to deploy unmanned drones that rule the sky, battle bots that secure the war theater and invisible troops of mechanized juggernauts that fight and advance 24 hours a day.

Reports indicate that the number of ground troop robots fighting in Afghanistan has pushed past 2,000. At 2011 levels, one in 50 troops is a robot. That number translates to two percent of U.S. military.

The total number of military robots deployed by the U.S. has reached 7,000 in the air 12,000 ground-based. Those numbers are expected to swell dramatically during the next 20 years.

DARPA’s killer battle droid

The goals are to push that number from  two percent to 10 percent, and then to half, and then most all ground and air troops.

Recently, the officer spearheading the U.S. Marine Corps robotics division, Lt. Col. Dave Thompson, said that the number of robots the military utilizes will grow in the coming years. Thompson revealed this while addressing an audience at the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International in Washington, D.C.

Defense robot deployed with human master

While each of the military branches in the Pentagon are tasked to work on the robot building projects, the entity most involved is the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).

DARPA is leading the effort towards converting the bulfk of America’s fighting forces from carbon to silicon based.

U.S. Navy’s sensor bot designed after lobster

Military spokespersons confirm that DARPA is expanding the frontiers of robot capability and honing bot forces to a fighting razor-edge.

They also confirm the Pentagon is continuously creating new missions for robots. They point to 2010 when bots broke ground working with combat troops, conducting hazardous reconnaissance and surveillance missions for their human compatriots.

Stories have enmerged the the human-robot bonding in wae has become so close that some soldiers have risked their lives to rescue a combat team’s robot that’s come under enemy fire.

Flying wasp survellience drone battlefield-ready

For now, military drones still dominate. The drones are so popular that the US Air Force turned from using NASA’s manned space shuttle to their own version–a diminutive robotic shuttle flown by controllers on the ground and supplemented with advanced artificial intelligence (AI).

As robot applications advance, so do their brains. AI is integral to creating a cohesive fighting unit that can break things and kill the enemy.

Most of the truly advanced battle robots are wrapped in the protective shroud of classified information. Yet while some higher-ranking officers have publicly aired their doubts about relying on an army of robots to protect and defend America and its interests, others are very enthusiastic about the future of bots in warfare.

Military armored mini-tank robot armed with pulse beam

Many of the robots being used in the theater are bomb-disposal bots or unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). Some of the UAVs are armed, others are not.

But the U.S. is not the only country designing and deploying robots for use on the battlefield. As of this writing 43 countries have robots–most of those are aerial drones.

Armored battle bee bot

Recently, the Canadian Broadcasting Company interviewed Leslea Mair, the producer of the film Remote Control War. The documentary deals with the ratcheting up of robot troops and their pervasiveness on the battlefield.

When asked what military robots will be capable of doing in the future, Mair responded, “I think almost the question should be, ‘What won’t they be capable of?’ Already, they’re flying the missions themselves.”

And their future?

“I think the vision for the future, certainly down the road, is for robots to be able to pretty much do anything a person can do.”

Original Helium article.

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