Humans and robots bond on the battlefield

The U.S. military has deployed thousands of robots on modern battlefields where they are now fighting side by side with humans who have grown to depend heavily on them for their assistance, reports LiveScience.com.

Thousands of robots now fight alongside humans in situations that loosely resemble scenes from science fiction movies such as “Terminator Salvation.” However, the real world poses a more complex situation than humans versus robots, and has added new twists to the psychology of war.

Indeed, human soldiers fighting in Southwest Asia feel a strong affection for their robots, said Peter Singer, a leading defense analyst at the Brookings Institution and author of “Wired for War: The Robotics Revolution and the Conflict in the 21^st Century.”

This psychological attachment is especially noticeable in the case of Explosive Ordnance Disposal teams where Packbots and Talon robots undertake the risk of disabling improvised explosives planted by insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan, he said.

Robots also bring an element of psychological warfare to the battlefield. The U.S. military regards robots as timeless warriors capable to striking fear into even the most determined enemies. And soldiers and commanders see current and future use of robots as not unlike those portrayed in the Terminator movies.

So far the U.S. military has fielded more than 12,000 ground robots and more than 7,000 flying drones in areas such as Iraq and Afghanistan.

Armed drones in particular have proved effective in loitering over target areas for hours until targets come in sight, and then firing their missiles as suspected insurgents—all while being controlled by human operators sitting thousands of miles away in Nevada.

“We don’t have to be in the year 2018 with Skynet and the terminators around us, for those huge policy and military dilemmas to take form,” Singer said. “They’re already here.”