Robotic soldiers are reshaping the face of the battlefield. While robots have been in the field for years, detecting bombs, acting as extra eyes and ears, and surveying unsafe areas, a new class of robots are creating a shift in how we think about war. The introduction of soldier robots, which can target and fire autonomously, has prompted a host of ethical and technical issues.
Exhibit A: iRobot, the company that created the vacuuming Roomba, has recently announced its newest war bot. The “iRobot Warrior” is a treaded, one-armed robot that can be used for battlefield causality extraction, firefighting, firing weapons, and assisting with Hazmat and SWAT teams. It’s a variation of the Packbot, a configurable explosive-detecting or surveying mobile robot with controllers that resemble a video game’s to make it easy for people to use. There are over 2,000 Packbots currently deployed overseas.
These initiatives to develop remotely controlled, and eventually entirely autonomous ‘hunters and killers’ that can locate and fire at target on their own from two US major military endeavors. The SWORDS project took bomb-disposal robots – devices that can be navigated from a distance to uncover and move suspicious packages – and turned them into gun-toting automatons, the first to appear on the field. Built by Foster-Miller, the newest versions are in Iraq and are able to move as fast as a running soldier, survive a fall from a bridge or window, and plunge through snow or underwater (see a video of the ‘Talon’ in action here).
The second initiative is the Future Combat Systems (FCS) which aims to have advanced robots fighting alongside robots by 2030, although it may undergo significant cuts this year under the new administration. Started in 2003, it is the biggest military contract in history and seeks to develop more sophisticated, automated robots. Such advances—spurred on by Congress’s 2000 mandate that by 2010 a third of ground and air vehicles must be robotic—seem to be going at full speed without ethical regulations, say some researchers.
War robots are fascinating to us for many reasons, primarily because of the frightening potential for unlimited and irresponsible bloodshed. Could somewhere down the line robot soldiers actually prevent war-related loss of human life? If all armies were completely automated, a battle of forces might mean only a loss of resources, and losers could concede without needing to sacrifice citizens. But if killing remotely becomes more and more the mainstream, if—essentially—going to war feels no different than playing a video game (a la Orson Scott Card’s Ender’s Game), maybe human lives will become even more of a commodity in times of war.
