Armed
with a budget of over $700 billion for the coming year – which will
likely continue to grow over the course of Trump’s
Pentagon-controlled presidency — the Pentagon’s dystopian vision
for the future of the military is quickly becoming a question not of
if but when.
by
Whitney Webb
Part
1
While
cyborg soldiers and fully automated weapons have long been fodder for
futuristic sci-fi thrillers, they are now a reality and, if the
Pentagon gets its way, will soon become the norm in the U.S.
military. As Defense One reported last Thursday, the Army had just
concluded a live-fire exercise using a remote-controlled ground
combat vehicle complete with a fully automated machine gun. The
demonstration marked the first time that the Army has used a ground
robot providing fire in tandem with human troops in a military
exercise and, as Defense One noted, “it won’t be the last.”
Indeed,
last week’s exercise represents just the latest step in the
Pentagon’s relatively quiet tip-toe into converting the U.S. Armed
Forces to a machine-majority force. Faced with low recruitment and an
increased demand for soldiers, the Department of Defense is seeking
to solve that problem altogether while also increasing the military’s
firepower and force in combat.
Though
unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV), better known as drones, are the most
well known of these devices, the Pentagon has been investing heavily
— for decades — in a cadre of military robots aimed at dominating
air, sea, and land. In 2010, the Pentagon had already invested $4
billion in research programs into “autonomous systems” and, since
then, its research wing — Defense Advanced Research Projects
Agency, better known as DARPA — has been spending much of its
roughly $3 billion annual budget funding robotic research intended
for use in military applications.
According
to former U.K. intelligence officer John Bassett, DARPA’s
investments in robotics and automated weapons will not only quickly
become the norm in the U.S. military, they will soon replace humans,
who are set to become a minority in the U.S. military in a matter of
years. During a recent speech, Basset – a 20-year veteran of the
British spy agency Government Communication Headquarters (GCHQ) and
very familiar with U.S. military research – warned that the U.S.’
attempts to “stay ahead of the curve” will result in the
Pentagon’s deployment of thousands of robot soldiers over the next
few years. The upshot, according to Basset, is that the U.S. Army
will have “more combat robots than human soldiers by 2025”
– just seven years from now.
The
mechanization revolution in the military, however, isn’t set to
stop there. According to the Army’s official Robotic and Autonomous
Systems (RAS) strategy, the Army plans to have autonomous
“self-aware” systems “fully integrated into the
force” between 2031 and 2040 along with the complete automation
of logistics. The strategy also states that, by that time, the Army
will have a cadre of robots at its service including “swarm
robots” that will be “fully powered, self-unpacking and
ready for immediate service,” along with advanced artificial
intelligence designed to “increase combat effectiveness,”
particularly in urban combat zones.
Now that
ground robots are undergoing testing alongside human soldiers, the
Army’s vision along with Basset’s prediction are set to become
the new reality of the U.S. military.
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