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That offers a window onto the potential future of warfare, reports said. * By Charles Levinson at The Wall Street Journal
* From: NewsCore
* January 12, 2010 4:57PM 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.
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