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General calls for more robots in Afghanistan

by on12 August 2009


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Droning on


While pilotless
US drones have had some success in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq, a top US Army general is urging the military to step up the deployment of ground robots.

Lieutenant General Rick Lynch, the commander of the III Armored Corps and the holder of a master's degree in mechanical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) said that robots saved lives. Obviously not Taliban lives, but US troops lives.

While serving in Iraq, Lynch said he lost a total of 153 soldiers under his command and "80 percent of those soldiers didn't have to die." He said that the technology was there. The army had to get past the demonstrations and into the field.

At the moment, ground operations are mostly limited to the use of small camera-equipped robots to detect improvised explosive devices, or IEDs. Lynch said that aerial surveillance and weapons systems were useful but "the bad guys know that if the weather turns bad we can't see them from the air."

He said among the "immediate applications" for unmanned vehicles were route clearance, surveillance and in convoys. Robots were "excellent at clearing routes," which can go from point A to point B and even detect and avoid obstacles.

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