U.S. Army Considers Replacing
Thousands of Soldiers With Robots
By Evan Ackerman
Posted 22 Jan 2014 | 17:05 GMT
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Photo: Boston Dynamics
Boston Dynamics designed the LS3 "robot
mules" to help soldiers carry heavy loads.
Last week at the Army Aviation
Symposium, in Arlington, Va., a U.S. Army
officer announced that the Army is looking
to slim down its personnel numbers and
adopt more robots over the coming years.
The biggest surprise, though, is the scale
of the downsizing the Army might aim for.
At the current rate, the Army is expected
to shrink from 540,000 people down to
420,000 by 2019. But at last week's event,
Gen. Robert Cone, head of the Army's
Training and Doctrine Command, offered
some surprising details about the slim-
down plans. As Defense News put it, he
"quietly dropped a bomb," saying the
Army is studying the possibility of reducing
the size of a brigade from 4,000 soldiers to
3,000 in the coming years. To keep things
just as effective while reducing manpower,
the Army will bring in more unmanned
power, in the form of robots. From the
Defense News story:
Ive got clear guidance to think about
what if you could robotically perform
some of the tasks in terms of
maneuverability, in terms of the future
of the force, he said, adding that he
also has clear guidance to rethink
the size of the nine-man infantry
squad.
When you see the success, frankly,
that the Navy has had in terms of
lowering the numbers of people on
ships, are there functions in the
brigade that we could automate
robots or manned/unmanned teaming
and lower the number of people that
are involved given the fact that people
are our major cost, he said.
The thing to keep in mind about initiatives
like this is that the army personnel who
are actually flying airplanes or shooting
guns or disarming bombs don't make up
the majority of the army. There's a
concept called tooth-to-tail ratio, which is
the ratio of soldiers directly involved in
fighting missions (tooth) to those involved
in supporting activities (tail). A typical ratio
is about 1/3 tooth to 2/3 tail, which means
that you're spending a lot of resources on
logistics, supplies, and other efforts to
support the actual combat operations.
According to Gen. Cole, the Army sees that
as an opportunity to become more
efficient. "Maybe its one-half to one-half,"
he said. "The point is you get to keep more
tooth, more folks that actually conduct
operations on the ground and less
supporting structure."
And one way of becoming more efficient is
by using support robotsa trend we're
seeing not only in the Army but other U.S.
armed forces as well. Robots will likely
include autonomous vehicles that can
transport supplies, autonomous aircraft
that can transport supplies
, and other autonomous robots that can
transport supplies
(like the LS3 "robot mule," pictured above)
. As you may have noticed, there's a
theme here, but most of those support
robot programs are in the early stages and
whether they'll prove effective, only time
will tell.
