The latest robotics were on display at an industry show this week at a naval airfield in Maryland, with a pilotless helicopter buzzing overhead and a “Wall-E” look-alike robot on the ground craning its neck to peer into a window.<\/p>\n
The chopper, the MQ-8B Fire Scout, is no tentative experiment and later this year will be operating from a naval frigate, the USS McInerney, to help track drug traffickers in the eastern Pacific Ocean, Navy officers said.<\/p>\n
The rugged little robot searching an enemy building is called a Pakbot, which can climb over rocks with tank treads, pick up an explosive with its mechanical arm and dismantle it while a soldier directs the machine from a safe distance.<\/p>\n
There are already 2 500 of them on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan, and a lighter version weighing 6kg has arrived that can be carried in a backpack, according to iRobot, the same company that sells a robot vaccum to civilians, the Roomba.<\/p>\n
Monday’s demonstration of robotic wonders was organised by defense contractors and the US Navy, which says it wants to lead the American military into a new age where tedious or high-risk jobs are handed over to robots.<\/p>\n
“I think we’re at the beginning of an unmanned revolution,” Gary Kessler, who oversees unmanned aviation programs for the US Navy and Marines, told AFP.<\/p>\n
“We’re spending billions of dollars on unmanned systems.”<\/p>\n
Kessler and other Pentagon officials compare the robots to the introduction of the aircraft or the tank, a new technology that dramatically changes strategy and tactics.<\/p>\n
Robots or “unmanned systems” are now deployed by the thousands in Iraq and Afghanistan, spying from the sky for hours on end, searching for booby-traps and firing lethal missiles without putting US soldiers at risk.<\/p>\n
The use of robotics in the military has exploded in the past several years as technology has advanced while Washington faced a new kind of enemy that required patient, precise surveillance.<\/p>\n
In 2003, the US military had almost no robots in its arsenal but now has 7 000 unmanned aircraft and at least 10 000 ground vehicles.<\/p>\n
The US Air Force, which initially resisted the idea of pilotless planes, said it trains more operators for unmanned aircraft than pilots for its fighter jets and bombers.<\/p>\n
Peter Singer, author of Wired for War, writes that future wars may see tens of thousands of unmanned vehicles in action, possibly facing off against fleets of enemy robots.<\/p>\n
Unlike expensive weapons from the Cold War-era, robotic vehicles are not off-limits to countries with modest defense budgets and dozens of governments are investing in unmanned programmes.<\/p>\n
At the trade show, military officers from the United States, Chile, Australia, Saudi Arabia and India listened to defense contractors promote their robotic vehicles, including a tiny helicopter about two-feet long and L3’s Mobius – a nimble medium-sized drone that reaches speeds of up to 215 knots.<\/p>\n
The technology may sometimes resemble something out of Star Wars or a toy shop, but the robots determine matters of life and death on the battlefront.<\/p>\n
In the fight against al-Qaeda, drones are Washington’s favoured weapon.<\/p>\n
Predator and Reaper aircraft, armed with precision-guided bombs and Hellfire missiles, regularly carry out strikes in Pakistan’s northwest tribal area, causing an unknown number of civilian casualties.<\/p>\n
Last week, a drone strike is believed to have have killed the Pakistani Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud.<\/p>\n
The unmanned aircraft in the US military’s inventory range from small Ravens, that can be tossed into the air to see over the next hill, to the giant Global Hawk, a 44-foot-long spy plane that can fly at high altitude for up to 35 hours.<\/p>\n
The drones and ground vehicles are often operated using joysticks or consoles familiar to a younger generation raised on video games.<\/p>\n
“Soldiers these days have a lot of experience playing video games when they’re growing up, and they’re really familiar with these controls.<\/p>\n
“So this really reduces the training time on these types of unmanned vehicles,” said Charlie Vaida of iRobot, which makes a game console for the Pakbot.<\/p>\n
Amid plans for unmanned bomber jets for aircraft carriers, the onslaught of drones could eventually render fighter aces a relic of history.<\/p>\n
Military officers insist the robots are a complement and not a substitute for traditional aircraft, and pose no threat to the careers of their fellow pilots.<\/p>\n
“I think they understand we’re not going to replace them,” said Captain Tim Dunnigan, a navy chopper pilot. “This is going to augment them.”<\/p>\n