Robots

Robot Artillery Gunners: The ARMY Wants Its Big Guns to Be Self-Loading

Key point: Robots are cheaper than soldiers and don't get tired. The question is whether they can successfully replace the men and women who load America's artillery.

Will the U.S. Army’s future artillery be operated by robot gunners?

A new Army research project calls for developing autonomous systems that can perform functions such as loading shells into cannon. It also follows another project that aims to replace forward observers, who call in artillery fire, with robots.

The research solicitation calls for developing “autonomous robotic systems that are capable of semi- and fully autonomous munitions handling inside a weapons system. Its functions would support loading of projectiles into the cannon breech, setting of charges and propellants, and management of excess case materials inside of the weapons system.

A M109A6 Paladin, a self-propelled 155-millimeter howitzer, is operated by a crew of four: a commander, driver, gunner and loader. It is not clear which crewmen could be replaced by robots should this technology come to fruition, though the gunner and loader would seem to be prime candidates. At the same time, given advances in self-driving vehicles, it is conceivable that the driver could be replaced by a robot, which would leave the commander as the human element of the system.