Since 2016 Russian firms have revealed the existence of several armed UGVs (Unmanned Ground Vehicle) but only one of them appears to have entered service; the five ton Uran-6. This one has seen action in Syria in an unarmed version for use by combat engineers to deal with landmines, roadside bombs and, most importantly, ensuring that a route is clear of mines and bombs.
No doubt the Chinese have made more progress given that armed UGVs would have made this encounter end far more quickly and differently:
Of course, China's Dystopian State 1.0 Beta version is supposed to discourage such defiance of the party's power in the first place.
And of course, good old fashioned "reeducation" methods aren't discarded by the communists:
Since last spring, Chinese authorities in the heavily Muslim region of Xinjiang have ensnared tens, possibly hundreds of thousands of Muslim Chinese — and even foreign citizens — in mass internment camps. This detention campaign has swept across Xinjiang, a territory half the area of India, leading to what a U.S. commission on China last month said is “the largest mass incarceration of a minority population in the world today.” ...
In a June 2017 paper published by a state-run journal, a researcher from Xinjiang’s Communist Party School reported that most of 588 surveyed participants did not know what they had done wrong when they were sent to re-education. But by the time they were released, nearly all — 98.8 percent— had learned their mistakes, the paper said.
Remember, domestic threats are just part of the continuum of threats to Chinese Communist Party control that must be stamped out.
America, too, is working on unmanned vehicles. But the focus of this program is on removing vulnerable people from the logistics tail that feeds the Army.
Sadly, our
UPDATE: Newly released pictures from 1989.
