Shrinking Army Studies Buying Robots to Replace Soldiers

[unhappycamper]

http://www.dodbuzz.com/2014/01/21/shrinking-army-buy-robots-to-replace-soldiers/

Shrinking Army Studies Buying Robots to Replace Soldiers
By Brendan McGarry Tuesday, January 21st, 2014 6:29 pm
Posted in Land, Policy, Sequestration, The Defense Business

Gen. Robert Cone, commander of Training and Doctrine Command at Fort Eustis, Va., said the service may decrease the headcount of brigade combat teams to about 3,000 soldiers from roughly 4,000 soldiers in coming years and replace the lost manpower with unmanned systems, writes Paul McLeary of Defense News.

[DetlefK]

1. Good for soldiers, bad for budget.

Self-driving combat vehicles, robotic mules, automated sentry-turrets... It frees up manpower but it will be dang expensive.

[bemildred]

2. I imagine maintenance will be an issue too.

Esp. in combat situations where things can get raggedy. What's the uptime? How many people to maintain? What supplies? Does performance degrade smoothly or all at once? Is it more complicated than a fighter jet?

[DetlefK]

3. Remember the Simpson-episode where Bart was sent to military-academy?

As the General said in his graduation-speech: "But anyways, the wars of the future will be fought with robots. And you know where your position will be in that military: It will be your job to build and maintain those robots."

[bemildred]

4. Yeah, exactly.

I used to work in defense software development, and I think this is a major waste of time and money. Do they really think they could, for example, have won in Iraq or AfPak if they had only had better weapons? More toys? It's not been blown up enough yet?

[DetlefK]

5. The sci-fi-novel "Robopocalypse" depicts the US-Army using robots in an Iraq-like war.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robopocalypse

(Just at the beginning of the storyline of the soldier.)
They use unarmed, humanoid robots for patrols and negotiations with civilians. Off course, the robots get blown up from time to time, but they are repaired and sent back. Over time, the insurgents come to realize that their resistance is futile and only creates collateral damage among their countrymen. Peace ensues.

In reality, it would be far too expensive to use robots as decoys for insurgents.



Btw, in that novel the bad guy hacks into the US-Army's remote-controlled battle-tanks and lets them run amok inside a military-camp. Now THAT'S a realistic tactic.

[bemildred]

6. Yeah, you got it.

Anybody that really works with computers knows how vulnerable they are. The notion that they could compete with a human on even terms is ludicrous, I don't care how much metal you put around them.

I used to read a lot of that stuff, SciFi. After WWII military themes were very popular and some of it was pretty good. I guess those ideas are still around.

Remote control, however, drones, have possibilities, but they won't be magic either, unless your opposition is equipped primitively. And they are not robust, can't be really, or it will cost you weight and hence dwell time. More metal, less fuel, for a given weight.