Subscribe to feed
2015: Robotic Army
By 2015, the U.S. plans on one third of its fighting strength will be robots. A project known as Future Combat Systems (FCS). The year 2015 sounds like a long way off, but actually it’s only 8 years down the road.
In 2001, armed Talon reconnaissance drones were sent in to caves in Afghanistan clearing out al-Qaida fighters. The U.S. army is already using 20 different robotic systems and 2,500 various units are deployed in current warfare operations. By 2035 they expect to have the first fully autonomous robots moving on the battle field on their own.
The Korea Times also has a story about their push toward robots in warfare, as the US Military is helping South Korea advance their technology and fighting force.
Currently South Korea has a military of about 680,000, while North Korea has 1.2 million. Even with that huge difference, South Korea plans to reduce there troop size down to 500,000 by the year 2020 while increasing the size of their robotic force. By 2012 they plan to start using various autonomous robots for reconnaissance and landmine removal. By 2013 they plan to have these fitted with various weapon systems, and multiple pairs of legs for ease of movement across rugged terrain, and used to patrol along the border fence line between North and South Korea. Recently, there has also been the development of an unmanned, fixed position border guard which can identify moving targets up to 4 kilometers in the day, and 2 kilometers at night. The plan is to have these deployed along the Demilitarized Zone by the end of this year.
Of course, many people will see this as a great new age where people… humans.. are taken out of harms way…. removed from the battlefield, but, does that mean nations might be quicker to go to war, if there is the thought that human lives are not at risk? Even those people are not looking far enough ahead. What happens when Good Robot Army defeats Bad Robot Army? Do the people on the side of Bad Robot Army give up, surrender, and do as Good Army says? Or do (again) we see humans start getting in to the fight to keep up their way of life or achieve their goals? This certainly won’t bring an end to war, but will bring a new age to warfare…. and it seems that a Sci-Fi kind of “drone war” might only be 8 years away.
No Comments
No comments yet.
Comments RSS TrackBack Identifier URI
Leave a comment
You must be logged in to post a comment.