MILTECH: From UAVs to "Throwbots"

In Friday's "Send in the Droids" piece, Trent Telenko noted advances in flying UAVs (the famous Predator drone is a UAV), including the possibility of portable micro-UAVs that could be carried by individual soldiers.

His work strengthens a strong tradition here at Winds of Change.NET, where we've been covering this subject since June 2002. See our coverage of Urban Warfare, the "Two New UAVs (robot planes)" article re: the X-45 UCAV and Sentry Owl, and the August 4GW: UAVs and Entomopters piece on some of the research into smaller systems.

Like Trent, I believe that larger UAVs will play important roles in future warfare. The Israelis have already come to this conclusion, as has the U.S. Army, whose current "Future Combat System: Battle Brigade Construct" includes a "Robot Assault Team" (see pg. 10 of this presentation)." Still, I'm particularly excited about the role of UAVs that can be carried by individual soldiers. Urban warfare is an unmistakable trend, and its tendency to produce high casualties means that we can expect our enemies to employ it frequently in the years ahead. A combination of expendable robots, simple communications systems (vid. ISRs from the 1998 "Urban Warrior" exercise), and proper doctrine can go a long way toward evening the odds - or even reversing them in our favour.

All great stuff. Now... what if entomopters and mini-UAVs aren't the best answer for close-in urban combat? I can see real limitations, myself, and both technologies are admittedly longer-range prospects. What have we got right now? What have we got that's cheaper?

Noah Shachtman's "Defense Tech" blog pointed me to one answer: a $45,000 platform called "Packbot," which has already seen use in the caves of Afghanistan (previous approach: soldier with rope, flashlight and grappling hook). Acceptance was enthusiastic, and iRobot company engineers have been working with troops in the field to implement modifications. Many of these changes will make iRobot's creations more useful in urban areas as well, and I expect at least some of them to be used in Iraq next month. Still, the capabilities of this generation of robots are fairly limited.

Fortunately, iRobot has also gone back to the drawing board as a result of some pretty sharp suggestions from the troops. "Flying doohickeys?" they say. "That's nice. Meanwhile, why don't you just give us something small that we can throw over walls and into buildings?"

"Throwbots," they call them... and iRobot is hard at work trying to whip a few up. This strikes me as a solution that fits the infantry mindset a lot better than flying UAVs, which is why I believe "throwbots" and not entomopters will become indispensible tools of infantry warfare over the next decade.

P.S. I just had to mention that Terminator 3 is coming out this May. I hope they don't ruin one of the few series I've ever seen whose sequel was better than the original smash hit. Meanwhile, even if it's functionally useless I believe the next generation of American combat droids should be given little sculpted terminator-type heads somewhere, with red eyes that glow softly on command. All of our enemies have VCRs, after all....

UPDATE: Meet the Throwbot - and learn what iRobot did with the troop's suggestions for its Packbot.