Drone Tanks

[Darth Raptor]

The discussion about UAVs in N&P made me wonder why other types of vehicles aren't also heavily automated and remote-controlled. To me, it seems like a tank or some other class of armored fighting vehicle would be much simpler to rig so that the crew could operate it from safety. So why not? Russian and Chinese tanks have auto-loading cannons, so that can't be the reason. The way I see it, there are two significant advantages:

Crew Survivability: This is the big one. If you lose a tank, you just lose a tank. No flag-draped coffins, no payouts to the families. An incapacited tank isn't even a total loss. While you can't bring dead crewmen to life, a vehicle can occasionally be salvaged.

Increased Capabilities: A lot of interior space is going towards accomodating the crew in modern AFVs. Free this up and you have more room for bigger engines, more fuel/ammunition and the now mandatory auto loaders.

Versus what I perceive to be the main discouraging factors:

Security: Successful hacking and/or jamming of a robot tank would be disastrous. Not only would infantry on the ground lose their support, but in the worst case they'd have an instant enemy tank. Obviously, control frequencies would be heavily encrypted and safeties would be in place to prevent remote comandeering, but still. A captured tank could potentially be rewired to serve the enemy.

Maintenance: Nowadays, if anything breaks down, the crew can get out and fix it. If something breaks on a robot tank, you're SOL. Your only option is to shut down and wait for recovery. I must admit, this is a very vulnerable and problematic situation (see above).

I don't really think cost is an issue. While the automated and remote-controlled equipment is undoubtedly expensive, so are benefits awarded to the families of deceased soliders. The cost of losing a remote-controlled weapon is considerably less both ethically and politically, even if it costs more to initially produce the unit.

[Penitent Tangent]

A major problem I see is the remote controll can only work from a distance. Now in the air this isnt a major problem but with a tank you have hills trees busnes and many other obstacles interfering with reception.

[Darth Raptor]

A major problem I see is the remote controll can only work from a distance. Now in the air this isnt a major problem but with a tank you have hills trees busnes and many other obstacles interfering with reception.

What about satellites?

[Penitent Tangent]

Satelites are expensive and I don't know how many vehicles you could control. I thought it was a 1 sat per UMV and if so then the combat effectiveness would drop and it would be much more expensive.

[defanatic]

Maintenance: Nowadays, if anything breaks down, the crew can get out and fix it. If something breaks on a robot tank, you're SOL. Your only option is to shut down and wait for recovery. I must admit, this is a very vulnerable and problematic situation (see above).

Couldn't you just leave the thing on so long as the thing that breaks isn't the turret ring, the loader, or the gun? Then it would be about as hard to capture as an immobilised tank.

Also, the military probably examines the value of one human life. What is an acceptable loss? And so on.

[Penitent Tangent]

What do you mean "leave the thing on" leave what on?

[Molyneux]

What do you mean "leave the thing on" leave what on?

I would assume the ability of the tank in question to defend itself while repair crews are dispatched.

Alternatively, if it is a vital weapon system that breaks, the treads would still be functional so the thing could just hightail it back to a friendly garage.

[Azrael]

I can't find the link, but "Futureweapons" profiled a prototype tank that could shoot down small missles/RPGs in mid air with phalanx style machine guns - a move designed to save weight by allowing them to drop armor that would have offered the tank partial protection from these attacks.

If that system works well enough against high speed missles and RPGs, it should be good enough for robotank's would be low-speed hackers.

[Penitent Tangent]

I see. Well at any rate a tank is not a covert weapon it needs to be used en masse. Making an UGV is not a bad idea but it needs to be made smaller and more mobile, like a remote bomb to be truly effective on the battlefield. Even today small UGV's are used for bomb deactivation/detonation, and they've been used in urban combat as well. Ive seen videos where a UGV was sent into a house to talk to a gunman inside, although sadly the gunman just shot the poor robot. But hey you got to crawl before you can walk right.

[RedImperator]

A major problem I see is the remote controll can only work from a distance. Now in the air this isnt a major problem but with a tank you have hills trees busnes and many other obstacles interfering with reception.

What about satellites?

Lightspeed lag could cost you a lot of tanks that way.

[Admiral Valdemar]

For now you just have small, robotic soldiers that are R/C with some basic AI to deal with threats. The idea of an autonomous MBT is interesting, but nothing I know leads to a functional project within any real timeframe right now. You could use satellites, yes, but the time lag, as Red mentions, could factor into it, even if only milliseconds (I have no idea where someone got rhe one satellite, one tank idea. Consider how many things rely on just a bunch of operational military sats from JDAMs to comms).

It would make much smaller, tougher tanks that cost less in resources and human lives. The intelligence, however, is the one thing keeping back all UV projects given we haven't the learning neural net you'd find in even a retard that can be mass produced and implanted into a hulking steel war machine. R/C can have lag or jamming and so on, so a good thinker on the ground is mandatory.

[Zor]

Security: Successful hacking and/or jamming of a robot tank would be disastrous. Not only would infantry on the ground lose their support, but in the worst case they'd have an instant enemy tank. Obviously, control frequencies would be heavily encrypted and safeties would be in place to prevent remote comandeering, but still. A captured tank could potentially be rewired to serve the enemy.

The best way for to avoid this is simply to A, grant an Automated Tanks a greater degree of autonamy B, simply don't program under combat and C, Keep them under guard between combat. Adding Virus protection is also useful.

Zor

[Chris OFarrell]

Not to mention with remote communications is that if your enemy is as high tech as you, what the hell happens if they manage to either kill the transmitter or jam the signal that is controling said tank?

Opppsss...

[Shroom Man 777]

Well, you could install videogame AI software

[Big Phil]

If the tank is remote controlled (like UAV's), the control signal can potentially be jammed, resulting in a useless hunk of expensive steel in the middle of a battlefield.

[Nephtys]

Well, you could install videogame AI software

And then suffer from bad pathfinding when one enemy stands in the middle of a narrow road. They'll then run down their whole team, just like in BF2?

It would seem that lightspeed lag renders most remote control rather undesirable, as well as cost, bandwidth, jamming, etc. It sounds like it's time to start designing Bolos.