WarBots: Latest in military strategy

Imagine a scenario in which one of the world's largest oil pipelines could be guarded from attack without deploying any sort of large military force or private security personnel. Imagine if hundreds of makeshift explosives could be detected, extracted or even diffused before endangering the lives of a surrounding civilian presence. Imagine if a government could launch a full-scale military attack with only a handful of mechanical engineers and a fleet of 30,000 robots equipped with automatic firing and rocket launching abilities for land, air and sea.

It might have a bit of a science fiction ring to it, but the reality is that robotic technologies are now being used more than ever in military and security operations worldwide.

When governments or militaries use the term "robotics," it can mean anything from remote-controlled vehicles that detect explosives or gather aerial intelligence to electronically autonomous systems capable of delivering an attack much like a human soldier.

Now more than ever, governments are increasing research funding for robotic technologies to be used in military operations. American and British forces have already deployed some of these robots in places like Iraq and Afghanistan.

Military robotics: A brief history

The first type of unmanned military robots can be traced back to 1940. During World War II, the Germans developed the Beetletank, a small land vehicle (4x4x1 ft) that carried up to 100 kilograms of explosives. The miniature tank was connected by a long line of telephone cables to a joystick controlled by a German soldier. Although highly ineffective for a multitude of reasons, the Beetletank would force some allied soldiers to be sent out to cut the wires before reaching its target.

As radio-controlled technologies were being developed during the Cold War, the Soviet Red Army created its Teletank, a large, unmanned, heavily armored land vehicle equipped with machine guns, flamethrowers and a self-detonation system.

By the time integrated circuit and silicon chip technologies were harnessed, all sorts of complex electronics were being tested for military and security operations. By the 1970s, the British had developed the Wheelbarrow, a light, remote-controlled robot used to dispose of IEDs created by the Irish Republican Army.

The Wheelbarrow was indeed revolutionary; its effectiveness caught the attention of governments eager to develop technologies for the next generation of combat. By the 1980s and into the 1990s, wealthy states began to pour millions into the research and development of innovations that would eventually become used in future military operations.

Robots in action

It is often noted that 11 September 2001 attacks forced western states to become more aware of increasingly unorthodox and untraditional methods of attack. In the same vein as the methods used to carry out the 9/11 attacks, one could argue that as technologies evolve, so changes the nature of combat.

As a senior scientist of the RAND Corporation once stated, "[Western governments and militaries] see that we aren't going to have another Desert Storm - the enemy isn't going to present itself out in the open as easy targets where precision weapons go in there, take everything out, and we all go home."

Indeed, this is exactly the logic of states utilizing robotic technology for domestic security or military operations abroad.

In was the 2001 US invasion of Afghanistan that truly marked the pinnacle of the most innovative robots deployed for military operations. These bots were mobilized for tasks ranging from guarding perimeters and delivering resources to detecting explosives and conducting reconnaissance missions.

Almost a year into the war, US forces began to use a small suitcase-sized ground vehicle nicknamed "Fester," a radio-controlled robot able to somersault and climb stairs and large rocks at approximately 10 miles per hour, perfect for exploring caves and conducting low-level reconnaissance missions. By 2004, over 50 similar robots could be found crawling Afghanistan's rubble at any given time.

One year ago, a private company called Foster-Miller modified three of their bomb-detecting robots with automatic firing systems, grenade and rocket-launching capabilities. Named TALON, the robot can also be equipped with an "arm" allowing the machine to - in theory - inspect potential explosive devices or drag injured personnel or casualties away from a battle scene. The robots were quickly sent to Iraq where they are currently active.

Another firm called IRobot has developed a similar robot able to recognize acoustic fluctuations and analyze thermal images around corners in order to detect possible snipers or other hidden threats. Other bots can detect explosives as well as nuclear, biological and chemical (NBC) materials. It was the same company that less-than-successfully promoted the autonomous robotic vacuum cleaner to homeowners on the commercial market in the 1990s.

Man versus machine

Currently over 5,000 robots are being used in Iraq, but human beings control all of them remotely.

However, Joseph Mait, a senior technical researcher at a US Army research lab in Maryland, said in a recent interview that the US military was hoping to change that. "The key is increasing autonomy. Now we have several soldiers per robot, but in the future we'd like to have one soldier with many robots," he said.

Mait's statement echoes the 2001 US Congressional announcement that it would require one-third of the US military's aerial and ground vehicles to become unmanned by 2015. Halfway through this timetable the Department of Defense released a report titled "Unmanned Systems Roadmap: 2007-2032," detailing plans to focus extensively on increasing the robotic autonomy of unmanned land, aerial and maritime operations.

The logic of the DoD is that by utilizing unmanned, autonomous military robots, an already over-stretched US military can focus human capital in operations where it is needed most without having to alter the overall size of the military.

The first wave of autonomous military machines came in the form of large rotary guns that were attached to US naval ships able to scan the surrounding skies and waters for threats and fired accordingly. More recently, the Unmanned air Vehicle (UAV) has been used to gather intelligence from the air.

"The emerging technology of unmanned vehicles [relocates] the human operator(s) - who used to be situated in the weapon system itself - to a remote location. This is a trend that is likely to continue on a very fast pace. Advances in the field of robotics increasingly ease this relocation of the operators and allow all kinds of unmanned vehicles to operate in complex scenarios including military operations," Professor Dr Andreas Birk, Jacobs University Bremen Robotics professor and researcher, told ISN Security Watch.

Indeed, as the push for more automaton increased, it should not have been terribly surprising when the UAV was revamped for combat missions. Accordingly, the Unmanned Combat Air Vehicle (UCAV) was developed and is now being used to carry out air strikes. In late 2002, the UCAV modeled after the popular UAV Predator Drone was flown over Yemen and carried out what the CIA called a "successful air strike, killing six suspected al-Qaeda members and a former bin Laden security official who played a key role in the October 2000 attack against the US naval ship USS Cole."

The UCAV carried out another air strike in January 2006 in Pakistan. Known as the Damadola Airstrike, the UCAV fired 10 missiles killing at least 18 villagers "suspected" of terrorist involvement (much to the outrage of the Pakistani public). The significance of the Damadola Airstrike is important: While most of the victims were reported to be rural villagers with no significant ties to any terrorist organization, they have also become some of the first casualties killed by a machine.

Robo-ethics

One of the main concerns with robotics has to do with the human element. What effects could increased levels of robotic autonomy have? Such a question illustrates a small part of the discussion found in the robotic engineering world, but it should increasingly become a concern within security studies as robotic technologies proliferate into areas of conflict.

"In general, the ethics concerns related to military robotics are in no way different from the generic ethical problems related to technology and warfare. One particular aspect is that - as already mentioned before - unmanned weapons systems may lower the restrictions to use them as the risks for [human] soldiers are lowered," Dr Birk told ISN Security Watch.

Other experts, however, believe that future military robotics can easily cause a rift in the current thinking of security and other political and legal institutions.

"In the future, due to the increasing tempo of warfare, it appears inevitable that increasing levels of autonomy will be moved onto unmanned and robotic systems. If done without consideration of the ethical consequence, there are a range of effects [that can occur]: difficulty of responsibility-attribution in the event of war crimes, the potential lowering of the threshold of entry into war, proliferation of the technology into terrorist organizations, and many more," Ron Arkin, Georgia Tech University professor of computing and robotics, told ISN Security Watch.

"Appropriate use of this technology, however, by engineering ethical safeguards as defined by international protocols such as the Geneva convention into these systems… can mitigate many of these risks and can potentially lower the incidence of war crimes and help save noncombatant lives. In essence a robot, in my opinion, can ultimately be more humane in the battlefield than a human, if properly designed," said Arkin.