Training with war bots

NY Times:

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As the mock attack began on the sprawling military base here, tiny drones hovered overhead, peering through the windows to see insurgents gathered inside the houses. Small robots — like R2-D2 in “Star Wars” — crawled through some of the doors, flashing back live video of the startled enemy’s positions. Electronic sensors placed nearby watched escape routes. And a battery of six-foot-high missiles stood at the ready farther out in the desert to destroy vehicles that tried to rush in to help the insurgents.

“When I was in Iraq, we couldn’t see what we were busting into,” said Specialist Randall Thompson, who operates the robots. “But with this equipment, we can at least get a peek.”

Army officials are trying to distance the relatively small-scale effort, which still faces some technical hurdles, from the shadow of a much broader program recently canceled that was to have created a truly modern military, with a new generation of combat vehicles and a vast wireless network.

As they go back to the drawing board for the big equipment, Army officials say these smaller technologies could make a difference sooner for the soldiers who take on some of the most dangerous missions hunting out insurgents.

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The drones resemble flying lawnmower engines about the size of a beer keg that land on four curved wire feet. With the cameras on the drones acting like spotters, the ground-launched six-foot missiles, called “rockets in a box,” will eventually enable soldiers to destroy hostile forces more than 20 miles away without having to call in help from artillery units or other aircraft, Army officials say.

The robots could also search caves and cars at hazardous checkpoints. And the sensors could guard outposts and monitor areas cleared of insurgents, freeing more soldiers to fight.

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... the new drones, made by Honeywell, are designed to hover over a crucial spot on a battlefield like helicopters, instead of flying in a wide circle. And if an assault squad needed, for example, to toss the 35-pound robot though a window, where it happened to land on its back, it would flip itself over and start shooting video.

The sensors, designed by Textron, send alerts and pictures from the field or from the inside of buildings. One device, which can be buried near a road, can even discern from seismic readings whether people, trucks or tanks are passing by or approaching.

The precision-guided missiles could represent a major advance. Fifteen of them can fit into a refrigerator-size launcher. They are being designed, by Raytheon and Lockheed Martin, to go over or swerve around hills and mountains and update their course in midflight. The warheads are supposed to be powerful enough to destroy a moving tank, making infantry brigades more potent than ever.

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These weapons bring a new dimension to the term "stand off." They also are significant force multipliers. They take away some of the advantages that insurgents have. When combined with current UAVs they can make a significant difference in dealing with forces like the Taliban and al Qaeda.

One component that is still missing is a sniffer bot that can detect the IEDs placed along the road and safely eliminate them. That would be a real frustration to the current enemy.