The robotic revolution has taken hold in a number of militaries around the world, including those of Russia, China, Pakistan and Iran, and most notably, the Western countries, United States and Israel. Great Britain now officially joins the growing list. According to a report in London’s Daily Telegraph Monday, Britain’s Ministry of Defense will soon introduce a series of new T-Hawk UAV “spybots” into the battlefields of Afghanistan to combat the threat against terrorist bombs, which currently account for nearly two-thirds of casualties. Britain has recently purchased six of them from the United States, each for the cost of a luxury car.
The new Honeywell RQ-16A T-Hawk (or T-Hawk for short) drone is one of several smart robots that will eventually eliminate the need for humans to foot-patrol for mines and roadside bombs. The Micro Air Vehicle (MAV) weighs less than 20 lbs, has VTOL capabilities, uses a fan duct gasoline engine to fly at 46mph, and once airborne is capable of flying more than 50 minutes autonomously. The MAV also comes equipped with day and infra-red cameras that relay information back to soldiers who operate the drone remotely. Named after the Tarantula Hawk that swoops down on the poisonous spiders in the desert, the T-Hawk can be quickly launched from a backpack or out of the back of a vehicle allowing soldiers to look over a hill or into an approaching village. In addition, the T-Hawk has “hover and stare” capability so that the drone can fly just inches above the ground or hundreds of feet up enabling close reconnaissance and scrutiny of potential threats without exposing the soldier operator to unnecessary risk. According to the Daily Telegraph report, the T-Hawk has already saved a number of American lives in Afghanistan where 25 are currently in service.
T-Hawk micro air vehicle – Video
The roboticization of military applications has grown at a rapid pace in recent years. According to another recent report, while the U.S. went to war in Iraq with just a handful of drones, today there are more than 5,300 drones in the U.S. inventory and about another 12,000 on the ground. In what may termed Military 2.0, the report goes on to mention that this is just the beginning of a long and steady process toward the use of robots on the battlefield, “These are just the first generation, the Model T Fords, compared with what is coming next.” By 2010 the US will have invested $4 billion in a research programs into “autonomous systems,” which is the military jargon for robots. The New York Times reported in a February, 2005 article on the roboticization of the military that the robot soldier has been a dream at the Pentagon for 30 years, though it was reported as well that specialists were then advising that it could take until 2035 to develop a robot that looks, thinks and fights like a soldier.
Major technological revolutions historically have frequently been spurred on by military and war-time applications—the Manhattan Project in the early 1940s and the development of the first atomic bombs are a striking case in point. Considering the major push by the U.S. in recent years towards the roboticization of its military, and now by Great Britain, there is little doubt that military science in the 21st century will provide a critical impetus for expanding the robotics revolution. Questions naturally arise: Will the wars and battles of tomorrow be fought exclusively with advanced autonomous robots? And, if so, what kind of ethical considerations would such robots follow? Would intelligent robots behave more ethically than humans on the battlefield, unencumbered by emotional considerations of fear, prejudice, and retaliation? These are important considerations that military officials and scientists will be facing in the years and decades to come.
As the T-Hawk quietly patrols and assists military personnel in reconnaissance missions and the search for enemy combatants over the terror-ridden skies of Afghanistan, robotics is redefining the art of modern warfare. The number of unmanned systems on the ground in Iraq has gone from zero to 12,000 over the last five years. This is only the start as military officials quietly acknowledge that new prototypes will soon make human fighter pilots obsolete. And the Pentagon is researching the possibility of employing tiny robots the size of flies to carry out reconnaissance work now handled by elite Special Forces troops. In the process of preserving life and limb robotic automated devices and robotic soldiers of the future may teach militaries new strategies for conducting more “civil” methods of warfare. It is worth considering how robotics might very well transform the nature of warfare as we know it? Could machines help create more “meaningful” approaches to confict resolution? Will war outcomes someday be primarily based on technological sophistication and not human casualties? These are just some of the points to consider as Western militaries enter the robotic age.
Tags: future of robotics, Honeywell RQ-16A, Micro Air Vehicle, military robots, robot drone, T-Hawk, t-hawk micro air vehicle, T-Hawk UAV
