Russia's ground combat robot marker has completed a two-week test at the Eastern Space Launch Site, Russian media reported. The robot will soon be deployed to the Russian police to guard the launch site and other state-level facilities.
Similarly, at the Annual meeting of the Association of the Us Army in October, US companies showed off the world's first four-legged combat robot dog and a ground-based combat robot carrying a missile cruises. A variety of new ground combat robots have been unveiled, attracting the attention of the world's media. So what are these ground combat robots capable of? What are the star products worth watching in countries around the world? What are the future development trends of ground combat robots?
Russia: coming from behind to overtake in the corner
Hailed as one of Russia's most promising technology projects, The Marker is a very intelligent ground combat robot that made its public debut in October 2019. The "Marker" has recently completed a series of tests, including resident patrol and uav launch test, at Russia's Eastern Space Launch Site.
The Russian Identifier ground combat robot is tested at the Eastern Space Launch Site. The resident patrol moves continuously for 6 hours along the designated 2.5km circular route to carry out environmental monitoring and perception test. The uav launch test was conducted by launching more than 20 rotorcraft UAV sorties by robot, and the preliminary cooperation between test robot and aerial uav. The Russian military is pleased with the test results and hopes to soon incorporate it into a police unit responsible for guarding space launch sites, military complexes and other important facilities.
The Marker, a tracked or wheeled combat vehicle that can carry multiple weapon modules, was developed by the Russian Joint Company for Scientific Production of Robotics, and the project was launched in March 2018. Weighing about 3 tons, the robot can carry two weapon systems simultaneously, including 12.7 mm large-caliber machine gun, 33/35/40 mm caliber grenade launcher, light anti-tank missile, reconnaissance/attack rotorcraft uav, and other high-precision shooting capabilities.
In addition, the robot is equipped with a target detection instrument, thermal sensors, day/night infrared cameras and other equipment, and has human-like cognitive abilities such as environmental information perception, autonomous route planning and target tracking. The robot can respond autonomously according to the target type, adopt electronic suppression and rope net capture to uav, carry out multi-weapon coordinated fire damage to ground targets, carry out propaganda warning and non-lethal weapon attack to intruders, and even use UAV to drive away or attack.
If "Marker" is the rising star of the Russian ground combat robot family, "Uranus" ground combat robot series is the master of the Russian robot family. In the just-concluded Russia-Belarus "Westen-2021" military exercise, The Uranus-9 and Nerekta performed excellently with their respective roles and cooperation, destroying many targets and winning high recognition from the Russian military.
The Russian Uranus-9 has anti-air and anti-tank capabilities and is the most powerful unmanned vehicle in the Russian military. In fact, Russia's ground robots made their mark on the battlefield in Syria. In December 2015, during a siege of the Syrian latakia governorate highland battle, 754.5 6 platform -, 4 M crawler robot code wheel machine and more drone fleet, in Andromeda - D under the coordination of automated command system, obtained in the first game in the world is given priority to with ground combat robot battle victory.
Although Russia's ground combat robot started late, it has developed rapidly in recent years. In particular, it has taken the Syrian battlefield as a training ground for combat robots, accumulated a lot of actual combat experience, and realized overtaking on curves, which has the strength to fight against the American chamber.
United States: long history and steady progress
Compared with Russia's ground-combat robots, the United States' progress in the field has been slow. As early as the late 1990s, the United States took the lead in the development of military robots and formulated the "Future Combat System" program, which aims to develop a variety of ground combat robots to perform reconnaissance, surveillance, target identification and combat missions.
The U.S. military has tested combat robots on the battlefield in Iraq. The Army envisages three classes of ground combat robots: light, medium and heavy. Among them, the light combat robot weighs about 7 tons and is equipped with anti-tank missiles or light low-recoil weapons that can coordinate with uAVs for precision strikes. The medium robots weigh about 15 tons and are equipped with medium-caliber machine guns, anti-tank missiles or large-caliber low-recoil weapons to operate in tandem with battle tanks and infantry fighting vehicles. The heavy robot weighs more than 20 tons and is equipped with a large-caliber gun. It is capable of striking with M1 Abrams Tank or M2 Bradley infantry fighting vehicles.
Over the next two decades, the Army developed multiple ground robots, but with a greater emphasis on their capabilities for reconnaissance, surveillance, cargo transport and mine-clearing. It is only in recent years that the US army has begun to pay attention to combat robots and build ground combat robots in the real sense.
At the Annual meeting of the Association of the Us Army in October, two types of ground combat robots were featured: the world's first armed four-legged combat robot dog and the TRX, a tracked combat robot armed with a missile patrol. The robot dog, launched by Us company Ghost Robot, is not only agile, but also equipped with a 6.5mm rifle and a 30x thermal imager, with an effective range of 1,200 meters.
Since 2020, the company has been working with the U.S. Army to test the robot dog, completing tasks such as base patrol, swamp pathfinding, and bomb detection and defusing. Compared with traditional tracked and wheeled robots, the robot dog is more adaptable to the environment and has a higher passing ability in complex terrain environments such as mountainous areas. TRX, a combat robot developed by General Dynamics Land Systems and part of the ARMY's Future Medium Unmanned Vehicle Program, carries dozens of spring-knife missiles in addition to a four-rotor reconnaissance drone, more like a "miniature land drone carrier."
Trend: AI cluster warfare
Compared with after war baptism of predecessors, the Russian "marker" somewhat inferior in body shape and firepower, but with a higher degree of intelligence level, adopted a number of artificial intelligence technology, the soldiers just released target designation, "marker" can independently determine how close to the target, how to overcome the road obstacles, and independently selected suitable weapon to destroy the ground and air targets.
In October, Russia also conducted cluster warfare tests using markers, consisting of three wheeled and two tracked markers to form a combat cluster. In the test, the robot battle group completed tasks such as target allocation within the group, entering the optimal fire array position, coping with the rapidly changing combat situation autonomously, and exchanging target instructions without human intervention.
According to the plan, Russia will complete the formation of combat robot units by 2025 and integrate them into the Russian army's combat sequence, forming an integrated combat capability of soldiers and robots.
An unmanned vehicle from Russia's Kalashnikov company works with soldiers during a drill. The Army plans to test a suite of ground combat robots called "company scale" in 2022 and says it hopes to use robotics, artificial intelligence and other technologies to make a single infantry platoon 10 times more effective in combat over the next decade.
The U.S. army believes that the cooperative formation between ground combat robots and soldiers and the autonomous adaptive formation between robots will become a new situation of battlefield force formation in the future.
Robot dogs developed by US companies can work with soldiers. In view of the huge advantages of ground combat robots, Britain, Germany, Canada, Japan, South Korea and other countries are also actively developing and preparing to form robot forces. South Korea's Aegis intelligent combat robot has served on guard duty in Iraq, Israel's robots in The Palestinian battlefield have damaged Hamas fighters, and Britain plans to create a robot force by 2030.
The REXMKII unmanned fighting vehicle developed by Israel has better mobility. It can be predicted that ground combat robots are developing towards systematization, intelligence, modularization and universality. In the future, unmanned and manned combat systems will be formed in the battlefield, and unmanned combat corps will also become an important force in the game between military powers.
