“Instead robotics will help human operators to have a better understanding of the battlefield whilst keeping them out of immediate harm’s way.” “I don’t think we’re going to see a future like ‘Terminator’ with humans completely devoid from the decision point,” Puddy says. This trend is likely to continue, possibly even evolving to enable future armies to deploy a ground swarm of drone vehicles in support of conventional MBTs and AFVs, but that is perhaps as far as it is likely to go. In many respects, this represents the logical extension of the growing move towards greater automation which has made familiar items of drones and already brought unmanned turrets and remote control to armoured vehicles. Of course, the obvious way to improve survivability is not to put anyone in danger in the first place, and a number of possible visions of the future battlefield feature unmanned armoured ground vehicles playing their part. Stealth technologies and novel drive systems that reduce engine heat signatures could also enhance survivability without the need to bolt on more metal, by making tomorrow’s tanks and AFVs harder to detect and more difficult targets to hit. Active protection systems that can destroy or mitigate incoming fire, or novel materials that marry high protection with low weight, could remove the need for heavy armour, and so boost vehicle speed and agility. Unsurprisingly, Dstl has plenty of its own ideas about this too. As DARPA’s Ground X-Vehicle Technology programme manager Major Christopher Orlowski recently said, it is now about defying “the ‘more armour equals better protection’ axiom that has constrained armoured ground vehicle design for the past 100 years”. Although adding more weight of armour brings incremental improvements, it hampers speed and mobility, as well as driving up both development and deployment costs. Modern tanks and AFVs enjoy unprecedented levels of protection, but as armour evolves, so too do armour piercing weapons. The nature of that armour could be very different in future.
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