WASHINGTON, Feb. 16 (UPI) -- The United States will have robotic soldiers that can see, think and react ready for the battlefield within 10 years, the New York Times said Wednesday.
At a cost of $127 billion, the project known as Future Combat Systems is the military's largest-ever contract expenditure, and is driving up the Defense Department budget by almost 20 percent through 2010.
Already, several hundred robots are digging up roadside bombs in Iraq, scouring caves in Afghanistan and serving as armed sentries at weapons depots.
By April, an armed version of the bomb-disposal robot will be deployed in Baghdad, capable of firing 1,000 rounds a minute. Controlled by a soldier with a laptop, the robot will be the first thinking machine of its kind to take up a front-line infantry position, ready to kill enemies.
"The real world is not Hollywood," said Rodney Brooks, director of the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at M.I.T. and a co-founder of the iRobot Corporation. "Right now we have the first few robots that are actually useful to the military."
