India To Develop Military Robots For Warfare

WoodenKnight writes "Indian DRDO chief Avinash Chander has told reporters that development of robotic soldiers would be one of his 'priority thrust areas', saying that 'unmanned warfare in land and air is the future of warfare.' He foresees robotic soldiers assisting human soldiers initially but, he hinted at forward-position deployment of such robots. He gave a timeline of at least a decade for the project to see any practical use but said a number of labs in India are now working on this."

India? Robots in the front line?

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

Very surprised. Though no country wants to risk the lives of their soldiers, only in the USA soldiers in body bags have such a heavy political price. India being a Democracy it too would pay a higher political price than, may be Pakistan and China. But still it is a highly populated country without draft. In fact, even in the USA, after the draft has been removed and it became an all volunteer armed forces, the political cost of returning body bags have dropped a lot. So why robots in the forward firing lines? May be it is posturing, goading Pakistan into spending its money on robots instead of supplying terrorists with cheap AK-47s.

Re:Metal Gear

[dpilot]

I disagree. IMHO war has generally been about egos, and resources are frequently the excuse. Assuming we managed to come up with efficient and logical machines, they would most likely come up with some more efficient way to get their resources than war.

However if they were to decide that war was the most efficient way, watch out!

Enthiran

[Meneth]

The robot "Chitti" in the 2010 Indian blockbuster movie Enthiran [wikipedia.org] was originally intended for army service.