R E P O R T

THE COMINGROBOT

Introducing America s futurefighting machines

Steve Featherstone

A, small gray helicopter was perched on therunway, its rotors beating slowly against theshroud of fog and rain blowing in from the Ghesa-peake Bay. Visibility was poor, but visibility didnot matter. The helicopter had no windows, nodoors, and, for that matter, nopilot. Its elliptical fuselagelooked as if it had been carvedout o{ wood and sanded smootbof detail. It bovered above therunway for a moment, swung itsblind face toward the bay, andtben dissolved into the mist.

The helicopter was tbe firstamong a dozen unmanned aer-ial vehicles (UAVs) scheduledto fly during tbe annual Asso-ciation for Unmanned VehicleSystems International confer-ence in Baltimore. The livedemonstration area at Webster Field, a naval airfacility located seventy miles south of Washing-ton, D.G., was laid out along the lines of a car-nival midway. Big defense contractors and smallengineering firms exhibited the latest militaryrobots under white tents staked out alongside anauxiliary runway. Armed soldiers kept watcb ftomtowers and strolled through tbe throng of militaryofficers and industry reps. I took a seat amongrows of metal chairs arrayed in front of a giantvideo screen, whicb displayed a live feed fromthe helicopter's surveillance camera. There waslittle to see except clouds, so the announcer at-tempted to liven things up.

"Yesterday we saw some boats out there," hesaid, with an aggressive enthusiasm better suitedto a monster-truck rally. "They didn't know theywere being targeted by one of the newest UAVs!"

Next, two technicians from AeroVironment,Inc., jogged onto the airfield andknelt in the wet grass to assem-ble what appeared to be aremote-controlled airplane. Oneof them raised it over his shoul-der, leaned back, and threw itinto tbe air like a javelin. Theairplane—called the Raven—climbed straight up, stalled,dipped alarmingly toward tbeground, and tben leveled off attwo hundred feet, its tiny electricmotor buzzing like a mosquito.Tbe screen switcbed to sbow tbeRaven's video feed: a bird's-eye

view of the airstrip, at one end of wbich a largeAmerican flag flapped limply on a rope stRing be-tween two portable cranes next to an inflatableScud missile launcher.

"A lot of the principles we use here are tak-en from the model industry," an AeroViron-ment spokesman told the announcer as theRaven looped around the field. The U.S. mili-tary has purchased more than 3,000 Ravens,many of wbicb bave been deployed in Iraqand Afgbanistan, but apparently none of themilitary officers present had ever seen oneland. At tbe end of the Raven's second flight,tbe crowd went silent as the tiny plane plum-

Featherstone is a writer and photographer in Syracuse, New York. His last article for Harper's Magazine, "TheLine Is Hot," appeared in the December 2005 issue.

Illustrations by Tavis CoburnREPORT 43

WEAPONIZED ROBOTS ARE THE

ULTIMATE "FORCE MULTIPLIER"—

THEY CAN DO THE MOST

DAMAGE WITH THE LEAST PEOPLE

meted from the sky and careered into theground, tearing off its wings. The techniciansscrambled to the crash site, stuck the wingsback on, and held the Raven triumphantlyabove their heads.

"It's designed that way," the spokesman ex-plained.

"Hey, if you can't fix it with duct tape," the an-nouncer said, "it's not worth fixing, am I right?"

Other teams took the field to demonstratetheir company's UAVs. The sheer variety of air-craft and their launching methods^planes wereslung from catapults and bungee cords, shot frompneumatic guns and the backs of pickup trucks,or simply tossed by hand into the air—testified tothe prodigious growth in demand for military ro-bots since the terrorist attacks of Septemher

11, 2001, and thesubsequent "globalwar on terrorism." Inhis opening confer-ence remarks. RearAdmiral TimothyHeely compared theembryonic UAVmarket with aviationin the first decades

oi the twentieth century, when the Wright broth-ers built planes in their workshop and dirigiblescarried passengers. "It's all out there," he said."You don't want to throw anything away."

It started to drizzle again. The military officerssought refuge under a catered VIP tent decorat-ed with red, white, and blue bunting while therest of us scattered in all directions. I headed tothe unmanned ground vehicle (UGV) tent lo-cated at the far end of the runway. The tent's in-terior was dim; the air, sticky and hot. Tablesstocked with brochures and laptops lined thevinyl walls. Robots rested unevenly on the grass.This was the first year UGVs were alloweddemonstration time at the conference, and com-pany reps were eager to show what their robotscould do. A rep from iRobot, maker of the popu-lar Roomha robotic vacuum cleaner, flippedopen a shiny metal briefcase that contained anLCD monitor and a control panel studded withswitches and buttons for operating the PackBot,a "man-packable" tracked robot not much big-ger than a telephone book. Hundreds of Pack-Bots have already been deployed in Iraq.

"If you can operate a Game Boy, you're good,"the rep said.

A Raytheon engineer fired up an orange ro-bot that looked like a track loader used in ex-cavation. The only difference was a solid blackbox containing a radio receiver on top of thecage where the human driver normally sat. Itrumbled out of the tent onto the airfield, fol-lowed by a camera crew.

"It's a Bobcat," the announcer shouted. "It's abiiig Bobcat!"

The Bobcat rolled up to a steel garbage bincontaining a "simulated Improvised ExplosiveDevice," hoisted it into the air with a set of pin-cers, and crumpled It like a soda can. A Raytheonspokesman listed all the things the tricked-outBobcat could do, such as breach walls.

"You could also crush things like a car if youwanted to," he added.

"1 never thought of crushing something," theannouncer said. "But yeah, this would dover>' nicely."

After the Bobcat had dispatched the mangledgarbage bin and returned to the tent, I asked aRaytheon engineer if the company had thoughtabout arming it with machine guns. "Fot-

get the machine guns," he said dis-missively. "We're going lasers."

M,ilitary robots are nothing new. DuringWotld Wat II, Germans sent small, remote-controlled bombs on tank treads across frontlines; and the United States experimentedwith unmanned aircraft, packing tons of highexplosives into conventional bomhers pilotedfrom the air by radio (one bomber explodedsoon after takeoff, killing Joseph Kennedy's el-dest son, and the experiment was eventuallyshelved). But in a war decided by the maneu-ver of vast armies across whole continents, ro-bots were a peculiar sideshow.

The practice of warfare has changed dra-matically in the past sixty years. Since Viet-nam, the American military machine hasbeen governed by two parallel and comple-mentary trends: an aversion to casualties anda heavy reliance on technology. The GulfWar reinforced the belief that technology canreplace human soldiers on the battlefield, andthe "Black Hawk down" incident in Somaliamade this belief an article of faith. Today, anynew weapon worth its procurement contract iscustomarily referred to as a "force multiplier,"which can he translated as doing more dam-age with less people. Weaponized robots arethe ultimate force multiplier, and everybranch of the military has increased spendingon new unmanned systems.

At $145 billion, the Army's Future CombatSystems (FCS) is the costliest weapons programin history, and in some ways the most visionaryas well. The individual soldier is still central tothe FCS concept, hut he has been reconfiguredas a sort of plug-and-pIay warrior, a node inwhat is envisioned as a sprawling network of ro-bots, manned vehicles, ground sensors, satel-lites, and command centers. In theory, eachnode will exchange real-time information withthe network, allowing the entire system to

44 HARPER'S MAGAZINE / FEBRUARY ZOO?

accommodate sudden changes in the "battlespace," The fog oi war would become a relic ofthe past, like the musket, swept away by crys-talline streams of encrypted data. The enemywould not be killed so much as deleted,

FGS calls for seven new unmanned systems.It's not clear how much autonomy each sys-tem will be allowed. According to UnmannedEffects (UFX): Taking the Human Out of theLoop, a 2003 study commissioned by the U.S.Joint Forces Gommand, advances in artificialintelligence and automatic target recognitionwill give robots the ability to bunt down andkill the enemy with limited buman supervi-sion hy 2015. As the study's title suggests, hu-mans are the weakest link in the robot's "killchain"—^the sequence of events that oc-curs from tbe moment an enemy targetis detected to its destruction.

At Webster Field, tbe latest link in themilitary's increasingly automated kill chainwas on display: the Special Weapons Ob-servation Reconnaissance Detection Sys-tem, or SWORDS. 1 squatted down totake a closer look at it. Despite its the-atrical name, SWORDS was remarkablyplain, consisting of two tbick rubber treads,stubby antennae, and a platform mountedwith a camera and an M24O machinegun—all painted black. The robot is man-ufactured by a company named Foster-Miller, whose cbief representative at theshow was Bob Quinn, a slope-shouldered,balding man with bright blue eye.s. Bobhelped bis engineer to get SWORDS readyfor a quick demo. Secretary of the ArmyFrancis Harvey, tbe VIP of VIPs, was com-ing tbrough the UGV tent for a tour.

"The real demonstration is when you'reactually firing these things," Bob lament-ed. Unfortunately, live fire was forbiddenat Webster Field, and Bob had arrived toolate to schedule a formal demonstration.At another conference two months be-fore, be had been free to drive SWORDSaround all day long. "I was going inro thedifferent bootbs and displays, pointing mygun, moving it up and down like the signof the cross. People were going like this"—bejumped back and held up his bands in surren-der^—"tben tbey would follow the robot back tome because they had no idea where I was. Andthat's tbe exact purpose of an urban combat ca-pability like this."

Sunlight flooded into the tent as SecretaryHarvey parted the canopy, flanked by twolanky Rangers in fatigues and berets. Bob ranbis hand over his scalp and smoothed his shirt.It was sweltering inside the tent now. Beneaththe brim of bis tan baseball cap. Secretary Har-

vey's face was bright red and beaded withsweat, He nodded politely, leaning into theverbal barrage of specifications and payloadsand mission packages the reps threw at him.When he got to SWORDS, he clasped hishands behind his back and stared down at tberobot as if it were a small child. Someone fromhis entourage excitedly explained tbe variousweapons it could carry.

Bob had orchestrated enough dog-and-ponyshows to know that technology doesn't alwaysimpress men of Secretary Harvey's age and po-sition. "We don't have it in the field yet," Bobinterrupted, going on to say tbat SWORDSwasn't part of any official procurement plan. Itwas a direct result of a "bootstrap effort" by

real soldiers at Picatinny Arsenal in New Jer-sey wbo were trying to solve real problems fortheir comrades in the field. "And soldiers loveit," he added.

On tbe long bus ride back to Baltimore, I satbebind Master Sergeant Mike Gomez, a MarineUAV pilot. "All we are are battery-poweredforward observers," he joked. Mike was biasedagainst autonomous robots tbat could fireweapons or drop bombs witb minimal, if any,buman intervention. Tbere were too manythings that could go wrong, and innocent

REPORT 45

people could be killed as a result. At the sametime, he wasn't opposed to machines that were"going to save Marines, save time, save man-power, save lives."

It wasn't the first time tbat day I'd beard tbisodd contradiction, and over the next threedays I'd hear it again and again. It was as ifeveryone had rehearsed the same set of talkingpoints. Robots will take soldiers out of harm'sway. Robots will save lives. Allow robots topull tbe trigger? No way, it'll never happen.But wasn't the logical outcome of all this fancytechnology an autonomous robot force, no hu-mans required save for those few sitting indarkened control rooms half a world away?Wasn't the best way to save lives—Americanlives, at least—to take humans off the battle-field altogether? Mike stared out the bus win-dow at the passing traffic.

"I don't think tbat you can ever take himout," he said, bis breath fogging the tinted glass."What happens to every major civilization? Atsome point they civilize themselves right out ofwarriors. You've got sheep and you've gotwolves. You've got to bave enough wolvesaround to protect your sheep, or else somebodyelse's wolves are going to take them out."

Goming from a career soldier, Mike's viewsof war and humanity were understandably ro-mantic. To bim, bad wolves weren't tbe realthreat. It was the idea that civilization mightbe able to get along witbout wolves, good orbad, or that wolves could be made of titanium

and silicon. Wbat would happen tothe warrior spirit tben?

S,, _ 'cores of scale-model UAVs dangled onwires from the ceiling of the exhibit hall at theBaltimore Gonvention Genter, rotating lazilyin currents of air-conditioning. Models juttedinto the aisles, their wings canted in attitudesof flight. Gompany reps blew packing dust offcluster bombs and electronic equipment. Tbeyput out bowls of candy and trinkets. Every-where 1 looked I saw ghostly black-and-whiteimages of myself, captured by dozens of in-frared surveillance cameras mounted insidedomed gimbals, staring back at me fromclosed-circuit televisions.

In addition to cameras, almost every bootbfeatured a large plasma monitor showing a con-tinuous video loop of robots blowing up vebi-cles on target ranges, or robots pepper-sprayingintruders, robots climbing stairs, scurryingdown sewer pipes, circling above battlefieldsand mountain ranges. These videos were oftenaccompanied by a narrator's bland voice-over,muttered from a sound system tbat rivaled themost expensive home theater.

I sat down in the concession area to study the

fioor map. An engineer next to me picked at aplate of underripe melon and shook his bead inawe at the long lines of people waiting for cof-fee. "Four or five years ago it was just boothswitb concept posters pinned up," he said. "Nowthe actual stuff is here. It's amazing."

At tbe fringes of the exhibit hall, I wan-dered through the warrens of small companiesand remote military arsenals squeezed side-by-side into 10x10 booths. 1 followed the screech-ing chords of thrash metal until 1 stood infront of a television playing a promotionalvideo featuring a robot called Gbaos. Ghaoswas built by Autonomous Solutions, a privatecompany that had heen spun out o( UtahState University's robotics lab. In tbe video, itclambered over various types of terrain, its fourflipper-like tracks chewing up dirt and rocksand tree bark. The real thing was somewhatless kinetic. A Ghaos prototype lay motionlesson tbe floor in front of the television. 1 nudgedit with my foot and asked tbe company'syoung operations manager wbat it was de-signed to do.

"Kick the pants off tbe PackBot," be said,glancing around nervously. "No, I'm kidding."

A few bootbs down I encountered a group ofmen gathered around a robot the size of a pa-perback book. Apparently, it could climb wallsby virtue of a powerful centrifuge in its belly. Apicture showed it stuck to a building outside asecond-story window, peering over tbe sill. Buttbe rep bolding tbe remote-control box keptramming the robot into a clotb-draped wall attbe back of bis bootb. The robot lost tractionon tbe loose fabric and flipped over on its back,wheels spinning. A rep from tbe neighboringbooth volunteered use of bis filing cabinet. Thelittle robot sipped across tbe floor, bumped tbecabinet, and, witb a soft whir, climbed straightup the side. When it got to the top it extendeda metal stalk bearing a tiny camera and scannedthe applauding crowd.

I continued along the perimeter, trying toavoid eye contact witb the reps. Since it wasthe first day of the show, they were fresh andalert, rocking on their heels at the edges of theirbooths, their eyes darting from name badge toname badge in searcb of potential customers. Ipicked up an M4 carbine resting on a table intbe Ghatten Associates bootb. The gun's griphad been modified to simulate a computermouse. It bad two rubber keys and a tbumbstick for operating a miniature radio-controlledtank sporting an assault rifle in its turret.

"You'll need this," said Kent Massey, Ghat-ten's chief operating officer. He removed a hel-met from a mannequin's head and placed it onmine. Tben he adjusted tbe heads-up display, apostage stamp-sized LGD screen that floated in

46 HARPER-S MAGAZINE / FEBRUARY 2007

front of my right eye. The idea behind the setupwas that a soldier could simultaneously keepone eye on the battlefield while piloting the ro-bot via a video feed beamed back to his heads-up display. He never had to take his finger offthe trigger.

I blinked and saw a robot's-eye view of trafficcones arranged on a fluorescent green square ofartificial turf. I turned my head first to the left,then to the right. The gimbal-mounted camerain the tank mimicked the motion, swivelingleft, then right. I pushed the thumb stick onthe carbine's pistol grip. The tank lurched for-ward, knocking down a cone.

"Try not to look at the robot," Kent advised.I turned my back to him and faced the aisle.

It was dtfficult for me to imagine how the

now. They get the PDAs, the digital things,cell phones, IM."

As I crashed the tank around the obstaclecourse, conventioneers stopped in the aisle todetermine why 1 was pointing a machine gun atthem. I aitixed the muzzle at the floor.

"The one mission that you simply cannotdo without us is armed reconnaissance," Kentsaid over my shoulder. "Poke around a corner,clear a house . . . We lost thirty-eight guys inFallujah in exactly those kinds of circum-stances, plus a couple hundred wounded.

If Ithe robot] gets killed, there's noletter to write home."

soldier of the future would manage both thestress of combat and the information overloadthat plagues the average office worker. Simplydriving the tank made me dizzy, despite Kent'sclaims that Chatten's head-aiming system in-creased "situational awareness" and "opera-tional efficiency" hy 400 percent. Then again,I wasn't Army material. I was too old, tooanalog. As a Boeing rep would later explain tome, they were "building systems for kids thatare in the seventh and eighth grades right

Rohots have always been associated withdehumanization and, more explicitly, humani-

ty's extinction. The word "rohot" is de-rived from the Czech word for forced labor,"rohota," and first appeared in KarelCapek's 1920 play, R.U.R. (Rossum'sUni-versal Robots), which ends with the de-struction of mankind.

This view of robots, popularized in suchmovies as the Terminator series, troublesCliff Hudson, who at the time coordi-nated robotics efforts for the Departmentof Defense. 1 ran into Cliff on the sec-ond day of the show, outside CarnegieMellon's National Robotics EngineeringCenter's booth. Like the scientists inR.U.R., Cliff saw robots as a benign classof mechanized serfs. Military robots willhandle most of "the three Ds: dull, dan-gerous, dirty-type tasks," he said, such astransporting supplies, guarding check-points, and sniffing for bombs. The moredelicate task of killing would remain inhuman hands.

"1 liken it to the military dog," Cliffsaid, and brought up a briefing given theprevious day by an explosive-ordnance dis-posal (EOD) officer who had just returnedfrom Iraq. The highlight of the briefingwas an MTV-style video montage of robotsdisarming lEDs. It ended with a soldierwalking away from the camera, silhouettedagainst golden evening sunlight, his loyalrobot humping along the road at his heels.

Cliff pressed his hands together. "It's that part-nership, it's that team approach," he said. "It's notgoing to replace the soldier. It's going to be anadded capability and enhancer."

Adjacent to where we stood talking in theaisle was a prototype of the Gladiator, a six-wheeled armored car about the size of a golf cart,built by Carnegie Mellon engineers for theMarines. It was one mean enhancer. The proto-type was equipped with a machine gun, hut mis-siles could be attached to it as well.

48 HARPER'S MAGAZINE / FEBRUARY 2007

"If you see concertina wire, you send thisdown rant;e," Cliff said, maintaining his themeof manyrobot cooperation. "And then theMarines can come up behind it. It's a greatweapon." Despite its capabilities, the Gladiatorhadn't won the complete trust of the Marines."It's a little unstable," Cliff admitted. "Mostpeople are uncomfortable around it when thesafety is removed."

Reps proffering business cards began circlingaround Cliff and his entourage, sweeping me aside,jorgen Pederscn, a young engineer with thin blondhair and a goatee, watched the scene with be-mused detachment, his elbows propped on theGladiator's turret. Jorgen had written the Gladi-ator's hre-control software.

"How safe is this thing?" I asked him."We wanted it to err on the side of safet>' first,"

Jorgen said. "You can always make somethingmore unsafe." In the early stages of the Gladiator'sdevelopment. Jorgen had discovered that its com-munications link wasn't reliable enough to al-low machine-gun bursts longer than six seconds.After six seconds, the robot would stop firing.So he reprogrammed the fire-control system witha fail-safe.

"You may have great communications here,"Jorgen said, touching the Gladiator with his fin-gertips. "But you take one step back and you're juston the hair\- edge of where this thing can com-municate well."

The integrity of data links between un-manned systems and their operators is a majorconcern. Satellite bandwidth, already in shortsupply, will be stretched even further as morerobots and other sophisticated electronics, suchas remote sensors, ate committed to the battle-field. There's also the possibility that radio sig-nals could be jammed or hijacked by the ene-my. But these problems are inherent to thecurrent generation of teleoperated machines:robots that are controlled by humans from afar.As robots become more autonomous, fulfillingmissions according to pre-programmed instruc-tions, maintaining constant contact with hu-man operators will be unnecessary. I asked Jor-gen if robots would someday replace soldiers onthe battlefield. He reiterated the need for aman in the loop.

"Maybe that's because I'm short-sighted basedon my current experiences," he said. "Maybe theonly way that it could happen is if there's no oth-er people out on that field doing battle. It's justrobots battling robots. At that point, it doesn't

matter. We all just turn on the TV tosee who's winning."

A s ROBOTS BECOME MORE

AUTONOMOUS, CONSTANT

CONTACT WITH HUMAN

OPERATORS WILL BE UNNECESSARY

I.t is almost certain that robot deploymentwill save lives, both military and civilian. Andyet the prospect of robot-on-human warfare does

present serious moral and ethical, if not strictlylegal, issues. Robots invite no special consider-ation under the laws of armed conflict, whichplace the burden of responsibility on humans,not weapons systems. When a laser-guided bombkills civilians, responsibility falls on everyone in-volved in the kill chain, from the pilot whodropped the bomb to the commander whoordered the strike. Robots will be treated nodifferently. It will become vastly more difficult,however, to assign responsibility for noncom-batant deaths caused by mechanical or pro-gramming failures as robots are granted greaterdegrees of autonomy. In this sense, robots mayprove similar to low-tech cluster bombs or landmines, munitions that "do something thatthey're not supposed to out of the control ofthose who deploy them, and in doing so causeunintended deathand suffering," ac-cording to MichaelByers, professor ofglobal politics andintemational law atthe University ofBritish Columbia.

The moral issuesare perhaps similarto those arising from the use of precision-guided munitions (PGMs). There's no doubtthat PGMs greatly limit civilian casualties andcollateral damage to civilian infrastructure suchas hospitals, electrical grids, and water systems.But because PGM strikes are more precisecompared with dropping sticks of iron bombsfrom B-52s, the civilian casualties that oftenresult fr-om PGM strikes are considered necessary,if horribly unfortunate, mistakes. One need lookno further than the PGM barrage that accom-panied the ground invasion of Iraq in 2003."Decapitation strikes" aimed at senior Iraqi lead-ers pounded neighborhoods from Baghdad toBasra. Due to poor intelligence, none of thefifty known strikes succeeded in finding theirtargets. In four of the strikes forty-two civilianswere killed, including six members of a familywho had the misfortune of living next door toSaddam Hussein's half brother.

It's not difficult to imagine a similar scenarioinvolving robots instead of PGMs. A robotarmed only with a machine gun enters a houseknown to harbor an insurgent leader. The ro-bot opens fire and kills a woman and her twochildren instead. It's later discovered that theinsurgent leader moved to a different locationat the last minute. Put aside any mitigating fac-tors that might prevent a situation like thisfrom occuning and assume that the robot didexactly what it was programmed to do. Assumethe commander behind the operation acted on

REPORT 49

the latest intelligence, and that he followedthe laws of armed conflict to the letter. Al-though the deaths of the woman and childrenmight not violate the laws of armed conflict,they fall into a moral black hole where no one,no human anyway, is directly responsible. Hadthe innocents of My Lai and Haditha beenslain not by errant men but by errant ma-chines, would we know the names of theseplaces today?

More troubling than the compromised moralcalculus with which we program our killingmachines is how robots reduce even further thecosts, both fiscal and human, of the choice towage war. Robots do not have to be recruited,trained, fed, or paid extra for combat duty.When they are destroyed, there are no deathbenefits to disburse. Shipping them off to hos-tile lands doesn't require the expenditure of po-litical capital either. There will be no grievingrobot mothers pitching camp outside the presi-dent's ranch gates. Robots are, quite literally,an off-the-shelf war-fighting capability—war ina can.

This bloodless vision of future combat wasbest captured by a billboard 1 saw at the exhibi-tion, in the General Dynamics booth. The bill-board was titled "Robots as Go-Gombatants,"and two scenes illustrated the concept in thegarish style of toy-modet-box art. One featuredUGVs positioned on a slope near a grove ofglossy palm trees. In the distance, a gtoup ofmud-brick buildings resembling a walled com-pound was set against a barren mountain range.Bright red parabolas traced the trajectoriesof mortar shells fired into the compoundfrom UGVs, but there were no explosions,no smoke.

The other scene was composed in the grittyvernacular of television news footage from Iraq.A squad oi soldiers trotted down the crackedsidewalk of a city street, past stained concretefacades and terraces awash in glaring sunlight.A small, wingless micro-UAV hovered abovethe soldiers amid a tangled nest of droopingtelephone lines, projecting a cone of whitelight that suggested an invisible sensor beam.And smack in the foreground, a UGV had ma-neuvered into the street, guns blazing. In bothscenes, the soldiers are incidental to the action.Some don't even carry rifles. They sit in

front of computer screens, fingerstapping on keyboards.

O_ n the last day of tbe show, I sat in theconcession area, chewing a stale pastry andscanning the list of the day's technical ses-sions. Most were dry, tedious affairs with suchtitles as "Tbe Emerging Ghallenge of Loiter-ing Attack Missiles." One session hosted

by Foster-Mi Her, the company that manufac-tures the SWORDS robot, got my attention:"Weaponization of Snvall Unmanned GroundVehicles." 1 filled my coffee cup anJ hust-led upstairs.

I took a seat near the front of the conferenceroom just as the lights dimmed. Hunched be-bind a podium, a Foster-Miller engineer beganreading verbatim from a PowerPoint presenta-tion about tbe history of SWORDS, endingwith a dreary bullet-point list cataloguing thepast achievements of the TALON robot,SWORDS's immediate predecessor.

"TALON has been used in most major, ma-jor . . . " Tbe engineer faltered.

"Gonflicts," someone in the audience stage-whispered. 1 turned to see that it was BobQuinn. He winked at me in acknowledgment.

"Gonflicts," the engineer said. He ended hisportion of the talk with the same video mon-tage that had inspired Gliff Hudson to comparerobots to dogs, TALON robots were shownpulling apart tangles of wire connected toIEDs, plucking at garbage bags tbat had beentossed on the sides of darkened roads, extract-ing mortar shells bidden inside Styrofoam cups.Bob Quinn took tbe podium just as the finalshot in the montage, that of the soldier walk-ing down the road with his faithful TALONrobot at his heels, faded on the screen behindhim. The lights came up.

"The 800-pound gorilla, or the bully in theplaypen, for weaponized robotics—for allground-based robots—is Hollywood," Bob said.The audience stirred. Bob strolled off the daisand stood in the aisle, hands in his pockets."It's interesting that UAVs like the Predatorcan fire Hellfire missiles at will without a hugeinterest worldwide. But when you get intoweaponization of ground vehicles, our soldiers,our safety community, our nation, our world,are not ready for autonomy. In fact, it's quitethe opposite."

Bob remained in the aisle, narrating a seriesof PowerPoint slides and video clips thatshowed SWORDS firing rockets and machineguns, SWORDS riding atop a Stryker vehicle,SWORDS creeping up on a target and lobbinggrenades at it. His point was simple: SWORDSwas no killer robot, no Terminator. It was a ca-pable weapons platform firmly in the controlof the soldiers who operated it, nothing more.When the last video clip didn't load. Bobstalled for time.

"We've found that using Hollywood on Hol-lywood is a good strategy to overcome some ofthe concerns that aren't apparent with UAVsbut are ver>- apparent with UGVs," he said. LastFebruary a crew from the History Ghannel hadfilmed SWORDS for an episode of Moil Gall, a

50 HARPER'S MAGAZINE / FEBRUARY 2007

half-hour program hosted by the inimitableR. Lee Ermey, best known for his role as theprofane drill sergeant in the movie Full MetalJacket. Ermey's scowling face suddenly appearedonscreen, accompanied by jarring rcx:k music.

"It's a lot smarter to send this robo-soldierdown a blind alley than one of our flesh-and-blood warriors," Ermey shouted. "It was devel-oped by our troops in the field, not some suit inan office back home!"

Ermey's antic mugging was interspersed withquick cutaways of SWORDS on a firing rangeand interviews with EOD soldiers.

"The next time you start thinking abouttelling the kids to put away that video game,think again!" Ermey screamed. He jabbed hisftnget into the camera. "Some day they couldhe using those same kinds of skills to run a ro-bot that will save their bacon!"

"That's a good way to get off the stage," Bohsaid. He was smiling now, soaking in the ap-plause. "I think armed robots will save soldiers'lives, it creates an unfair fight, and that's whatwe want. But they will be teleoperated. Themore as a community we focus on that, giventhe Hollywood perceptions, the bettet off oursoldiers will he."

Downstairs in the exhibit hall, I saw that Boe-ing had also learned the value of Hollywood-style marketing. I had stopped by the compa-ny's booth out oi a sense of obligation morethan curiosity: Boeing is the lead contractor forECS. \X^ile I was talking to Stephen Bishop, theFCS business-development manager, I noticeda familiar face appear on the laptop screen be-hind him.

"Is that—MacGyver?"Stephen nodded and stepped aside so that 1

could get a better view oi the laptop. The facedid indeed belong to Richard Dean Anderson,former star of the television series MacGyverand now the star of a five-minute promotionalfilm produced by Boeing. Judging hy the digitalspecial effects, the film prohably cost more tomake than what most companies had spent ontheir entire exhibits. Not coincldentally, thefilm is set in 2014, when the first generation ofECS vehicles are scheduled for full deploy-ment. An American convoy approaches abridge near a snowy mountain pass somewherein Asia, perhaps North Korea. The enemy mo-bilizes to cut the Americans off, but they aredetected and annihilated by armed ground ve-hicles and UAVs.

At the center of this networked firestorm isRichard Dean Anderson, who sits inside acommand vehicle, furrowing his brow andtapping a computer touchscreen. As theAmerican forces cross the bridge, a lone ene-my soldier hiding behind a boulder fires a

rocket at the lead vehicle and disables it. Theattack falters.

"I do not have an ID on the shooter!" a tech-nician yells. Anderson squints gtimly at hiscomputer screen. It's the moment of truth.Does he pull back and allow the enemy time toregroup, or does he advance across the bridge,exposing his forces to enemy fire? The rousingmartial soundtrack goes quiet.

"Put a 'hot on the bridge," Anderson says.A dune-bugg>-like robot darts from the col-

umn of vehicles and stops in the middle of thebridge in a heroic act of self-sacrifice. The loneenemy soldier takes the bait and fires anothermissile, destroying the robot and unwittinglyrevealing his position to a micro-UAV loirer-ing nearby. Billions of dollars and decades ofscientific research come to hear on rhis mo-ment, on one man hiding behind a snow-covered houlder. He is obliterated.

"Good job," Anderson sneers. "Now let's fin-ish rhis."

The film ends as American tanks pour acrossthe bridge into enemy territory. The digitallyenhanced point of view pulls hack to reveal theFCS network, layer by layer, vehicle by vehi-cle, eighteen systems in all, until it reachesspace, the network's outer shell, where a spysatellite glides by.

"Saving soldiers' lives," Stephen said, glanc-ing at his press manager to make sure he wason message. I commended the film's productionvalues. Stephen seemed pleased that I'd no-ticed. "Three-stars and four-stars gave it astanding ovation at the Pentagon last Novem-ber," he told me.

"You can't argue with MacGyver," I said."Because it's all ahout saving soldiers' lives,"

Stephen said. "Works for congressmen, worksfor senators, works for the grand-mother in Nebraska."L(ater that summer I visited Picatinny Ar-

senal, "Home of American Firepower," in NewJersey, to see a live-fire demonstration of theSWORDS robot. SWORDS was conceived atPicatinny by a small group of EOD soldierswho wanted to find a less dangerous way to"put heat on a target" inside caves inAfghanistan. Three years later, SWORDS wasundergoing some final tweaks at Picatinny be-fore being sent to Aberdeen Proving Groundfor its last round of safety tests. After that, itwould he ready for deployment.

"As long as you don't break my rules you'll hefine," said Sergeant Jason Mero, motioning forus to gather around him. Sgt. Mero had partic-ipated in the initial invasion of Iraq, includingthe assault on Saddam International Airport.He had huized sandy brown hair, a compact

REPORT 51

build, and the brusque authority common tonon-commissioned officers. He told us exactlywhere we could stand, where we could set up ourcameras, and assured us that he was there tohelp us get what we needed. Other than the"ver>', ver>' loud" report of the M240 machinegun, there was little to worry about.

"The robot's not going to suddenly pivot andstart shooting ever^'hody," he said, without ahint of irony.

A crew from the Discovery Networks' Mili-tary Channel dragged their gear onto therange. They were filming a special on "War-hots," and the producer was disappointed toleam that the SWORDS robot mounted witha formidable-looking M2O2 grenade launcherwasn't operable. He would have to make dowith the less telegenic machine-gun variant.The producer, Jonathan Gruher, wore a canvasfishing hat with the brim pulled down to theblack frames of his stylish eyeglasses. Jonathangave stage directions to Sgt. Mero. who kneltin the gravel next to SWORDS and began de-scribing how the loading process works.

"Sergeant, if you could just look to me,"Jonathan prompted. "Good. So, is a misfeedcommon?"

"No, not with this weapon system," Sgt.Mero said. "It's very uncommon." "My ques-tions are cut out," Jonathan said. "So if youcould repeat my question in the answer? So,you know, 'Misfeeds are not common ...'"

"Mis—" Sgt. Mero cleared his throat. Hisface turned red. "However, misfeeds are notcommon with the M240 bravo."

"Okay, great. I'm all set for now, thanks."The firing range was scraped out of the hot-

tom of a shallow gorge, surrounded on all sidesby trees and exposed limestone. Turkey vul-tures circled ahove the ridge. The weedyground was littered with spent shell casings andscraps of scorched metal. Fifty yards fromwhere I sat, two human silhouettes were visiblethrough shoulder-high weeds in front of a con-crete trap filled with sand. Sgt. Mero hooked acable to SWORDS's camera, then flipped a redswitch on the control box. I felt the M240'smuzzle blast on my face as SWORDS lurchedhackward on its tracks, spilling smoking shellson the ground.

A cloud of dust billowed behind the silhou-ettes. Sgt. Mero fired again, then again. Witheach hurst, recoil pushed SWORDS backward,and Sgt. Mero, staring at the video image onthe control hox's LCD screen, readjusted hisaim. I could hear servos whining. When Sgt.Mero finished the amn:iunition helt, heswitched of¥ SWORDS and led us downrangeto the targets.

"So, um, Sergeant?" Jonathan said. "As

soon as you see our camera you can just starttalking."

"As you see, the M240—""And Sergeant?" Jonathan interrupted. "I

don't think you have to scream. You can justspeak in a normal voice. We're all close to you."

"The problem with a heavy machine gun is,obviously, there's going to be a lot of spray,"Sgt. Mero said, hending down to pick up one ofthe silhouettes that had fallen in the weeds."Our second guy over here that we actuallyknocked down—he didn't get very many bul-lets, but he actually got hit pretty hard."

Through the weeds I spotted theSWORDS robot squatting in the dust. Myheart skipped a beat. The machine gun waspointed straight at me. I'd watched Sgt. Merodeactivate SWORDS, I saw him disconnectthe cables. And the machine gun's feed traywas empty. There wasn't the slightest chanceof a misfire. My fear was inational. but 1 still

made a wide circle around therohot when it was time to leave.

Within our lifetime, robots will give usthe ability to wage war without committingourselves to the human cost of actually fight-ing a war. War will become a routine, a pro-gram. The great nineteenth-century militarytheorist Carl von Clausewitz understood thatalthough war may have rational goals, theconduct of war is fundamentally irrational andunpredictable. Absent fear, war cannot becalled war. A better name for it would be tar-get practice.

Back on the firing line, Sgt. Mero bootedup SWORDS and began running it aroundthe range for the henefit of the cameras. Itmade a tinny, rattling noise as it rumbledover the rocks. A Discovery crewman wad-dled close behind it, holding his camera lowto the ground. He stumbled over a clump ofweeds, and for a second I thought he was go-ing to fall on his face. But he regained hisbalance, took a breath, and ran to catch upwith the robot.

"1 think I'm good," Jonathan said after thedriving demonstration, "Anything else youwant to add about this?"

"Yeah," Sgt. Mero said, smiling wryly. "Itkicks ass. It's awesome." In repentance for thisbrief moment of sarcasm, Sgt. Mero squaredhis shoulders, looked straight into the camera,and began speaking as if he were reading fromcue cards. "These things are amazing," he saidbreathlessly. "They don't complain, like ourregular soldiers do. They don't cry. They're notscared. This rohot here has no fear, which is agood supplement to the United States Army."

"Tliat's great," Jonathan said. •

HARPER-S MAGAZINE / FEBRUARY 2007