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June 22, 2005

Talon Sword delayed. . . .

The Packbot crawled through caves in Afganistan looking for Al-Queda badguys and predator drones fly overhead, but the next generation of battlefield robotics has been delayed as Army engineers finish final testing in preparation for the Talon Sword to be deployed to combat regions.

I'm glad to see that the Army isn't rushing these tools to our soldiers before they are ready. I know that pressure to take our boys out of harm's way is strong, but lets face facts. If the technology isn't ready, or worse, doesn't work after it's deployed, soldiers in the field will lose faith in it. They may even be putting themselves in greater danger by using tactics that fail due to technology.

All in all I approve of the move to put weapons on battlefield robots, and I respect the difficulties that arise when you try to automate or remote control a system. I'm glad to see that they're still moving forward, and I hope that soon the technology will be ready to help our boys in the field.

Here's a brief roundup of battlefield robots with lots of links that I'd written previously.

--Jason

Posted by JasonColeman at June 22, 2005 2:43 PM