While pilotless US drones have had some success in
Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq, a top US Army general is urging the military to
step up the deployment of ground robots.
Lieutenant General Rick Lynch, the commander of the III
Armored Corps and the holder of a master's degree in mechanical engineering
from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) said that robots saved
lives. Obviously not Taliban lives, but US troops lives.
While serving in Iraq, Lynch said he lost a total of 153
soldiers under his command and "80 percent of those soldiers didn't have
to die." He said that the technology was there. The army had to
get past the demonstrations and into the field.
At the moment, ground operations are mostly limited to
the use of small camera-equipped robots to detect improvised explosive devices,
or IEDs. Lynch said that aerial surveillance and weapons systems
were useful but "the bad guys know that if the weather turns bad we can't
see them from the air."
He said among the "immediate applications" for
unmanned vehicles were route clearance, surveillance and in convoys. Robots were "excellent at clearing routes,"
which can go from point A to point B and even detect and avoid obstacles.