COLUMN-Killer robots and a revolution in warfare:Bernd Debusmann
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/LM674603.htm

If the US or Israel decided to invade Iran in 5–10 years from now they would have to expect that their greatest difficulty would be in dealing with urban-based warfare and insurgency. One could imagine that it may be nearly impossible to overthrow a country (Iran) with more than twice the population, possibly a very large number of organized suicide bombers, and with an ethnic majority which may be opposed to an imposed new form of government.

But with the second battle of Fallujah the US took the town while loosing only about two dozen of its soldiers. This was largely because Fallujah had been surrounded and civilians were given the opportunity to evacuate which they did.

Recently Israel refrained from significantly entering Gaza city perhaps due in part to the expected losses on both sides. As a result, Hamas, their irreconcilable enemy was left intact.

If in these situations civilians were first ordered to be evacuated and then the robots were sent in first, a city could be largely cleansed of insurgents and booby traps before soldiers were risked. It would be pointless suicide to try and defend a city under those circumstances. So it seems to me that there is a tremendous incentive on the part of Western countries to construct many remote-controlled combat robots not much more advanced than the Talon. So I think that we can expect this in the very near future.

In the more distant future I could also imagine robots being genetically designed, modeled in a virtual environment, and then pitted against other genetic variants. The winner then has its genes mutated to create new models which then fight each other in a virtual environment. Within a short period of time we could have the designs for frighteningly efficient killing machines. The whole Terminator paradigm doesn’t seem so sci fi any more.