Robot warriors are no longer sci-fi but reality. So what happens when they turn their guns on us?
By Gavin Knight
A few minutes before nine in the morning, and the young soldiers have no idea of the horror that is about to strike them. They are taking part in a massive military training exercise, involving 5,000 troops, and are about to showcase the latest in robotic weapons technology.
The MK5 anti-aircraft system, with two huge 35mm cannons, is essentially a vast robotic weapon, controlled by a computer.
But while it's one thing when your laptop freezes up, it's quite another when it is controlling an auto-loading magazine containing 500 high-explosive rounds.
As the display begins, the South African troops sense quickly that something is terribly wrong. The system appears to jam - but what happens next is truly chilling.
'There was nowhere to hide,' one witness stated in a report. 'The rogue gun began firing wildly, spraying high explosive shells at a rate of 550 a minute, swinging around through 360 degrees like a high-pressure hose.'
One young female officer rushes forward to try to shut down the robotic gun - but it is too late.
'She couldn't, because the computer gremlin had taken over,' the witness later said.
The rounds from the automated gun rip into her and she collapses to the ground. By the time the robot has emptied its magazine, nine soldiers lie dead (including the woman officer).
Another 14 are seriously injured. The report will later blame the bloodbath on a 'software glitch'.
It sounds like a blood-spattered scene from the new blockbuster Terminator Salvation, in which a military computer takes over the world using an army of robot soldiers.
But this bloodbath actually happened. And concern is mounting that it may happen again and again, as a growing number of military robots flood the battlefield.
Indeed, Pentagon insider Peter Singer believes that we are witnessing the dawn of the robot warrior age.
'Just look at the numbers,' he says. 'We went into Iraq in 2003 with zero robots. Now we have 12,000 on the ground. They come in all shapes and sizes, from tiny machines to robots bigger than an 18-wheeler truck.
There are ones that fit on my little finger and ones with the wingspan of a football field.'
The U.S. military is the biggest investor in robot soldiers. Its robot programme, dubbed Future Combat Systems, is budgeted to spend $240 billion over the next 20 years.
But Singer is worried that in the rush to bring out ever more advanced systems, many lethal robots will be rolled out before they are ready.
It is a terrifying prospect. 'Imagine a laptop armed with an M16 machine-gun,' one expert said.
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