Recently Cyclops was standing in a workshop at the US Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center in San Diego when he raised his arm, took aim and fired, dead on target. He is the start of a process that will, says Bart Everett, technical director of robotics at the centre, lead to the creation of “an android-like robot that can go out with a soldier to do a lot of human-like tasks that soldiers are doing now”.
Those tasks are likely to include forward reconnaissance — and shooting to kill. Is this a futuristic fantasy best left to Hollywood films such as Terminator and Robocop? The reality may arrive sooner than we think, according to some experts.
Simple robots are already on the front line and other more sophisticated ones are heading there. Last week the US army revealed that in April it will deploy 18 armed robots in Iraq.
These machines, complete with sight and sound sensors, will be controlled by soldiers using laptop computers up to half a mile away. They are likely to be sent into buildings to flush out insurgents and to inspect vehicles suspected of carrying bombs.
But these will be no mere probes: each robot will have a gun capable of firing 1,000 rounds a minute. Some versions can carry grenade launchers or anti-tank rockets. They will hunt and kill. They are the first wave of America’s new model army.
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“The introduction of robot fighting machines is the biggest thing in human development since the internal combustion engine,” claimed John Pike, director of Global Security, an American research body that specialises in military capabilities.
“If you apply Moore’s law (that computing power doubles every 18 months), by the end of the decade there will be thousands of warrior robots. And some of them will be autonomous (pre-programmed and acting under their own control). It opens up major new concepts of warfare.”
The US Congress has approved a programme to make a third of all US ground attack vehicles and deep-strike aircraft unmanned by the end of the decade. The Pentagon is spending £70 billion on robots and other high-tech devices in a project called Future Combat Systems, the largest military contract in US history.
BY 2010 American spending on high-tech weapons will be more than double the current budget for all of Britain’s armed forces. The UK is outgunned on the money front but is contributing technical expertise. It is also quietly taking part in operations.
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This weekend the Ministry of Defence (MoD) confirmed that an RAF pilot had participated in robot warfare. The pilot, who has not been identified, is one of 50 British personnel embedded in a US-UK project pursuing unmanned aerial devices.
On August 25 last year the pilot was at a computer on a military base near Las Vegas where he was controlling, via satellite, a Predator drone over Iraq. At the push of a button he sent a Hellfire missile onto an insurgent target near Najaf.
Like Predators in the sky, the robot warriors of the future may creep up on us before we realise it. The Terminators are coming.
Can a robot ever replace a human in war? They have some clear advantages, say experts. “They will kill without pity or remorse,” said Pike. “Historically, only about 1% of soldiers in real war are like that. They are sociopaths who these days are used as snipers. Half of the rest just spray bullets around and the other half never fire at all.”
While the sophisticated machines are expensive to develop, they cost less than human soldiers in other ways. They require no salary or housing; when not in use they can simply be stored. Nor do they need retirement benefits — no small matter when the Pentagon already owes its troops $653 billion in future payments. But most importantly their political cost is low — they require no condolence letters to bereaved families.
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So America is powering ahead with devices such as “autonomous” reconnaissance vehicles and supply trucks. The latter will be unmanned vehicles that follow pre- programmed routes to the front line. They are known as Mules — multifunctional utility/logistics and equipment.
Another machine, equipped with sensitive visual, acoustic and infrared devices, is being designed to scout buildings, tunnels and caves. Early models have already been used in Afghanistan.
A sergeant who helped to develop the Swords (special weapons observation reconnaissance direct-action system) robot being used in Afghanistan and Iraq was impressed with the results. “We were sitting there firing single rounds and smacking bull’s- eyes,” he said. “We were completely amazed.”
In Britain, scientists at University College London have developed a device they call a “snakebot”. Dropped from the air, it is designed to wriggle across the ground as unseen as a snake, while carrying instruments that can transmit details of enemy positions.
The researchers used a computer system with “digital chromosomes” that are able to rectify faults in case the snakebot is “wounded”. If some of the links in the snake are disabled, the computer works out how to use the remaining links in other ways to keep the device moving.
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Britain, which invented the first machines for remote bomb disposal, is also involved in the US drive for robots through a Glasgow computer company, Essential Viewing. It is providing some of the video systems used on the robots being sent to Iraq.
However, the android killing machine is not in Britain’s sights. The MoD prefers to develop mechanical add-ons for human soldiers.
Last month troops were on Salisbury Plain testing Fist (future integrated soldier technology), a £2 billion project to equip 30,000 troops with advanced kit and communications. It includes uniforms made of special fabrics that reduce the risk of being detected by thermal imaging cameras. Fist also involves global positioning systems that would allow commanders to see exactly where all their troops are on the battlefield and what they are doing.
Other advances under way include electric power for personal radios generated by a soldier’s foot movement; “exo-skeletal” supports to enable soldiers to lift and carry very heavy weights; and a number of surveillance drones that can be carried in a backpack and launched on the battlefield.
Why is the MoD less keen than the Americans on the idea of android warriors? The difference lies in more than money: it is a cultural divide in how to fight wars.
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BRITISH forces take a different approach to interpreting rules of engagement from the United States, one aim being to ensure that targets are properly identified and their motives clearly understood.
The RAF, for example, has stricter training about identifying targets before opening fire than American forces. A US fighter jet will attack a perceived threat early; the RAF will wait to determine what the threat is.
The RAF pilot involved in the Predator strike last year, the MoD said, was allowed to act only under British law, not American, even though he was operating with American equipment under American command in Las Vegas.
The more robots become autonomous, the greater the legal and moral minefield. For robots, judging threats may be extremely difficult.
“Suppose an autonomous robot has a crowd of people before it,” said Pike. “Could it distinguish someone, maybe even a woman or a child, who approaches asking for food from someone carrying a hidden weapon? Sometimes these things come down to gut instinct. I don’t know how that is taught to a machine.”
Ghastly mistakes where a machine runs amok, mowing down the innocent, are the inevitable fear. Wing Commander Andrew Brookes, of the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London, said: “We do worry about the legalities of what we do and if we let autonomous units run around we will worry about control and responsibility.
“The US has a different philosophy to us in this. Their number one concern is protection of their people. If an American soldier says he felt he was under threat when he opened fire, there are few in the US who would prosecute him.”
Unlike the British, no American troops have been prosecuted for killing Iraqi civilians and the United States has not signed up to the International Criminal Court.
The emerging technology also has clear limitations, say other British experts. To disable a Cyclops-type robot “it would take only a few projectiles loaded with dye and you could blind it,” said Christopher Foss, land forces editor of Jane’s Defence Weekly. “You’d need some kind of lens cleaning system.”
He remains sceptical about the effectiveness of robots, pointing out problems such as the loss of signals to the operator, either by accident or interference from the enemy, and the need for a strong method of identifying friend from foe to prevent the robot from shooting its own side. “The British Army,” he recalled, “did test a robotic Scorpion (armoured vehicle), but it wasn’t very successful. It couldn’t see down very well and when it went into a dip in the ground you lost it.”
Since then, however, robot technology has moved on and is advancing in leaps and bounds — or at least an anthropomorphic stroll. Last week three independent research teams published details of robots designed to walk like people. One developed by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has a computer program that learns from experience, improving its gait as it goes along.
“It is one of the first walking robots to use a learning program,” said Dr Russ Tedrake, a member of the research team. “It is the first to learn to walk without any prior information built into the controller.”
If robots ever acquired a sophisticated ability to learn, where would that lead? It is the stuff of science fiction, found in Isaac Asimov’s novel I, Robot and films such as Blade Runner. The Americans, however, are intent on building the robots first and answering questions later.
Gordon Johnson of the US Joint Forces Research Centre betrayed no doubts. “The American military will have these kinds of robots,” he said. “It’s not a question of if; it’s a question of when.”