Yesterday the Torygraph put up an article on various countries around the world equipping their armies with robot dogs, one of which is now Britain. These robots are themselves fitted out with guns and other weapons. The article comes after a piece a few days ago reporting that Ukraine has set up a special department of its military to manage drone warfare. We really are on the verge of A.B.C. warfare, as depicted in 2000 AD, where wars have become too hot for humans and are being fought by robots instead. Except that these machines don’t have the intelligence and humanity of the A.B.C. Warriors’ Hammerstein.
The article, by Ed Cummings, begins
‘How killer robot dogs could become weapons of mass destruction
Of all the inventions in the dystopian sci-fi series Black Mirror, perhaps none is more terrifying than the robotic guard dogs in Metalhead. In the episode, from the fourth series of the programme in 2017, Maxine Peake plays Bella, a woman who, along with two companions, breaks into a remote warehouse to look for medicine. Instead, she finds an autonomous “dog”, armed with a shotgun, knives and shrapnel sprays. It quickly kills both of her colleagues and chases Bella over the moorland with ruthless single-mindedness. The film is a chilling vision of machines programmed to do one thing only. The dog does not think or feel; it just kills.
Such machines are no longer fantasy. Last month, it was disclosed that United States Marines special operators were testing robotic dogs armed with guns based on sentry automatic machine guns. Robotic quadrupeds have become increasingly common across the US military in recent years, for everything from bomb disposal to perimeter patrols, but arming them is a newer development.
Not to be outdone, three weeks later, the Chinese military released a YouTube video showing its own four-legged robot, armed with an assault rifle, working alongside its soldiers on exercises. “It can serve as a new member in our urban combat operations,” one soldier says in the video, while the footage shows the rifle firing off bursts, “replacing our members to conduct reconnaissance and identify [the] enemy, and strike the target.” The film makes it clear why such a robot might be useful, able to run into dangerous situations ahead of human soldiers. In another video, an army of similar machines does press-ups in sync.
Britain has its own initiative, too. It has been testing Boston Dynamics’s “Spot” quadruped as well as Ghost Robotics’s Vision 60 for future use alongside ground troops. Speaking about the V60, Dave Swan, the lead engineer of FCG Expeditionary Robotics Centre of Expertise, said the “quadruped offers increased situational awareness for soldiers on the ground”, with the “potential to act as the eyes and ears for soldiers on the front line”. With a gun on its back, however, one of these machines becomes more than a sensor array.
“Trials have previously taken place with robotic dogs,” said a Ministry of Defence spokesman, exploring “the potential they hold for delivering mission-critical supplies, scoping out hazardous areas, or performing combat tasks that are deemed too dangerous for humans.
The conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza have proved that wars will increasingly be fought by unmanned machines. “Too dangerous for humans” might justify any number of robot uses. Drones have been a decisive presence on the battlefield since Russia’s full-scale invasion began in 2022, mostly in the air. There is no shortage of footage of deadly, remote-controlled drones trundling across fields towards tanks and armoured personnel carriers, before delivering decisive blows. In Gaza, meanwhile, Israeli forces have been using quadruped robots to clear tunnels and other cramped locations. Several units have reportedly been equipped with a drone, named the Rooster, housed inside a wheeled cage on their back. The drone is thought to be able to move on the ground and “jump” over obstacles if required.’
The article mentions that Boston Dynamics, one of the companies that first developed robot dogs, wrote an open letter with five other similar companies a year or so ago announcing that they would not arm their machines. Kudos and respect to them. And I also recall that when one company announced it would develop war robots back in the 90s or turn of the century, scientists were so appalled by the prospect and the possibility that this could lead to our extinction as a species by intelligent machines that there was indeed a chorus of disapproval. The robotics scientist at Reading University, Kevin Warwick, was so frightened by the prospect of robots and computers outstripping humanity in intelligence and other abilities and taking over and enslaving us, that he became depressed and turned to cyborgisation instead.
But the world seems to be developing these machines apparently regardless for humanity’s security and future on this planet.
For further information see: The conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza have proved that wars will increasingly be fought by unmanned machines. “Too dangerous for humans” might justify any number of robot uses. Drones have been a decisive presence on the battlefield since Russia’s full-scale invasion began in 2022, mostly in the air. There is no shortage of footage of deadly, remote-controlled drones trundling across fields towards tanks and armoured personnel carriers, before delivering decisive blows. In Gaza, meanwhile, Israeli forces have been using quadruped robots to clear tunnels and other cramped locations. Several units have reportedly been equipped with a drone, named the Rooster, housed inside a wheeled cage on their back. The drone is thought to be able to move on the ground and “jump” over obstacles if required.
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