Robot vs. Robot War? Now China Has Semi-Autonomous Fighting Ground Robots
Robot vs. Robot War? Now China Has
Semi-Autonomous Fighting Ground Robots
The Chinese Army is preparing to deploy small,
new, tracked war-robots armed with machine guns, night vision, missile loaders
and camera sensors to conduct attacks while leaving manned systems at safer
stand-off distances.
by Kris Osborn June
15, 2020
The Chinese Army is preparing to deploy small,
new, tracked war-robots armed with machine guns, night vision, missile loaders
and camera sensors to conduct attacks while leaving manned systems at safer
stand-off distances.
Citing a China Central Television segment on
the robots, People’s Online Daily reports that the “thigh-high
robot looks like a small assault vehicle. Target practice results showed the
robot has acceptable accuracy.”
While the report stresses that the robot will
be controlled or operated by human decision-makers, it is not clear if the
robot is merely remote-controlled or if it operates with some measure of autonomy.
As a small tracked vehicle, the robot is built to traverse rugged or uneven
terrain and operate as a forward-positioned weapons “node” for ground attacks.
The U.S. military has long-been operating
combat robots, ranging from teleoperated sensors and IED-detonators to small,
semi-autonomous unmanned systems programmed to respond to specific cues or
sensor input. At the same time, the U.S. Army’s drones are increasingly capable
of much greater levels of autonomy and, according to its current technological
modernization strategy, expects to operate most of its combat formations
with robotic systems functioning alongside or in tandem
with manned platforms. Deploying forward-positioned command and control nodes,
weapons and supply transporters, reconnaissance-oriented robots and even armed attack unmanned platforms are all part of the
Army’s modernization calculus.
While current Pentagon doctrine stipulates that
a human must always be “in the loop” when it comes to decisions about the use
of deadly force, many U.S. military leaders have expressed concern that there
is little or no assurance that potential enemies will follow a similar path.
This is of particular relevance now because the technical ability to engineer a
robot able to navigate, surveil, track, target and destroy an enemy is
basically here, given rapid advances in algorithms enabling autonomy.
The apparent Chinese intention for the robots
appears somewhat analogous to the U.S. posture, meaning that they will be
deployed for reconnaissance and potential attack missions.
A war-prospect such as this invites an
interesting discussion regarding what types of defensive tactics the U.S. might
be assessing in response to the threat of a Chinese robotic attack.
Naturally, it highlights the importance of U.S.
efforts to deploy its own unmanned systems to identify and potentially take out
approaching armed robots. It also underscores the significance of the U.S.
Army’s current focus on command and control, air-ground drone networking and
emerging concepts of multi-domain battle. Concentrations of small armed robots,
moving well ahead of an armored formation, could in theory be easy to detect
with air or even ground sensors, cameras and surveillance technology. Overhead
Ground Moving Target Indicator (GMTI) sensors operating on drones or fixed-wing
surveillance planes would likely detect the movement or robots, and air-based
thermal imaging might pick up a heat signature from the small engines
propelling the robots - especially if groups of them were concentrated in a
certain area.
Should armed air support not be available for
any given land-war mission, U.S. ground forces might be well suited to fire
some of its now-emerging long-range precision weaponry, such as laser-guided artillery or
land-launched “area” rockets used to explode the robots or at least disrupt
their movements. U.S. robotic vehicles could, in this instance, provide
forward-placed targeting guidance or laser designation for attacking precision
weapons.
Finally, of course, Army developers are likely
looking at various EW “jamming” techniques intended to both find the
electromagnetic signature emitted from the robots and, if possible, “jam, thwart
or disable” their targeting, communications or networking systems. In short,
the arrival of armed Chinese war-robots introduces the potential of some kind
of robot-to-robot warfare, a scenario likely to be capturing Pentagon attention
at the moment.
Kris Osborn is the new Defense Editor for the
National Interest. Osborn previously served at the Pentagon as a Highly
Qualified Expert with the Office of the Assistant Secretary of the
Army—Acquisition, Logistics & Technology. Osborn has also worked as an anchor
and on-air military specialist at national TV networks. He has appeared as a
guest military expert on Fox News, MSNBC, The Military Channel, and The History
Channel. He also has a Masters Degree in Comparative Literature from Columbia
University.
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