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How the .s. Military Can Win the Robotic Revolution
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One of the great conundrums of war and technology is the odd fact that there is no such thing as a permanent first-mover advantage.
Commodore was an early leader in personal computers, developing and marketing the world's best-selling desktop computer, the Commodore 64; it went bankrupt in 1994. The Ottoman Turks were the first to successfully master the use of gunpowder in fluid battle plans, becoming a powerful empire that spanned three continents; soon after, their armies were routed and they were pitied as "the sick man of Europe." Time and again, whenever a remarkable new technology came along, the early leaders soon fell far behind.
Today, the U.S. military may be wrestling with a similar challenge. In the bureaucratic blink of an eye, it's become a dominant power in the potentially game-changing field of military robotics. When the U.S. military went into Iraq in 2003, it used only a handful of unmanned systems in the air, none of them armed.
On the ground, the invasion force used zero unmanned ground vehicles. Today, we have over 7000 unmanned aerial systems in our inventory--48-foot-long Predators, micro-aerial vehicles that a single soldier can carry in his rucksack, as well as lawnmower-size PackBots on the ground and Talons that help find and defuse deadly roadside bombs.
Such war bots may be part of an important turning point in history. Scientists describe unmanned systems today as being where the horseless carriage was back at the turn of the last century.
From Popular Mechanics
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Comments
Othman El Moulat
You will never win the war against Muslim peoples. simply because we are fighting with our spirit and faith while you relay on machines and Robots to fight for you. machines can never win over human spirit. Faith in Allah and courage of believer fighters is much more powerful than your Robots. You are Loosing!
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