RoboSoldiers
The idea of sending Terminator-like machines has been around for decades. Currently, though, robots on the battlefield are more an extension of a soldier's abilities to locate, identify and subdue an enemy.

In the past, the American Talon bomb-disposal unmanned ground vehicle (UGV) came equipped with a mechanical arm, to pick up and inspect suspicious objects. Last month, UGV maker Foster-Miller shipped its 1,000th Talon robot, many of which are being used in Iraq and Afghanistan. For another model, Foster-Miller swapped the metal limb for a remote-controlled, camera-equipped, shock-resistant tripod, which the Marines use to fire their guns from hundreds of feet away, according to Wired.

"Hunting for guerillas, handling roadside bombs, crawling across the caves and crumbling towns of Afghanistan and Iraq — all of that was just a start," according to Defense Tech.

Rockets, grenades and machine guns can all be carried on top of the 2-foot-6-inch Talon robots.
Credit: Foster-Miller, via Defense Tech

Moreover, 101 bomb-sensing robots from iRobot Corp. are being built and deployed to forces oversea. The U.S. Military's Man Transportable Robotic Systems program has requirements for up to 1,200 robots through 2012. To date, iRobot has delivered more than 800 PackBot robots to a broad range of military and civilian customers worldwide. The robots have performed tens of thousands of missions in Iraq and Afghanistan and are already credited with saving soldiers' lives.

Last month an Israeli defense firm unveiled a portable robot billed as being capable of entering most combat zones alone and engaging enemies with an on-board armory that includes a machine-pistol and grenades, according to Reuters. The manufacturer, Elbit Systems Ltd., says the VIPeR's small size and dual treads enable it to move "undeterred by stairs, rubble, dark alleys, caves or narrow tunnels." In addition to bomb-sniffing and bomb-disposal equipment, the VIPeR can carry an Uzi machine-pistol or plant a grenade using an on-board video camera. The VIPeR was invented as part of Israel's efforts to develop weaponry that could reduce the risks to its forces from hand-to-hand fighting against Palestinian or Lebanese Hezbollah guerrillas.

The Israeli-made VIPeR robot, about the size of small TV set, and designed for tight, dangerous places in battle.
Credit: Elbit Systems, Ltd.

Drafting Other Species
Robots fighting battles for us? It gets stranger. Research on insects, squirrels, fish and dolphins has begun to develop what could be our best weapons yet against toxins and explosives.

U.S. military defense scientists have determined a way to train the common honeybee to smell explosives used in bombs, a skill they say could help protect American troops abroad, according to a report by Agence France Presse. Trained bees can identify "vapors from explosives such as dynamite, C4 plastic and triacetone triperoxide."

Cockroaches, too, are being accepted among the military's toughest. "Cockroaches can detect all kinds of things from anthrax spores to DNA," Karen Kester, an entomologist at Virginia Commonwealth University, explained to Popular Science last month.

Researchers are also studying how squirrels and other hibernators "manage their core body temperatures." In March, Wired explained that when the rodents hibernate, they can survive as long as 10 hours with 60 percent of their blood. If wounded soldiers could do that, they might have a better chance of survival.

Then there are dolphins. The Navy's sea mammal program started in the late 1950s and grew to comprise 140 animals during the Cold War. Dolphins helped protect a pier in the Vietnam War, and the last time the marine mammals were deployed overseas was in 2003 in the Iraqi harbor of Umm Qasr, where they located underwater mines and cleared a path for Marines to land, officials say.

However, the sea mammal program remains hush-hush even today. Rumors of dolphins trained to kill continue to swirl — to the point that the Navy has launched a Web site to explain. The official statement: "The Navy does not now train, nor has it ever trained its marine mammals to harm or injure humans in any fashion or to carry weapons to destroy ships. Fantasy is more interesting than reality."

According to The Associated Press, about 75 dolphins and 25 sea lions are housed at Naval Base Point Loma in San Diego Harbor as part of a Navy program to teach them to detect terrorists and mines underwater.

One sea lion, two handlers, and a rubber boat searching for objects on the ocean floor can effectively replace a full-sized naval vessel and its crew, a group of human divers, and the doctors and machinery necessary to support the divers operating on board the vessel.

Better Armor
Like Defense Tech editor Noah Shachtman, here at IMT we're concerned for but still exalt "the human above the mechanical."

When asked in February of any particularly noteworthy weapons currently in development, Schactman responded:

The American soldier. I'll take a kick-ass infantryman, or a sharp-eyed intelligence officer, over any piece of gear. Every time. These guys are the ones that'll make the difference in the dirty wars the U.S. is going to be fighting in the years to come. And that's why it bugs me to no end to see them get short-changed, while gazillion dollar fighter jets and destroyers suck up all of the Pentagon's cash.

In fact, "the success of body armor in Iraq has triggered big sales for armor companies back home," according to The Washington Times. The Pentagon has spent nearly $5 billion on body armor over the past five years. The U.S. Army alone issues armor to each of its 175,000 soldiers fighting overseas, the Washington paper noted last month, "and at $3,150 per set, body-armor companies are seeing big profits."

So while the entomologists, biologists and biochemists continue their research, various engineers and scientists work diligently toward enhancing soldiers' protection while fighting.

For instance, Okenwa Okoli, associate professor of industrial and manufacturing engineering in the Florida A&M University-Florida State University College of Engineering, and his research team at FSU's High-Performance Materials Institute have developed a composite manufacturing process to create lightweight body armor using nanotubes that can bullet-proof soldiers' legs, arms and head.

Physicists at Salford University announced earlier this month they received a hefty grant to design the latest generation of materials that can hide solid objects by bending light around them. That is, they are working on creating invisibility cloaks.

About a year ago, DefenseReview reported on the Stealth Technology System (STS) being developed at Advanced American Enterprise (AAE). STS utilizes a form of electro-optical camouflage (a.k.a. optical camouflage, adaptive camouflage, active camouflage, chameleonic camouflage and cloaking technology). AAE uses the term "invisibility stealth" to describe the effect of its tech, which, according to them renders an object, person or vehicle 85 percent to 100 percent invisible to the human eye or video camera in the visible spectrum (visible light) as soon as you flip the switch to "on." (DefenseReview followed up soon after with a practical review of the technology. Photo credit: DefenseReview)

Similar, researchers at Duke's Pratt School of Engineering last October demonstrated a cloaking device that can render items nearly invisible to electromagnetic waves at microwave frequencies. The demonstration highlighted the potential for the emerging class of electronic materials called "metamaterials."

Finally, the Pentagon's Future Warrior Concept includes a powerful exoskeleton and a self-camouflaging outer layer that adapts to changing environments. The future soldier will also benefit from "intelligent" armor, which remains light and flexible until it senses an approaching bullet, then tenses to become bulletproof.

David R. Butcher contributed to this post.

Resources

U.S. Military Trains 'Air Force' of Bomb-Sniffing Bees
AFP, Nov. 28, 2005

Bugging Out on Homeland Security
by Abby Seiff
Popular Science, March 2007

Squirrel = Super Soldier?
by Noah Shachtman
Wired, March 12, 2007

Navy Shows Off Its Terror-Fighting Dolphins
by Thomas Watkins
The Associated Press, April 14, 2007

Be More Than You Can Be
by Noah Shachtman
Wired, April 2007

The Memory Hacker
by Stephen Handelman
Popular Science, April 2007

U.S. Military Develops Robocop Armor for Soldiers
by Mathew Hickley
The Daily Mail, April 11, 2007

iRobot Awarded Additional $14 Million from U.S. Navy for Bomb-Disposal Robots
press release
IRobot, April 2, 2007

Israel Unveils Portable Killer Robot
Reuters, March 8, 2007

Make Way for the Robot with Feelings
by Richard Gray
The Standard, Feb. 21, 2007

Let Robots Sweat the Boring Stuff
by Nick Currie
Wired, Feb. 27, 2007

The Whiz Kid of Warfare
by Michael Weiss
Jewcy, Feb. 8, 2007

Body armor success spurs surge in sales
by Bryce Baschuk
The Washington Times, March 25, 2007

Invisible cloak a step nearer
by Yakub Qureshi
Manchester Evening News, April 6, 2007

Cloaking Device Is No Longer Just for Star Trek
by Joesph Ogando
Design News, Oct. 20, 2006

Is Cloaking Technology for U.S. Infantry Warfighters Finally Possible?
by David Crane
DefenseReview, March 12, 2006

Cloaking Tech Continued: STS Optical AND Thermal/IR Camouflage for Warfighters
by David Crane
DefenseReview, May 17, 2006

FSU researcher's light body armor may save soldiers' lives
by Molly Smith
FSU.com, March 22, 2007