An Army exercise used remotely controlled vehicles to breach physical barriers to allow manned units to cross them:
First Lieutenant Cody Rothschild told US defence publication Stars & Stripes: “We did a robotic breach today, which has never been done before. This is a great step forward for the Army, and for robotics.”
The exercise involved remotely controlled robots clearing a path for forces, supported by M1A2 Abrams tanks and Bradley Fighting Vehicles. The unmanned systems disabled landmines and built a land bridge enabling infantry to navigate a tank trench.
Reducing the exposure of combat engineers to enemy fire defending the obstacles is good.
When they are truly robotic with autonomy, how long will it be before the assault echelon is robotic, too?
Years ago I wondered if jihadis would respond to robotic and remotely controlled weapons with their own, in a similar breaching mission:
I have to wonder if the next step is for Hamas to switch to robots to attack the Israeli border defense robots. Perhaps crawling mobile mines or EFPs try to work their way through the border defenses, taking days or weeks to try and evade detection. Maybe tunnels are dug to push the robot to the surface where it will begin its infiltration mission. Perhaps UAVs with mine or EFP payloads are sent on one-way missions to land by a road to hit an Israeli vehicle. Perhaps the crawlers wash up on shore as "junk" and then move out. Or maybe terrorists assemble a robotic terrorist inside a city or out in the countryside and then set it to deploy and attack hours or days after the construction team leaves?
Perhaps enough terrorist robots can overwhelm the robotic sensors to clear a path to allow "human" terrorists to exploit the gap and actually reach human targets before getting themselves killed.
And how will jihadi ideology deal with fighting and dying not to kill infidels but robots?
In the bigger picture, I expect robotics to eventually return us to the days of mass armies waging wars of attrition. But instead of pushing meat sacks into the line, the key will be robot production and logistics to get them to the front line.
