Sometime in the not too distant future a robot crushes a human skull underfoot as it scours
the landscape for more people to kill.
Overhead heavily armed drones hunt out the last human survivors, mercilessly pushing
the human race into extinction, and in a shining metal facility somewhere deep in the desert,
a mastermind artificial intelligence fires the last few remaining human nuclear weapons
back down onto the people who created them.
Any human survivors are rounded up by the machines and sent to prison camps where they
are forced to compute pi for eternity.
We've all seen these horrible visions of the future, and while this has been fantasy for
many decades, today we're moving closer than ever to a manmade machine apocalypse with
modern nations like Russia leading the way.
Hello and welcome to another episode of The Infographics Show, today we're taking a look
at autonomous military killer robots and how they might be the future of the Russian, and
other nation's, armies.
First of all, why build a killer robot in the first place?
Well, the simplest answer is that as humans we are generally adverse to taking any unnecessary
risks, and as an act of altruism we seek to limit the amount of danger that we place our
own soldiers in.
A drone can do many of the things a human soldier can, and if the drone gets killed
then there's no loss of human life.
Politically though this is an incredibly appealing option for generals and politicians alike,
as losing human lives in combat can have severely negative repercussions with the civilian population.
In nations such as the US and Great Britain which rely completely on a volunteer military,
this is an especially important consideration as low public opinion of the military directly
correlates with less, and less quality, recruits.
Russia, of which approximately two thirds of its military are still conscripts, is slowly
trying to shift to an all-volunteer service- something it has difficulty doing because
of the low appeal that the military has as a viable career option.
In fact, even its mandatory conscription policies are proving difficult to implement in recent
years, with up to 164,000 young men in Russia avoiding their draft notices in 2018.
Military service is overwhelmingly an unappealing option for Russian men.
For example, in the US a service member can enlist with a sign-on bonus and leave the
military expecting access to medical care, with a very generous education benefits package
that includes tens of thousands of dollars for school, supplies, and basic allowance
for housing to cover food and rent.
A Russian service member's benefits however are limited to preferred entry status to universities,
which allows them to replace the entry exams required with an interview.
They must still pay for their own education, and can expect no help at all with paying
for housing, medical care, or supplies.
While Russia has been slowly trying to make volunteer service more appealing, its military
budget simply can't afford to offer the same benefits as the US, and thus it continues
to struggle to create a completely volunteer military force.
With low morale, nearly zero retention, and low quality, conscripts are a universally
unappealing option for any military, let alone a Russian military trying to maintain its
competitive edge against Western militaries.
This is where armed drones are suddenly a very appealing option for the Russian military.
With no need to maintain their morale, no expensive benefits to pay out after the end
of their service, and no impact on public opinion, armed drones seem like the perfect
answer to the Russian military's personnel retention problems and lack of a fully volunteer
military force.
Simply put, the Russian military can avoid the hassle of a manned workforce altogether
by simply replacing soldiers with robots who don't need salaries or enticing benefit packages.
Drones also don't require much in the way of supply costs, certainly far less than the
housing, medical care, and feeding costs of a human soldier, and they completely eliminate
the greatest cost of a manned military altogether- the cost of training.
To recruit a new Marine the United States spends $6,539 per Marine in recruitment costs
alone, which include the cost of advertisement, college fund, and an enlistment bonus.
But then you have to train that new recruit, which adds $1,614 in uniforms and gear, with
$301 in classroom training costs- unsurprisingly the lowest classroom training costs of any
branch of the US military.
Then there's annual salary as well as clothing and moving expenses which tack on an additional
$19,973.
Ammunition costs for training and kitting out add up to $787, and support staff to include
drill sergeants and teachers add an additional $15,674.
In just his first year alone, a brand new Marine recruit costs the US government $44,887-
over a four year service contract you can expect that cost to come to an average of
$180,000, and that's before figuring out pay increases and additional training costs, which
realistically push the figure closer to $300,000.
Yet these figures are only for a basic infantry grunt, and with modern militaries requiring
ever more technologically proficient service members to do more high tech jobs, costs are
skyrocketing.
The cost of graduating a single recruit from a military academy is on average $340,000,
and that's before receiving their military training.
Compare those costs with the $10,000 cost for a small unmanned ground vehicle such as
a robotic mule, and $100,000 on average for a larger model such as a platform capable
of delivering ground fire support and you start to see why robots are an incredibly
appealing option for any military, but specially for the Russian armed forces.
Yet for Russia, robots are a very appealing option for another much more practical reason,
and that's their power as a force multiplier.
A force multiplier is any strategy or equipment which has a multiplicative effect on the effectiveness
of your military forces.
On a tactical level it can be as simple as a strategically advantageous defensive position,
and on a macro level it can be advanced warfighting concepts such as combined arms warfare.
Anything that directly increases the lethality of your military forces is a force multiplier.
Currently Russia finds itself in a very unfavorable strategic position.
NATO countries push up against its doorstep, and Western economies continue to outstrip
it both in the financial sector and the technology and development sectors.
The more powerful economies in the West are increasingly more appealing for Russian nationals
with advanced technical training, who may prefer to seek out higher salaries in other
countries.
This has led to a brain drain across the Russian economy, further impacting its ability to
innovate and expand.
While Russia continues to develop cutting edge military technologies, it very often
finds itself unable to actually field those technologies due to their cost.
This is most apparent in the official cancellation of Russia's 5th generation fighter program,
which after years of development was abruptly placed on indeterminate hiatus.
Ground robots offer many favorable solutions to Russia's growing military quandary, providing
Russia with a cheap option for bolstering its military forces.
While Russia's generals- as any other nation's generals would do- dream of completely overpowering
any potential enemies, the strategic truth behind Russian military doctrine has for decades
been not to defeat NATO, but to offer them only extremely unfavorable win conditions.
Armed ground robots can directly aid in this vision by offering Russia a cheap, mass-produceable
fighting force that can be rushed into any potential conflict.
Immune to fear, low morale, or mass desertion- as is feared from Russia's conscript force
in a real war- ground robots seem the perfect tool, and when fielded in large numbers can
help bring a numerological parity of sorts versus NATO troops.
Yet ground robots come with a host of moral issues, and thanks to the US, the use of drones
generates serious negative public opinion around the world.
Blamed for using drones to indiscriminately kill civilians along with their military targets,
the US military has fought a fierce public opinion war to defend its use of drones.
Russia would face a similar problem if it were to begin the use of combat ground drones,
though it would quickly discover the public backlash to be exponentially magnified.
While American aerial drones strike surgically at individual targets, Russia's ambition to
field a large force of ground robots would place these robots on the front lines of combat,
exposing them to far more civilian casualties than an individual drone loitering far behind
enemy lines and seeking out one specific target.
Ground robots, or their operators, would face the difficulty of executing a ground war on
the front lines against enemy combat forces while also navigating the hordes of civilians
inevitably caught in the crossfire of modern urban combat operations.
While any military faces this quandary, Russia's troubles in this regard are specially significant
because of its desire to field ground robots in numbers significant enough to deter NATO's
traditional armed forces, though historically Russia has not given much concern to the collateral
damage of their military operations.
Currently Russia has several ground robots in development to fulfill a variety of duties,
but the most prominent models are those of the Marker family of large remotely operated
drones.
The size of a small tank, Marker robots can be outfitted with a variety of weapon systems
to fulfill roles from indirect fire support to anti-tank, and can be armed with mortars,
.50 caliber machine guns, and tank-caliber cannons.
In an anti-tank role the Marker is also equipped with up to four anti-tank missiles capable
of defeating up to 800mm of explosive reactive armor, making them lethal even against the
most modern tanks- and all these capabilities come at a fraction of the cost and risk to
human lives as a real tank.
Yet ground robots require a human operator, which can be eliminated, and a secure communications
link which can be jammed or even used to hack the robot itself- as the US found out early
in the war in Afghanistan when Taliban insurgents hacked into the camera feeds of a loitering
Predator drone using off-the-shelf software.
While they remain an appealing option, the vulnerability to hacking and electronic warfare-
especially against a technologically sophisticated enemy- makes ground robots currently a very
risky investment.
In the end ground combat robots are currently a risky proposition.
If used successfully they could help nations like Russia, which find themselves increasingly
outclassed militarily, maintain some level of firepower parity, but if overused can threaten
to become a public opinion nightmare due to the inevitable high level of civilian casualties
they could generate as front line combatants.
Those same casualties if inflicted by human troops can still be troubling, but our deeply-seated
fear of unmanned robots makes us especially sensitive to human deaths at the hands of
a machine.
With Russia's historically poor concern for collateral damage, ground combat robots could
either be a strategic safeguard against NATO's growing military sophistication, or an unmitigated
political crisis- only time will tell.
Do you think we should use more robots in warfare, or less?
Why or why not?
Let us know in the comments!
Also, be sure to check out our other video called Why The US Military Can't Upgrade From
Windows XP?
Thanks for watching, and, as always, don’t forget to like, share, and subscribe.
See you next time!