In 10 to 15 years, one-third of Israel’s military machines will be unmanned, predicts Giora Katz, vice president of Rafael Advanced Defense Systems Ltd., one of Israel’s leading weapons manufacturers.

In the 2006 Lebanon War, Israeli soldiers took a beating opening supply routes and ferrying food and ammunition through hostile territory to the front lines.

In the Gaza conflict in January 2009, Israel unveiled remote-controlled bulldozers to help address that issue.

Within the next year, Israeli engineers expect to deploy the voice-commanded, six-wheeled Rex robot, capable of carrying 550 pounds of gear alongside advancing infantry.

Headquartered at the Detroit Arsenal in Warren, Mich., TARDEC, part of the U.S. Army Research, Development and Engineering Command, is the country’s laboratory for sopchisticated military automotive technology. It develops and integrates the right technology solutions to improve the effectiveness of the current force and realize the superior capability of the future force in order to facilitate Army transformation.

According to officials, the Great Lakes Chapter of the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International will host an Automotive-Robotics Cluster Initiative Partnership Workshop on July 28-29 that will seek to bring together existing automotive infrastructure with the robotics needs of the DOD.

The goal of the event is to work on the framework put forth by the DOD’s Mentor Protégé Robotics Initiative and bring out ideas to help Michigan automotive-based corporations to grow the emerging robotics cluster in the state.

The DOD Mentor-Protégé Program assists small businesses to successfully compete for contracts by partnering with large companies under individual, project-based agreements.

Among the partners involved in this effort is the U.S. Small Business Administration, which during the event will organize a resource center that will enlighten companies about the various resources available through the SBA, DOD, and state and regional economic development authorities.

The conference will be hosted by the Great Lakes Chapter of AUVS with U.S. Army Tank Automotive Research and Development Center Joint Center for Robotics, National Automotive Center, the Small Business Administration (SBA), the DOD’s Office of Small Business programs, the Michigan Economic Development Corporation, and Automation Alley at Oakland University’s Oakland Center.

TARDEC along with Altair recently emphasized the need for increased modeling and simulation in the development of military ground vehicles.

The Special Weapons Observation Reconnaissance Detection System, or SWORDS, will be joining Stryker Brigade Soldiers in Iraq when it finishes final testing, said Staff Sgt. Santiago Tordillos, a bomb disposal test and evaluation NCOIC with the EOD Technology Directorate of the Army’s Armament Research, Development and Engineering Center at Picatinny Arsenal, N.J.

“We’re hoping to have them there by early 2005,” Tordillos said. “The Soldiers I’ve talked to want them yesterday.”

The system consists of a weapons platform mounted on a Talon robot, a product of the engineering and technology development firm Foster-Miller. The Talon began helping with military operations in Bosnia in 2000, deployed to Afghanistan in early 2002 and has been in Iraq since the war started, assisting with improvised explosive device detection and removal. Talon robots have been used in about 20,000 missions in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to Foster-Miller reports.

“It’s not a new invention, its just bringing together existing systems,” said Tordillos, who has been involved with the project since its inception about a year and a half ago.

Different weapons can be interchanged on the system – the M16, the 240, 249 or 50-caliber machine guns, or the M202 –A1 with a 6mm rocket launcher. Soldiers operate the SWORDS by remote control, from up to 1,000 meters away. In testing, it’s hit bulls eyes from as far as 2,000 meters away, Tordillos said. The only margin of error has been in sighting, he added.

“It can engage while on the move, but it’s not as accurate,” Tordillos said.

The system runs off AC power, lithium batteries or Singars rechargeable batteries. The control box weighs about 30 pounds, with two joysticks that control the robot platform and the weapon and a daylight viewable screen.

SWORDS recently was named one of the most amazing inventions of 2004 by Time Magazine.
There are four SWORDS in existence; 18 have been requested for service in Iraq, Tordillos said. So far, each system has cost about $230,000 to produce, said Bob Quinn, lead integrator for the project. When they go into production, Quinn estimates the cost per unit will drop to the range of $150,000 to $180,000.

Quinn credits Soldiers with getting the project started.

“It’s a classic boot-strap effort,” said Quinn.

Tordillos fielded a variety of questions while showing off the system in the exhibit hall. Soldiers wanted to know what military occupational speciality they have to sign up for in order to work with the system. There is no specific MOS for it, he said.

Other questions were more thought provoking. Does he envision a day when armed robots outnumber humans on the battlefield? Tordillos firmly said no.

“You’ll never eliminate the Soldier on the ground,” he said. “There’ll be a mix, but there will always be Soldiers out there.”

“The Otis application is ideal for the ADAM platform as their factory operation can take full advantage of ADAM’s “random origin to random destination” nature, navigating around obstacles that are expected and unexpected”, says Bill Torrens, VP of Sales and Marketing for RMT Robotics. He goes on to say, “lean manufacturing is a foundation philosophy for Otis and key to their future, so we at RMT are proud that ADAM was selected to be such an integral part of Otis’ strategy for growth and success”.

The scheme is officially referred to as Energetically Autonomous Tactical Robot (EATR™) by those behind it. It will come as no surprise to Reg readers that the funding is from DARPA, the famous Pentagon warboffinry bureau. If you’re a hammer, all the problems start to look like nails: if you’re DARPA, all the solutions start to look like robots.

The idea of EATR is ostensibly that military reconnaissance droids far behind enemy lines would be able to forage for fuel. Robotic Technology Inc, lead contractor on the EATR, puts it thus:

EATR is an autonomous robotic platform able to perform long-range, long-endurance military missions without the need for manual or conventional re-fueling. The patent pending robotic system can find, ingest and extract energy from biomass in the environment, as well as use conventional and alternative fuels (such as gasoline, diesel, propane and solar) when suitable.
The machine runs on a “biomass furnace” which powers a steam generator driving a “waste heat engine” from Cyclone Power Technologies. These pieces of kit will now be mated together within 90 days, according to RTI.

The robot steamers are envisaged as being equipped with powerful articulated arms in order to rip trees or bushes out of the earth and stuff them into their glowing maws. By way of a treat, it seems that the machines will also be able to loot or forage more conventional fuel supplies from the petrol tanks of cars, domestic gas cylinders and so on. Cyclone says that their engine can also run happily on old apple cores, banana peel and other kitchen garbage gleaned from bins.

Hapless drivers or householders will be in no position to object to such robotic plundering: military reconnaissance vehicles are typically heavily armed, and doubtless the EATR will be no exception. It might also be fitted with DARPA’s SELF tech, enabling it to construct copies of itself and modify its own design.

Even more disturbingly, it seems clear that the EATRs could run on various other kinds of organic matter, for instance bodies. No doubt things would start small, with roving EATRs scooping roadkill, stray cats and such into their fireboxes and reaping fresh energy from their rich, blazing dripping.

From there it would be only a small step to the inevitable harvesting of every living thing on Earth. Trees, crops, garbage, cattle, the very human race itself – all would go to feed the hungry roaring furnaces and drive the clanking, puffing, smoke-belching mechanical locusts onward until the sooty corpse-pall from their engines covered the entire Earth. An Earth which would be home in time to nothing but slowly powering-down EATRs, prowling across endless ashy plains of their own droppings.

A Maryland company under contract to the Pentagon is working on a steam-powered robot that would fuel itself by gobbling up whatever organic material it can find — grass, wood, old furniture, even dead bodies.

Robotic Technology Inc.’s Energetically Autonomous Tactical Robot — that’s right, “EATR” — “can find, ingest, and extract energy from biomass in the environment (and other organically-based energy sources), as well as use conventional and alternative fuels (such as gasoline, heavy fuel, kerosene, diesel, propane, coal, cooking oil, and solar) when suitable,” reads the company’s Web site.

That “biomass” and “other organically-based energy sources” wouldn’t necessarily be limited to plant material — animal and human corpses contain plenty of energy, and they’d be plentiful in a war zone.

EATR will be powered by the Waste Heat Engine developed by Cyclone Power Technology of Pompano Beach, Fla., which uses an “external combustion chamber” burning up fuel to heat up water in a closed loop, generating electricity.

The advantages to the military are that the robot would be extremely flexible in fuel sources and could roam on its own for months, even years, without having to be refueled or serviced.

Upon the EATR platform, the Pentagon could build all sorts of things — a transport, an ambulance, a communications center, even a mobile gunship.

In press materials, Robotic Technology presents EATR as an essentially benign artificial creature that fills its belly through “foraging,” despite the obvious military purpose.

Under the terms of the contract, Qinetiq’s Waltham, Mass.-based Technology Solutions Group will perform the work, which is expected to be completed early in 2010.

The Technology Solutions Group, with 800 product developers, includes the businesses formerly known as Foster-Miller Inc., Planning Systems Incorporated, Automatika, Applied Perception, Spectro Inc. and the research and development activities of Apogen Technologies Inc.

Qinetiq has been expanding its line of TALON robots since they were initially deployed for military field tasks in 2000. Now more than 2,800 TALON robots are deployed around the world, more than any other military robot, according to company officials.

The Washington-based analyst’s 2005 book, Children at War, was a comprehensive examination of the increasing use of children as combatants while his 2003 book Corporate Warriors broke new ground with its warnings about the rise of private military contractors.

Singer’s latest work, Wired for War, is indeed timely. The revolution involving robot warriors has started in earnest. Robots are being used on a daily basis by U.S. forces to defuse car bombs and destroy improvised explosive devices in Iraq while American Predator unmanned aerial vehicles, armed with missiles, prowl the skies in Pakistan and Afghanistan, seeking out al-Qaeda and Taliban targets.

As Singer, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, notes, by 2008 there were 5,331 unmanned aerial vehicles, or UAVs, in the U.S. military’s inventory, almost double the amount of manned planes being operated.

Singer, a first-rate researcher, meticulously lays out the development of the science of robotics and the early introduction of basic weapons in that field. A milestone was the Goliath, a German “demolition vehicle” the size of a small go-cart and packed with more than 100 pounds of explosives. More than 8,000 of the robot tracked vehicles were used during the Second World War.

But during the past decade, and in particular in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, robots have really come into their own. While research has been led largely by the U.S., other nations including Canada have climbed aboard the robotic warrior technology train.

The Canadian military operates UAVs in Kandahar and in theis planning to purchase more pilotless aircraft for overseas missions and to patrol the country’s borders. Canada’s special forces also use a robotic vehicle to search out chemical, nuclear or biological contamination.

The prevalence of such machines on the battlefield, and their capability to save lives, has created in some cases a bond between soldier and robot.

Singer details how one U.S. soldier in Iraq became upset when told that his unit’s bomb-hunting robot nicknamed “Scooby-Doo” could not be repaired after it was damaged in a blast. Scooby had hunted down and defused 18 improvised explosive devices and one car bomb, dangerous missions that had saved multiple human lives.

Other soldiers awarded their unit robots medals or “promoted” them because of the jobs they performed destroying IEDs. Soldiers were not just doing this as a joke, but because they are truly bonding with these machines, concludes Singer.

When one robot was knocked out of action in Iraq, a soldier ran 50 metres, all the while being shot at by an enemy machinegun, to “rescue” the machine.

But ultimately, the robotic revolution sweeping the battlefield is also changing the face of warfare, not necessarily for the better. Singer and others worry that machines further distance some military personnel from the brutality of battle.

Such distance has already been established in modern times with pilots being able to bomb from great heights, not ever seeing the face of their enemy. Those pilots, however, could still be shot down so they faced the danger of battle.

Those operating UAVs can often see the face of the enemy using cameras on board the aircraft, but the experience is more akin to a video game. And there is no risk since the UAV operators flying aircraft in Iraq and Afghanistan are actually situated in air-conditioned trailers at a Nevada military base. After their shift is over, they get into their cars and drive home to their families in nearby Las Vegas.

“By removing warriors completely from risk and fear, unmanned systems create the first complete break in the ancient connection that defines warriors and their soldierly values,” Singer writes. “If you are sitting at a computer’s controls, with no real danger other than carpal tunnel syndrome, your experience of wars is not merely distanced from risk, as with previous technologies, but now fully disconnected from it.”

Singer also raises the concern that the U.S. overreliance on technology could backfire. Instead of striking fear in the heart of insurgents, the missile-laden UAVs could promote the view that Americans are cowards since they do not want to fight face-to-face.

“These systems will show the pathway to your defeat unintentionally,” explained Mabashar Jawed Akbar, an Indian Muslim who is founding editor of the Asian Age. “They create a subtext that shows that you don’t want to die … That all we need to win is to frighten them.”

In talking about the Israeli use of UAVs, Lebanese international affairs analyst Rami Khouri has observed that instead of hurting morale among Hezbollah fighters, attacks by such aircraft fuelled a greater desire to fight back.

It’s clear from Singer’s book, however, that the role of robotic warriors will only increase on the battlefield. And the idea of systems resembling those from the Terminator films is not so far-fetched. One U.S. military report predicted, “Just as World War One accelerated automotive technology, the war on terrorists will accelerate the development of humanoid robot technology.”

Other robots will have more in common with the insect world. Singer writes that we can expect Proliferated Autonomous Weapons, or PRAWNS, in future war zones. Resembling a swarm of bees, these miniature robots would use simple sensors to find the enemy.

Each individual robot would have knowledge of how many fellow robots are attacking the same target, Singer writes. Much as ants have different types working in their colonies, the individual PRAWNs might also carry different weapons or sensors allowing them to match themselves to the needs of the overall swarm to carry out their mission.

The robotic world of war in the future will be terrifying indeed.

Researchers at Texas A&M University and Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands have collaborated on a way to speed up the process. Small robots take photos of the disaster site. The photos are then uploaded to a computer program called Rubble-Viewer that transforms them into a three-dimensional map of the site. (The program is based on Microsoft’s Photosynth software, which won a 2008 PM Breakthrough Award.)

This could speed up rescues. “It can take 10 hours to extract somebody because you don’t know the structure,” says Robin Murphy, a professor of computer science and engineering at Texas A&M. “This will give structural engineers more accurate information to speed up extraction.” RubbleViewer’s creators hope to get the software to first responders by August, when hurricane season normally hits its peak.

Conditions on the battlefield have changed almost as much as those off of it. Just as America’s first black president has replaced an oil-conscious white Texan in the White House, war in the Afghan theatre is almost unrecognisable as that which broke out eight years ago.

“What we’ve seen since the beginning of war in Afghanistan is a revolution equal to that inspired by the introduction of gunpowder, the machine gun or the tank,” says Peter W Singer, director of the 21st Century Defense Initiative at leading research unit The Brookings Institution and author of Wired For War. “Unmanned systems, unused and unwanted at the beginning, are now saving the lives of thousands of soldiers.”

Developments in technology have allowed scientists, manufacturers and military personnel to come up with innovative equipment that has changed the face of modern warfare since the beginning of the war in Afghanistan according to Institute for Global Futures CEO Dr James Canton. But will president Obama’s shift in US focus away from Iraq towards Afghanistan spur further innovation? Or will the global financial crisis derail future projects?

“There has been a shift over the past 15 years,” says Canton. “Most innovation comes from the private sector now. That isn’t going to stop and the military will be the beneficiaries of that.”

Singer isn’t quite so confident that there will be money available to pioneer further innovation, but he does believe that war machines will continue to be at the forefront of the revolution in warfare being experienced both in Afghanistan and Iraq.

So what technologies are being researched and implemented to change the future of war in Afghanistan?

Robotics – the UAV example

Little more than glorified toys when coalition troops first took the fight to the Taliban, military robots have advanced so much there is expected to be 10,000 of them deployed in the field in 2009. Performing tasks like surveillance, troop rescue, mine clearance and target identification, robots have become an indispensable part of military life in Afghanistan because they take humans out of harm’s way.

“Even at a time of shrinking defence budgets, there will be one area of sure growth, and that’s unmanned systems.”"Robotics has finally been accepted by the military,” says Singer. “There was a lot of resistance to them initially but attitudes have changed because it has been demonstrated that you can send machines on missions that it would be dull, dirty or dangerous for humans to do.

“In addition, technology is evolving and the robots themselves are becoming exponentially better year on year. In 2001 the human-operated Predator drones saw Osama bin Laden moving about between caves but couldn’t do anything about it as they were unarmed. The Reaper, which is basically the next generation version of the Predator, is highly lethal and is so packed with AI that it can make decisions on its own.”

Greater protection with M-ATVs

When they first entered Afghanistan, US army tactical vehicles were defenceless against improvised explosive devices (IEDs) because they did not have armour. Although they tried up-armouring vehicles to rectify the problem, IEDs (also known as roadside bombs) remain the biggest killer of coalition troops, accounting for 33% of deaths in 2008 according to figures published by the International Security Assistance Force.

The new great white hope is the mine-resistant ambush-protected all-terrain vehicle (M-ATV). The M-ATVs are lighter than the mine resistant ambush protected vehicles (MRAPs) that have been successful in countering IED attack in Iraq and will be suitable for off-road use, which is critical in the Afghanistan war theatre.

“We’re growing and our formations are growing faster than we can keep up with the sourcing,” says general Ann Dunwoody, the new commander of army materiel command at Fort Belvoir in the US. “Given the two different terrains in Iraq and Afghanistan, the same vehicle doesn’t fit in both environments. We are working with industry to see how fast they can deliver a different kind of technology.”

Communications – new improved connections

At the beginning of the war the US army was hamstrung by old-fashioned radios and networks that required line-of-sight communication, which was completely unsuitable for the mountainous Afghan terrain.

“We got into some tactical satellites but for the most part, we’re a very line-of-sight focused force, and that presented some significant challenges,” says lieutenant colonel John Burger, chief of the US army’s central command strategic programmes branch. “There are some promising technologies coming to the fore. I think the biggest foundational change has been from line-of-sight to over-the-horizon capabilities in different form factors.”

“War machines will continue to be at the forefront of the revolution in warfare.”Other advances have included voice over internet protocol (VoIP), which allows conversations to be held securely, and video conferencing capabilities that negate the need for generals to meet up physically to discuss tactics.

“Soldiers in the field have far better communications capabilities now,” says Singer. “They are lashed together and back to those behind the lines better than ever, giving them greater situational awareness. But these advancements aren’t without their problems.

“An overwhelming amount of data is being transferred back and forth, so it is not efficient. And the ability to be connected to senior officers is like crack for some generals. They can’t help getting involved in micro managing low-level aspects of battle. And if they’re doing that who’s doing their jobs?” he asks.

The next big development will be the joint tactical radio system (JTRS), a family of revolutionary software-programmable tactical radios that will provide soldiers with interoperable voice, data and video communications, when they go live in 2010.

Future combat systems

The masterwork of the US army is future combat systems (FCS). Designed in response to the demands of modern warfare in Iraq and Afghanistan, FCS will be live from 2015, although some elements of the technology are being tested by troops already.

FCS consists of eight new manned ground vehicles, a family of unmanned air and ground vehicles, the non-line-of-sight launch system and advanced tactical and urban sensors, all connected to a state-of-the-art network of computers, software and radios that will allow full connectivity between soldiers at any level from brigade to squad.

“Future combat systems is being designed in line with what we know about war generally and from the experiences of soldiers in Afghanistan,” says Canton. “Soldiers need better protection, lighter equipment and more precise weapons systems that are less complicated to use.

“The weapons systems they have at the moment were not designed for the cold of Afghanistan. They need a system that can morph in different environments because the nature of warfare is changing all the time.”

Outlook

Developments in technology have allowed scientists, manufacturers and military personnel to come up with innovative equipment that has changed the face of modern warfare since the beginning of the war in Afghanistan.

“Technology is evolving and the robots themselves are becoming exponentially better year on year.”But will president Obama’s shift in US focus away from Iraq towards Afghanistan spur further innovation? Or will the global financial crisis derail future projects?

“There has been a shift over the past 15 years,” says Canton. “Most innovation comes from the private sector now. That isn’t going to stop and the military will be the beneficiaries of that.”

Singer isn’t quite so confident that there will be money available to pioneer further innovation, but he does believe that war machines will continue to be at the forefront of the revolution in warfare being experienced both in Afghanistan and Iraq.

“Even at a time of shrinking defence budgets, there will be one area of sure growth and that’s unmanned systems,” he says. “Investment is being driven by the capabilities of these unmanned systems and demand for them in the field. This is just the start of the revolution.”