TekPlus - Robot Wars - The real Terminator?

Unless governments support the development of UMVs it is likely that companies will not invest in large-scale projects, unless there are definitive orders such as in the US, otherwise the risk will be too great in developing unmanned craft and small developments such as SimiCon will prevail.

The evolution of UMVs will move from reconnaissance to attack vehicles, but even reconnaissance vehicles will require some degree of protection in order to protect investments, otherwise they will be easy to compromise. UMVs will also come under new forms of attack including electrical and software based technologies. Since UMVs will rely heavily on GPS location, communications with a control base, software and electronics will be the weaponry utilised to attack such vehicles will not solely rely on explosives. UMV developers need to utilise encryption software to prevent captured vehicles from being compromised as well as the technology itself (self-destruct procedures may be incorporated), anti-virus software to prevent virus attack, encryption technology to encapsulate transmissions etc.

Civilian use for unmanned vehicles

UMVs could be adapted for use in the civilian word; surveillance is an area where police forces could replace expensive helicopters with cheaper drone type aircraft, search and rescue services could deploy unmanned vehicles without compromising the safety of crews during bad weather for example, help in surveying and monitoring ecology, geography or environmental catastrophes such as oil spills, or movements of large numbers of refugees, utilise security software to help protect computer networks and mobile devices. In this way technology developed for one purpose could be transposed to a more moral one, in deed if unmanned vehicles do not 'take-off' then the technology has the potential to be re-used and adapted.

Despite the numerous positive impacts of using UMVs, there are sufficient drawbacks that need to be overcome:

Increasing interest in unmanned military vehicles UMVs is demonstrated by the following activities:

- Boeing Co. has built full-sized unmanned demonstrators that should fly summer 2002

- Northrop Grumman Corp. recently unveiled designs of a diamond-shaped flying wing called Pegasus

- Northrop Grumman is designing a pilot less fighter jet for the US - Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) program

- Lockheed Martin Corp. is developing electronics for unmanned vehicles.

- SiMiCon a small Norwegian, privately-owned, independent start-up company’s development of SiMiCon Rotor Craft (SRC) - has a helicopter’s vertical take-off and landing capability with fixed wing high-speed potential

- Athena Technologies Inc. - is developing tiny robot surveillance planes that can be controlled by hand-held computers. Uses line of sight technology at present but may be programmed for long-distance missions

- AAI Corp. - building lawn-tractor-sized drones that could be used to survey battlefields

New US defence spending on unmanned vehicles include:

$158 million to buy 22 Air Force Predators (unmanned aerial vehicles), and to upgrade and arm the existing fleet,

$100,700 million set aside to buy 12 Army Shadow unmanned aerial vehicles,

$306 million to accelerate development of improvements to the Global Hawk - unmanned reconnaissance plane similar and as big as a U-2. Can stay aloft for 36 hours at a time

$83 million to begin development of the Navy's Unmanned Underwater Vehicle.

Why unmanned vehicles?

Unmanned military vehicles provide new flexibility and enable personnel to make new tactical decisions, that would otherwise place others in too much danger or where time and distance meant humans could not perform the necessary task. The positive benefits of unmanned vehicles:

Unmanned Vehicles

We have all seen, or at least are all aware, of the robot war programme genre, where teams of people smash up their remote controlled robots; having spent a great deal of time and money creating a wide range of hunter-seeker machines. Although we are unlikely to see the emergence of true robot warriors, such as those seen in Star Wars and Terminator films, we are likely to see an emergence of unmanned vehicles of all shapes and sizes.

We have recently seen the emergence of drone vehicles patrolling the skies of Afghanistan, taking photographs of terrorist enclaves and keeping track of movements. Drone aircraft are relatively cheap to build, maintain, keeping them airborne over long periods, easy to launch, and have the added benefit of removing military personnel out of harms way. These unmanned aircraft are generally used in recognisance missions but may find new uses as more offensive and defensive weaponry. The emergence of such aircraft has been driven by the points given above and is not limited to the skies, vehicles are being developed for the ground and the sea, such as unmanned tanks and submarines. We place unmanned vehicles into three categories:

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Robot Wars - The real Terminator?