AUVSI

[Noel Sharkey]

The purpose of this forum is for open discussion about the unfolding of armed autonomous weapons or robots. Comments and news items relating to these and armed teleoperated robots will also be part of the remit.

Robots are an integral part of the United States’ Future Combat Systems project - the largest technological project in history, estimated to exceed $230 billion. In 2001, the U.S. Congress (Public Law 106-398, Section 220) mandated that “It shall be a goal of the Armed Forces to achieve the fielding of unmanned, remotely controlled technology such that… by 2015, one-third of the operational ground combat vehicles are unmanned.” Between 2004 and 2005 each of the three US armed forces released publicly available masterplans for the massive development of Unmanned Combat Air vehicles, Unmanned Undersea Vehicles and Unmanned Ground Vehicles. In other words lethal robots in the air, on the land and under the sea.

In the most recent “unmanned systems roadmap 2007-2003” published in December, 2007, spending on unmanned systems was expected to rise to $4 billion by 2010 with the total expected to exceed $24 billion.

Over 4,000 robots are currently deployed in Iraq and there are more in Afghanistan. The vast majority of these, such as the Foster-Miller Talon Range and the iRobot PackBot range, are used to explode roadside improvised explosive devices. These harm no one and save lives. But in November, 2008 the first four armed Talon SWORDS were sent to Iraq. These can be equipped with M240 or M249 machine guns, Barrett .50 calibre rifles, 40mm grenade launchers or anti-tank rocket launchers. Recent new suggests that they have not been deployed in conflict yet. More sophisticated robots such as the tank-like MAARS may join them soon. At present all of these robots can be seen as extensions of the soldier. Human operators retain all of the decisions regarding the application of lethality.

In the skies above Iraq and Afghanistan there are semi-autonomous Unmanned Combat Air Vehicles such as the MQ1-Predator that in November 2002, under the control of the CIA, famously fired two Hellfire missiles to kill a car full of suspected al-Qaeda men. MQ1-Predators had flown 400,000 mission hours by the end of 2006 and have flown significantly more since. Late last year they were joined by a squadron of more deadly hunter killer Reapers that can each carry a payload of 14 Hellfire missiles or 4 Hellfires and two 2,500lb bombs. These can navigate and search out targets but, like the ground robots, it is a remote operator, this time thousands of miles away in the Nevada desert, who makes the final decision about when to apply lethal force.

It is the next planned step that sends a cold shiver down my spine. The robots are to operate autonomously, to locate their own targets and destroy them without human intervention. This step is high on the military agenda of all the US forces. In a book published by The National Academies Press in 2005, a Naval committee wrote that, “The Navy and Marine Corps should aggressively exploit the considerable warfighting benefits offered by autonomous vehicles (AVs) by acquiring operational experience with current systems and using lessons learned from that experience to develop future AV technologies, operational requirements, and systems concepts.”

The signs are there that such plans are falling into place.. On the ground, DARPA, the US Defence Agency, ran a successful Grand Robotics challenge for four years in an autonomous vehicle race across the Mohave Desert. In 2007 it changed to an urban challenge where autonomous vehicles navigated around a mock city environment. You don’t have to be too clever to see where this is going. In February this year DARPA showed off their “Unmanned Ground Combat Vehicle and Perceptor Integration System” otherwise knows as the Crusher. This a 6.5 ton robot truck, nine feet wide with no room for passengers or a steering wheel. It travels at 26 mph and Stephen Welby, director of DARPA Tactical Technology office said, “This vehicle can go into places where, if you were following in a Humvee, you’d come out with spinal injuries,” Carnegie Mellon University Robotics Institute is reported to have received $35 million over four years to deliver this project.

There are a number of good military reasons for such a move. Teleoperated systems are expensive to manufacture and require many support personnel to run them. One of the main goals of the Future Combat Systems project is to use robots as a force multiplier so that one soldier on the battlefield can be a nexus for initiating a large scale robot attack from the ground and the air. Clearly one soldier cannot operate several robots alone. Autonomous systems have the advantage of being able to make decisions in nanoseconds while humans need a minimum of hundreds of milliseconds.

And it is not just the US. Others are now embarking on robot weapons programmes in Europe and other allied countries such as Canada, South Korea, South Africa, Singapore and Israel. China, Russia and India are also embarking on the development of unmanned aerial combat vehicles. Other countries such as the UK, South Africa and Singapore are also beginning to have their own version of the DARPA challenge. The US DoD unmanned systems roadmap 2007-2032 is unsure about the activity in China but admits that they have strong infrastructure capability for parallel developments in robot weapons. Their first armed ground robot was reported was reported in the People’s daily recently. It is for use at the Olympic Games. But could we be witnessing the beginnings of a robot weapons arms race?

This forum has been set up to discuss both the technical and ethical issues raised by the move towards developing autonomous weapons systems (as well as current ones such as the Phallanx and SMArt 155).

Some sources for further reading

Committee on Autonomous Vehicles in Support of Naval Operations National Research Council (2005) Autonomous Vehicles in Support of Naval Operations, WashingtonDC: The National Academies Press
http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=11379

The Joint Robotics Program Masterplan (250+ pages)
http://[www.jointrobotics.com/activities_new/2005%20JRP%20Master%20Plan.pdf

Read the Unmanned Aircraft Systems Roadmap (250+ pages)
http://www.acq.osd.mil/usd/Roadmap%20Final2.pdf

The Navy Unmanned Underwater Vehicle Masterplan (97 pages)
http://www.navy.mil/navydata/technology/uuvmp.pdf

Interview with Dyke Weatherington (in charge of DoD unmanned aerial vehicles) Dec 2007
http://www.defenselink.mil/news/newsarticle.aspx?id=48453

Interviews in 2005 New York Times - the Gordon Johnson remarks say it all
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/16/technology/16robots.html