Israel building robot army - report
Charles Levinson at The Wall Street Journal
ISRAEL is developing an army of robotic fighting machines that offers a window onto the potential future of warfare, reports said.
Sixty years of near-constant war, a low tolerance for enduring casualties in conflict, and its hi-tech industry have long made Israel one of the world's leading innovators of military robotics, The Wall Street Journal revealed.
"We're trying to get to unmanned vehicles everywhere on the battlefield for each platoon in the field," says Lt. Col. Oren Berebbi, head of the Israel Defense Forces' technology branch.
"We can do more and more missions without putting a soldier at risk."
In 10 to 15 years, one-third of Israel's military machines will be unmanned, predicts Giora Katz, vice president of Rafael Advanced Defense Systems Ltd., one of Israel's leading weapons manufacturers.
"We are moving into the robotic era," Mr Katz said.
Over 40 countries have military-robotics programs today.
The US and much of the rest of the world is betting big on the role of aerial drones. Even Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed Shiite guerrilla force in Lebanon, flew four Iranian-made drones against Israel during the 2006 Lebanon War.
When the US invaded Iraq in 2003, it had just a handful of drones.
Today, US forces have around 7000 unmanned vehicles in the air and an additional 12,000 on the ground, used for tasks including reconnaissance, airstrikes and bomb disposal.
In 2009, for the first time, the US Air Force trained more "pilots" for unmanned aircraft than for manned fighters and bombers.
US and Japanese robotics programs rival Israel's technological know-how, but Israel has shown it can move quickly to develop and deploy new devices, to meet battlefield needs, military officials say.
"The Israelis do it differently, not because they're more clever than we are, but because they live in a tough neighborhood and need to respond fast to operational issues," says Thomas Tate, a former US Army lieutenant colonel who now oversees defense cooperation between the US and Israel.
Among the recently deployed technologies that set Israel ahead of the curve is the Guardium unmanned ground vehicle, which now drives itself along the Gaza and Lebanese borders.
The Guardium was deployed to patrol for infiltrators in the wake of the abduction of soldiers doing the same job in 2006.
The Guardium, developed by G-nius Ltd., is essentially an armored off-road golf cart with a suite of optical sensors and surveillance gear.
It was put into the field for the first time 10 months ago.
In the 2006 Lebanon War, Israeli soldiers took a beating opening supply routes and ferrying food and ammunition through hostile territory to the front lines.
In the Gaza conflict in January 2009, Israel unveiled remote-controlled bulldozers to help address that issue.
Within the next year, Israeli engineers expect to deploy the voice-commanded, six-wheeled Rex robot, capable of carrying 550 pounds of gear alongside advancing infantry.