WE: ROBOT by David Hambling

Author:David Hambling
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Aurum Press Ltd
Published: 2018-09-15T16:00:00+00:00

ROBOTS

AT WAR

ROBOTS AT WAR

Perhaps the first military robots were eighteen-century fireships, unmanned vessels that crashed into enemy ships, bridges or fortifications to destroy them. The British called them ‘machine-vessels’ after the mechanical timer that was used to set off the fuse, and the Italians maccina infernale or ‘machine from hell’.

Remote-controlled boats have been around since the 1890s, but navies have largely resisted using them. That may change with the Sea Hunter, an autonomous vessel designed to track submarines. Meanwhile robot submarines themselves are on the brink of a new era. Small, short-ranged, unmanned underwater vehicles have been around since the 1950s, but Echo Voyager is the prototype of a much larger vessel able to operate on its own for months on end.

The first military drones were arguably the balloons used to drop bombs on Venice during the Austrian siege in 1849. Franz von Uchatius, best known as the inventor of an early motion-picture projector, rigged small hot-air balloons to release bombs when a command signal was sent down a long copper wire. They were not successful; the technology was not up to the task.

Drones reappeared in the First World War, in the form of radio-controlled biplanes. These ‘aerial torpedoes’ carried an explosive charge to destroy enemy airships or ground positions, but neither the British Sopwith AT nor the American Kettering Bug was considered reliable enough to be used in action.

Drones have never been popular with air forces, but the Predator drone proved so effective in gathering intelligence during the conflicts in former Yugoslavia in the 1990s, that it was no longer possible to resist pressure from the intelligence community. The US Air Force reluctantly acquired a fleet of Predators. These started to carry their own missiles in 2001, after a series of incidents in which ‘high value targets’, including Osama bin Laden, were spotted, but air strikes could not be called in fast enough.

The Predator has since been superseded by the bigger and more powerful Predator B, better known as the Reaper. In military terms, it is a light reconnaissance aircraft with some weapons; the X-47B under development is a more serious combat aircraft. Meanwhile much smaller attack drones, like the portable Switchblade, are becoming important for tactical operations.

Remote-controlled ground vehicles have also existed since before the Second World War, but they have been largely limited to niche roles, such as bomb disposal, where machines like the PackBot 510 are essential. The Minitaur is a novel legged design offering greater mobility, which may prove valuable for urban reconnaissance. The XOS-2 is a more exotic development: a robotic exoskeleton giving its wearer enhanced strength and endurance. It will initially be used for logistics, but with the ultimate goal of a suit of powered armour that turns its wearer into a walking tank. The Covert Robot is equally remarkable, being a stealthy robot used to infiltrate enemy positions and move around silently without being spotted.

The only armed ground robots in service are South Korea’s SGR-1A sentry robots. Russia experimented with remote-controlled ‘teletanks’

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