From The Financial Times:
Trooper Talon doesn’t get tired or hungry. He doesn’t get scared and he doesn’t panic under fire. He fights on even when, all around him, his comrades are falling. He never forgets his orders, never gets distracted, never even blinks. Unfortunately for the rest of his platoon, he has one flaw: after eight hours in the field, his batteries run out.
Talon is a robot. He is the future of warfare and, with more than 12,000 robotic machines already deployed in Iraq, he is also the present. These machines range from the briefcase-sized PackBot that can scope a house for potential enemies, to the 35m wingspan Global Hawk spy-plane that can survey half of Iraq in one flight. They are doing some of the difficult, dull and dangerous jobs that once cost soldiers’ lives. And since 2002, when a Predator drone assassinated al-Qaeda leader Abu Ali al-Harithi, they are also doing the killing.
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My Comment: An excellent article from The Financial Times. A MUST READ.