Robotisation of the battlefield is under way. Its steady march can be seen in the number of drones, principally airborne ones, now in use. These aerial systems are now working alongside hundreds of terrestrial vehicles which are bringing significant help to troops on the ground. The Americans are the main users, and from their point of view this evolution is real and impossible to stop. The immediate consequence is the great number of issues raised regarding how we should conduct armed conflict now and in the future. Often the first image that comes to mind is that of the Terminator.

And yet the robotisation of the battlefield as we currently see it is a myth, an illusion. It does not exist, because the machines used by troops are not robots but remotely-operated systems that have no ability to make decisions or to act alone. It is true that most drones, like most aircraft, can fly on autopilot, but the decisions that count—those concerning direction of the sensors and the use of effectors (for those machines that have them)—remain the exclusive responsibility of man. Regarding ground equipment, the situation is even simpler: the systems used by bomb disposal teams, for example, have no autonomy whatsoever as they are driven by man. Man decides and acts via these machines. The truth is that there are no ground-based robots on the battlefield, just systems that are remotely guided and operated by humans. Nevertheless, some requirements, such as that for ground units to cover ever more terrain with fewer people, are sure to change the scene significantly. If to that we add our aversion to military losses, then the ‘autonomous’ solution has a lot of sense. But how soon is this likely to happen and how? Is the Terminator already being prepared in some secret laboratory?

What is a Robot?

Before attempting to answer this question we need to set some limits to our subject. At the outset, we must recognise a difference between remotely-controlled systems and autonomous or semi-autonomous systems. In a remotely-controlled system, the man remains in control: examples include the French VAB TOP⁽¹⁾ and PackBot.⁽²⁾ The user of these never releases the control lever because, without the man in the loop, the system will simply stop. In contrast, a robot is autonomous or semi-autonomous. The Roomba vacuum cleaner, for example, falls into this category, as it is able to manage the level of dust in your home by itself. Of course military systems cannot realistically be compared with domestic appliances, since the specifications and tasks are hardly the same, but the comparison is made simply to underline yet again that we do not have any true robots in the Army. That said, it is not at all easy to a give a clear definition to the notion of robot.