Northrop Shows Off a Touchscreen-Controlled Robot Wielding a Giant Machine Gun

Is it me or the RC antenna is mounted in the front and exposed?

Who the hell knows. I see at least five on that thing.

Little bit more worried about the giant gun guys...

Well, obviously for gorilla fighting, it is fairly easy to overcome. If an enemy can run up to it before it can notice and turn the machine gun, they get to be in a blind zone.

From there, they can disconnect systems, jam the gun. Heck, they could just tip it over, and it loses almost all threat value.

I think its a cool idea, but a ground based robot gun is impractical except for in open combat, in a group of robots, where they can cover eachother, and attack enemies before they get too close.

These things are mini-tanks, and are pretty much only useful in tank-based combat, save that they are ment to take out personel. Personel are typicall absent or covered during situations where tanks are utalized. There just isn't really a prime military situation where this is needed.

Robotic arial vehicles, and robot load carriers are great, because they don't have any major disadvantages. Load carriers have human escourts, and arial vehicles are always distances from their enemies.

If we had 2000 of these things at D-day, it would have been amazing. I just have my doubts about it being useful in the wars of today.

Recommend the ONR/Swampworks, take a look at this and evaluate for various in-port and at-sea ops and apps.

** Ordnance handling on carrier decks ?
** Supplies/Ordnance Onloading, in port?
** Semi-automated UCAV processing, above/below decks?
** Acceleration of force deployments/evac. (LaJune)?
** Swarm/Squad deployment from C-130s (expedient perimeter).

These things can be deployed, at altitude, by C-130s, via GPS glide-chutes. They can also be made litoral-submersible and could just "tractor-up", from beneath moderate surf (onto a beach). >>> Sidebar ?

these are cool and everything but i seriously think all unmanned vehicles, land air or sea should have some type of safe code needed to be put in before tampering with the machine, that way if it falls into the wrong hands and they take it back to their base to figure it out, it either fries itself and all its internals. or even better...BOOM

"Well, obviously for gorilla fighting, it is fairly easy to overcome. If an enemy can run up to it before it can notice and turn the machine gun, they get to be in a blind zone."

Said enemy would then be exposed. Say it's snipers in a wooded area, as recently happened in Afghanistan - this thing would allow you to locate the enemies and put down suppression fire without exposing yourself.

What a waist of money. Are these people ever told no? There are no limits to national defense spending.

But hey, lets eliminate so called "Big Government" unless there is a uniform involved. Give those guys everything they want.

Jonainpdx has no idea what he is talking about. Although, I am for lowering our military spending because i feel the money could be much better for society spent in other areas, say education. In 2009 the US was over 45% of the global military spending with the next closest country China at about 7%. I call that overkill. I understand that because we have so many enemies a strong military is important (although i wish this was not so) and because of China's increasing economic dominance it is starting to overstep its boundaries and we are the only country powerful enough to stop China. However, I do not find it necessary to spend over 6 times as much as China. And for those who say jobs would be lost the jobs to be relocated to other areas, such as public works.

Now back to the previous comment, Northrop is a private company, it creates military devices and sell them to militaries around the world. The government is not spending money on this product, in fact the article states that the US military is scared of buying this. So please only make intelligent comments.

Sorry about the political rant on a website for science and technology.

gorilla fighting hu? or baboon?

anyway, as for tanks, they support and are supported by infantry. nobody would disable it because it would never be used by itself.
its use is more probably heavy weapon infantry support/carrier. this type of gun are useful in battle but can't be carried around by men.
make the math.

Not to be a pacifist but I'd much rather see some sort of mule armed with a whole suite of medical supplies. It picks up the soldier and brings the solider into a chamber and then begins to save its life.

I listen to the comments and it seems like none of the people have read that Northrop just put the gun on it for the show. You know just to get people to come over and say that cool. The real vehicle just hauls stuff, plain and simple. Something like that draws more people then a vehicle with a box on it.

Sure they can speculate all they want if it might give the military ideas, but even in the article it states that the military is leery of it.

I'm saving my money for the flamethrower version.

I agree with tcolguin: these sorts of vehicle robots are much more useful for cargo hauling than for combat. 1200 pounds that soldiers don't have to carry on their backs is a big help anywhere.

World met the T-.5 ...This one is not connected to skynet yet.

World meet the T-.5 ...This one is not connected to skynet yet.

Having actually been a machine gunner in the Marines, I have a bit of a different perspective here.

First, many comments have been put here about using it more as a pack mule than as a weapons platform. The Marines organize their machine gun teams into 3-man teams. With a carrying capacity of 1200 pounds, there is more than enough power to cary both the weapon as well as cargo.

Second, there is a concept known as defilade fire in which you set up the machine gun behind a birm or crest of a hill, someplace where you can't be seen directly by the enemy, and then use the ballistic trajector of the fired bullets to rain the fire down on the target. Its a form of indirect fire that is deadly in more than one way, because the target can't determine where the fire is coming from and so can't return fire, and because its harder to take cover from this type of fire since the bullets have a downward trajectory. The drawback of this concept is someone does have to expose themself in some way in order to direct the fire onto target. With a robot, there would be a new concept in defilade, as you could hide in a safe place, and the robot becomes both the gunner and observer.

And third, the touch screen controls could be used to increase accuracy. It would be simple to program in the ability to set windage and elevation offsets. This would enable the gunner to get on target after only 1 burst, instead of the 2-3 bursts it can sometimes take (even more if the gunner isn't listening to his team leader).

It would also be a very good weapon for entering and clearing buildings provided they could reduce it's size and put a smaller machine gun on it (you don't need a .50 cal to kill someone, and its harder to move a weapon of that size around corners).

And as far as it being disabled from damage, I am sure they wouldn't make this gun a permenant mount. You could just remove the weapon from the disabled robot and go back to the old way of doing things.

My only concern with a weapon like this is if taken into combat against a more capable nation that has the resources to try and hack the control signal, either to disable the robot, or to take complete control of it and turn it against us.

The ARMY should be scared if they're letting the "robot" pull the trigger!!! There's a difference between a "robot" and a "ROV" (remotely operated vehicle). If you want to let the onboard brains figure out how to get from point A to point B, fine, but you need to have a human step in via virtual telepresence when it comes time to start firing weapons.

This thing is a boring pack mule to assist human troops anyhow, so it's crap. The future is in replacing soldiers with small agile flying/hovering ROV/UAVs deployed via larger "mothership ROVs" and controlled via telepresence by humans some significant distance away utilizing a combination of human guidance/decision making and Artificial Intelligence for things like swarm formations, following/supporting a single human-controlled leader, returning to a mothership for refueling and re-arming, etc.

The future is also very much in the micro-assassin field. Insect size robots that can sting evil-doers to death in their caves at night.

An RPG would sort this out.

Treize Khushrenada, Gundam Wing

"When wars are dehumanized both victory and defeat become miserable"

"Automated weapons known as mobile dolls will make humans unnecessary in battle, making warfare meaningless"

"With a fancy gun that has long forgotten the meaning of battle, I would feel no emotion, even if I were to shoot an enemy right through the heart."

Can we focus on friendly robots please!
www.associatedcontent.com/article/5790196/future_of_robotics_mapping_the_human.html

In light of all these comments, I am thinking that, if "we" put half as much money into propaganda warfare, as we do into new kill-bots, we might get more results, for our money.

What if an enemy could be suitably convinced to think or do whatever we wish of them ???

I have read that subliminal messages, contained within department store MUZAC audio tracks, can convince folks not to shoplift ... and ... IT WORKS !!

..."I am honest ... I don't steal ...
... I am honest ... I don't steal ...
... "Peace, love, dove ... Coke, Levi's, Rock-n-Roll !! ".

War will be obsolete the day only robots are lost in combat.

Lance Corporal Tom,

I agree with you; and I would be much afraid of some smart Iraqi or Al-Qaedi figuring out how to hack the control frequencies and shooting up the American Solders working with the CaMEL. I’ve read of events such as the United States Navy loosing control of one of their UAVs over Washington, DC. And of insurgents hacking into the video feed from UAVs and seeing what the UAVs are seeing.

It looks like CaMEL is remote controlled and not decision making. I’m a bit put off that the author compared it’s powertain to a Toyota Prius. Though if I ever seen a Prius off-roading and not breaking down I’ll of course reevaluate my statement.

Good luck and keep your head down.

~Eugine McAnical

Holey Moley the picture scared me. I dont blame those guys for not feeling safe with these machines around. That huge gun on the front of it would make me feel so much less safe than if I had to fight myself. I dont know maybe Im behind in the times but I dont trust technology that is this advanced. Just sayin'.

I don't know what all this talk about primates fighting is about, but as for GUERILLA warfare, maybe.

I hope it come equipped with a TV behind the gun so while the operator is firing he/she can watch their favorite music video.

Is there an app on my iphone for this thing?