Friday, August 16, 2019

Better, Stronger, Faster?

Will robots make American infantry ten times as effective? If so, that will go a long way to making up for the loss of the current edge provided by well-trained marksmen.

Interesting:

Are humans with robots an order of magnitude better than humans without robots? It’s the question the Army’s Maneuver Center for Excellence is hoping to solve through trial and experimentation. The National Advanced Mobility Consortium posted a request for white papers Aug. 5 about technologies that might have a place in a robotic, artificial intelligence (AI) and autonomy technology demonstration at Fort Benning in September 2020. ...

In order to do this, the Maneuver Center for Excellence, together with Fort Benning’s Maneuver Capabilities Development and Integration Directorate’s Robotics Requirements Division, is exploring robotic systems for “ground, air, water,” as well as the virtual space — otherwise known as the four platonic elements of terrestrial war. These robots and systems should be able to improve “mobility, protection, situational awareness, endurance, persistence, and depth” as well as, and this is key, lethality.

Taken together, the robots should lend an advantage to the platoon’s OODA loop — its ability to observe, orient, decide and act — with the goal that a robot-enabled platoon completes OODA-loop cycles 10 times faster than it would without robots.

I've written, in this USNI Blog article, that technology will bring precision rifles to even untrained enemy troops, requiring another method of maintaining our infantry dominance against the "pray and spray" crowd.

Will robots--which at first will be expensive and only available to troops with the money and advanced economies to provide them--do the trick?

Of course, I always worry about the human wave crowd that has no decision loop. They just charge and shoot until they overrun you or they all die forward of your lines.

Stay tuned for the demonstration results, I guess.