The American military is working on a new generation of soldiers, far different from the army it has. "They don't get hungry," said Gordon Johnson of the Joint Forces Command at the Pentagon. "They're not afraid. They don't forget their orders. They don't care if the guy next to them has just been shot. Will they do a better job than man? Yes."
The robot soldier is coming. 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. Robots are a crucial part of the Army's effort to rebuild itself as a 21st-century fighting force, and a $127 billion project called Future Combat Systems is the biggest military contract in US history.
The military plans to invest tens of billions of dollars in automated armed forces. The costs of that transformation will help drive the defence department's budget up almost 20%, from a requested $419.3 billion for next year to $502.3 billion in 2010, excluding the costs of war. The annual costs of buying new weapons is likely to rise 52%, from $78 billion to $118.6 billion.
American military planners say robot soldiers will think, see and react increasingly like humans. In the beginning, they will be remote-controlled, looking and acting like lethal toy trucks. However, as technology develops, they may take many shapes. And as their intelligence grows, so will their autonomy.
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Originally Posted by KilLAtomiK
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