Originally published March 2 2005
Robot soldiers to fight on the battlefield within the next decade
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
The Pentagon predicts that robots will be a key force in the battlefield in a decade’s time, where the machines would be able to hunt and kill enemies. The army plans to invest tens of billions into an automated fighting force, which will drive defence budgets up by 20% to $502.3 billion in 2010.
The American military is working on a new generation of soldiers, far different from the army it has.
The Pentagon predicts that robots will be a major fighting force in the American military in less than a decade, hunting and killing enemies in combat.
Military planners say robot soldiers will think, see and react increasingly like humans.
Even the strongest advocates of automatons say war will always be a human endeavor, with death and disaster.
And supporters like Robert Finkelstein, president of Robotic Technology in Potomac, Md., are telling the Pentagon it could take until 2035 to develop a robot that looks, thinks and fights like a soldier.
Robots in battle, as envisioned by their builders, may look and move like humans or hummingbirds, tractors or tanks, cockroaches or crickets.
All these are in the works, but not yet in battle.
Already, however, several hundred robots are digging up roadside bombs in Iraq, scouring caves in Afghanistan and serving as armed sentries at weapons depots.
Despite the obstacles, Congress ordered in 2000 that a third of the ground vehicles and a third of deep-strike aircraft in the military must become robotic within a decade.
The history of warfare suggests that every new technological leap - the longbow, the tank, the atomic bomb - outraces the strategy and doctrine to control it.
"The lawyers tell me there are no prohibitions against robots making life-or-death decisions," said Mr. Johnson, who leads robotics efforts at the Joint Forces Command research center in Suffolk, Va.
"As machines become more intelligent, people will let machines make more of their decisions for them," Mr. Joy wrote recently in Wired magazine.
The median lifetime cost of a soldier is about $4 million today and growing, according to a Pentagon study.
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