Monday, August 17, 2009

US military embraces robot 'revolution'

http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=CNG.d10c511b69833385c9228d3b65cd742c.1a1&show_article=1&catnum=1

The big business of war, and just how profitable it can be.

Robots or "unmanned systems" are now deployed by the thousands in Iraq and Afghanistan, spying from the sky for hours on end, searching for booby-traps and firing lethal missiles without putting US soldiers at risk.

The use of robotics in the military has exploded in the past several years as technology has advanced while Washington faced a new kind of enemy that required patient, precise surveillance.

In 2003, the US military had almost no robots in its arsenal but now has 7,000 unmanned aircraft and at least 10,000 ground vehicles.

The US Air Force, which initially resisted the idea of pilotless planes, said it trains more operators for unmanned aircraft than pilots for its fighter jets and bombers.

Peter Singer, author of "Wired for War," writes that future wars may see tens of thousands of unmanned vehicles in action, possibly facing off against fleets of enemy robots.

Unlike expensive weapons from the Cold War-era, robotic vehicles are not off-limits to countries with modest defense budgets and dozens of governments are investing in unmanned programs.

At the trade show, military officers from the United