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On October 18, the National Advanced Mobility Consortium—an organization of industry and academic researchers contracted by the US government to develop autonomous ground systems for the military—announced the selection of four companies to build prototype light robotic combat vehicles for the US Army. These are "non-developmental" prototypes, meaning they're based on existing technologies that could be turned into deployable systems with relatively minor modifications.
The Robotic Combat Vehicle-Light (RCV-L) program is part of the Army Futures Command's Next Generation Combat Vehicle effort. It seeks to provide soldiers in mechanized infantry and armor units with robotic "wingmen" that extend their reach and effectiveness on the battlefield. The Army hopes to have prototypes of the RCV-L as well as a heavier vehicle (the Robotic Combat Vehicle-Medium) in full testing in 2020. Two of each design will be fielded as "platoons" for testing, with the goal of wide deployment of tankbots by 2028.
Working in concert with new crewed combat vehicles, the robotic vehicles would provide additional sensors and firepower to bring to bear on an enemy in the field. By using robots to make the "first contact" with an enemy, unit commanders would be given more time to make decisions before committing human soldiers to the fight—or at least, that's the doctrinal thinking behind the Army's robotic combat crew goals.
The four companies chosen to develop the first prototypes are HDT Global, Oshkosh Defense, QinetiQ, and Textron. Each has already fielded some combination of ground vehicle and robotic systems—some of which have already been evaluated in some form by the Army.
Tankbots seems like a good name for a dystopian sci-fi movie to me.
(Score: 2) by MostCynical on Wednesday October 23 2019, @06:30AM (3 children)
I welcome the henchmen of our robot overlords..
(hey, they were probably programmed by MVP types, so they will likely fall over and explode before doing too much damage)
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Wednesday October 23 2019, @06:51AM
Not doing too much damage, you say...
Mmmm... I have a hunch that "friendly fire" doesn't mean the kumbaya marshmallow-roasting boyscouts bonfire and that it may include the damage cause by those MVP-type robotic wingmen falling over and exploding in close proximity of your heels.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 23 2019, @07:55AM (1 child)
Actually, this isn't the prototype .. that was MAGIC2010 [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Wednesday October 23 2019, @10:12AM
Can SoylentNews please implement something that automatically removes the .m part from Wikipedia links? It is really annoying.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 23 2019, @10:20AM (1 child)
Dun dun dun da dun
Dun dun dun da dun
... You hear the Terminator theme song in your head right now and just did that out loud.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Wednesday October 23 2019, @03:44PM
It's been so long since I've seen a terminator film and the score was quite forgettable. Thus, no I didn't do the terminator theme song in my head.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 23 2019, @12:15PM (6 children)
Please read the book. It out lines the next 2000 years!
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Wednesday October 23 2019, @02:31PM (2 children)
Imma level with you, BOLO kind of sucked. There's a few short stories by a few authors where they managed to find something clever to do, but mostly it was a real trashy set of books.
(Score: 2) by pdfernhout on Thursday October 24 2019, @02:54AM
https://www.amazon.com/Chronicles-Old-Guy-Cybertank-Adventure/dp/0985295627 [amazon.com]
"In the distant future mankind creates sentient cybertanks patterned on the human brain to help fight their alien enemies. Then, inexplicably, the humans vanished. They just went away. All that is left of the human empire are the cybertanks who, in their own way, keep the human civilization alive. With an intelligence based on the human psyche, the cybertanks continue to defend human space, but also perform scientific research, create art, form committees and ponder the universe. These are the stories of one of the first cybertanks, known to his friends as “Old Guy.” He has outlived most of his peers, and has had a wealth of experiences over his long life, but he is starting to slowly become obsolete. Join him and his comrades Double-Wide, Whiffle-Bat, Smoking Hole, Mondocat, and Bob, as they live and love and fight alien enemies such as the deadly Fructoids, the Yllg, and the fiendish Amok."
Written with humor by Timothy J Gawne, who did a post-doctoral fellowship at the Laboratory of Neuropsychology at the NIH, and is now a professor doing research the nature of the neural code, and the physical basis of human thought.
I've enjoyed the whole series and am hoping for another book some time soon...
Meanwhile, see also my sig "The biggest challenge of the 21st century: the irony of technologies of abundance used by scarcity-minded people" because these planned Robo-Tanks are yet another example. We could use all this advanced technology and AI to make abundance for everyone on the planet instead of creating Robo-Tanks to essentially impose artificial scarcity everywhere and eventually force people to be like robot slaves.... And see also the Marshall Brain story, "Manna" which explores a related theme.
The biggest challenge of the 21st century: the irony of technologies of abundance used by scarcity-minded people.
(Score: 1) by jman on Thursday October 24 2019, @10:54AM
For a series, never could figure out if I liked those, or his Retief stories better. Both classic skiffy. His Imperium and other standalone books are certainly worth a read as well.
He was guest at a con I've been going to since the mid-70's, just a few years before I started attending. Would have been nice to meet the guy. Born in '25, Air Force pilot, started publishing in the early 60's. He could get out there; like Dick, had that amazing ability to make you distrust your own reality.
Unfortunately, a stroke suffered in '71 reduced his writing ability, and he never completely recovered. Still, one of my favorite authors.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Wednesday October 23 2019, @03:47PM
If you think someone can predict the next 2000 years, I've got a nice piece of swamp land in Arizona to sell you.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Wednesday October 23 2019, @07:30PM (1 child)
IIUC, the original idea of a BOLO was a cyborg. Anyone planning to volunteer?
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 1) by jman on Thursday October 24 2019, @10:40AM
IIRC, David Weber did a nice history of the Bolo. They were not cyborgs at first, but grew that way. The last story was around nine thousand years from now...
(Score: 1) by jman on Thursday October 24 2019, @10:35AM
(In the canon, the Bolo first came into operation just last year, originally being an Abrams on steroids.)
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday October 24 2019, @03:09PM
Imagine a Tankbot, connected to Starlink.
From anywhere on the planet it could get Windows Updates.
If you eat an entire cake without cutting it, you technically only had one piece.