The face of war is changing, and it may no longer be a human one. Developing new technology has always been a cornerstone of a successful military force, but now those technologies are steadily moving human soldiers from combat to management positions. Virtually every major military power is working on robotic weapons. In short, we’re outsourcing more and more of war into the hands of robots and computers. Even the conventional foot soldier has robotic and biological augmentation in his/her future. Today, Singularity Hub is taking a wide-angle look at these changes and how they will change the nature of war and our world.

Release the Drones

Forget the future for a moment, and just consider our present. The U.S. military employs more than 7000 unmanned drones in operations all over the world. Even just 15 years ago, the number of active drones was just a few dozen at most. Now, the use of Predator drones is regularly covered by major media outlets. The Predator, an unmanned, remotely flown drone capable of delivering explosive payloads, is able to seek out and destroy hostile targets thousands of miles from the soldier controlling it. A Raven drone, another Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV), is capable of short range reconnaissance and lightweight enough to be carried into the field by a foot soldier. See the video after the break.

These UAVs are just the tip of the drone iceberg. Besides specialized anti-munitions drones, defense turrets, and surveillance drones already in use, the U.S. military is developing rolling ground vehicles, water surface vehicles, and remote bombers that could all see action in the next few years. There are several competing models for each category, but the Crusher (ground), X-45 (air), and USV (water) are advanced enough to have videos available on the web. Each of these drones would be piloted by controllers many miles away from the field (eventually even from the other side of the world). Closer to home, pocket sized reconnaissance drones may become a part of every soldier’s arsenal  (like the Ember from iRobot we talked about recently) , allowing them to explore dangerous areas without risking their own skin.

Read More