It seems the biggest loss when considering a tank assault is the personnel. Assuming one can get over the hurdles of production such that one doesn’t run out of tanks to deploy, whether they get blown up or not, however risky the strategies &etc, remotely-controlled robot tanks seem like the sensible choice.
Have they already been developed? If not, is there a reason why they aren’t practical?
Well, there are unmanned aerial drones, so I’m not sure why you’d want something trudging along on ground level if there are no boots on the ground anyway. Also, they’re a long, long way from Terminator Hunter-Killers and more like a remote-controlled glider with rockets, but quite effective nonetheless.
Do some reading on the DARPA Grand Challenge for autonomous vehicles. Basically, it’s all we can do right now to keep robot cars on the road at a sedate pace. Throw in the fog of war and it’s just going to be a mess.
Now if you’re really talking about remote-controlled drones – well, it’s not a * bad * idea, but tanks really do need crew. Someone has to load the shells and perform maintenance. Drones would be sensitive to jamming technology as well.
Not to mention that your fundamental assumption may be flawed – when tanks cost somewhere between 2 and 6 million dollars, your emphasis is going to be on keeping them intact rather than sending in wave after suicidal wave to accomplish a mission. Not to mention the logistics of supply for your hypothetical infinite waves of robot tanks are pretty much insupportable. You still have to get the tanks to the theater, supply them with fuel and ammo and keep them maintained.
What the OP’s getting at is that the training and experience of veteran crews of almost any military object (tank, plane, ship, etc…) is what really makes them militarily valuable.
The question is a natural outgrowth of that thinking, especially when combined with the success of remotely controlled drones (Predator, etc…) and the amount of effort and money that’s been put into crew survivability in modern-day tanks like the M1 Abrams, LeClerc, Leopard II, etc…
I think part of the reason we don’t see drone tanks yet, is because the radio control links and pilot infrastructure can handle a few stealthy drones who are essentially sneaking up on people.
We’re not up to having entirely remote controlled tank battalions yet; you’d still have to have a pretty robust maintenance and supply tail, run by humans, and you’d still have to have about 1/4 the number of people for driving the things.
What I envision is something like a land-based Predator- something electrically powered and silent, and about the size of a 4-wheeler or small car, that could be a unmanned, low-profile scout car with advanced sensors (IR, mm-wave radar, optical, etc…) Combine a fleet of those with GPS tracking, and it might be a LOT easier to keep tabs on your enemies’ positions and strengths than with more conventional reconnaissance.
I don’t know about that… Being airborne has a lot of advantages for recon. We still have guys on the ground in Jeeps (or Humvees, I guess, nowadays), but the advantage they bring to the table is in things like being able to get out of the vehicle and going into a building, or stopping and asking questions of locals, which a drone couldn’t do. I’m not really seeing anything a ground-vehicle scout drone could do that a flying scout drone can’t.
Fire on enemy personnel at close range?
What about building aqueducts?
You might want to take a look at iRobot’s Packbot and SUGV programs for an idea of what the army is currently actually using in the field (on the ground, as opposed to airborne drones).
These are not anything like tanks, but if you are wondering what current capabilities for remotely controlled vehicles actually in the field are, this is one place to start.
Their website (iRobot’s) also includes info on programs that are still only in development. (Go to the government/industrial portion of the website; obviously, I am not talking about the Roombas.)
The Packbot has been deployed for several years now. The SUGV is either on the verge of being adopted or has already started to be deployed.
I believe they use other similar “robots” from other manufacturers, but their names/types elude me right now.
It has been a while since I closely followed developments in this area, so I can’t really give you any more info than that.
There are various miniature tank-like vehicles that are made for remote disarming or removal of bombs. See examples here (German army) or here (American model).
These are mainly remotely-controlled disarmament vehicles – they are often armored like a tank, but don’t actually have offensive weapons like guns on them.
The Los Angeles police department has a much bigger one – about a tow-truck size, with a big telescoping arm that can actually pick up a car suspected of containing a car bomb. Then the vehicle can be remotely driven away (at a speedy 6 mi/hr) hauling the suspected car bomb away from populated locations to a safe area for disposal. But this vehicle doesn’t look to be armored much at all; if just looks like a tow truck with a tree-trimmers grabbing arm on it – no resemblance to a tank at all.
I present to you: the Guardium.
OK, so its not quite a tank, but it’s pretty big (the chassis comes from a dune buggy), has some armor, and can be equipped with light weapons. It’s mostly used for patrol, recon and rapid response.
Have there have been tanks fitted with remote control equipment so they can be used as targets?
And yet, with recon airplanes, we still have scout cars and afvs.
I think part of the attraction would be that the R/C scout car would probably be integral to the battalion, while scout drones beyond a certain piddling size would be USAF assets that they’d have to negotiate for, and there would be a lack of control and immediacy to its info.
Look at it this way- if the battalion commander can have his S2 run the robo-scout out to look at the enemy positions without drawing fire (and potentially look over his shoulder while he’s doing it), it’s a whole lot more immediate than having to call in a recon mission and wait for the USAF to relay the information back.
With people inside them who can do things that robots (currently) can’t.
And the other bit you mention is an artifact of how our military is organized, not anything related to the technology itself. If it’s really a problem, then you could just have a few scout drones under Army control, instead of Air Force.
There are plenty of UAVs under Army control. Not to mention that there are battalion and even company level UAV assets. So even a company commander can send out his own UAV to recon an area if he wants.
… in theory anyway. All it’s going to do is putter around for less than five minutes before it crashes and then I have stop what I’m doing to get suited up and go retrieve the stupid thing!
But the ones at battalion and brigade level are pretty reliable.
Here ya go. Test for of the BILL2 ATGW. Includes on-board ammunition fire.
Close enough. If it is a remotely controlled armored+armed car or better I’ll call it a robot tank for the purposes of this thread. Thanks 
That looks like robot ammo :eek: What is the guidance system on that thing?
Yes, they build aqueducts…but apart from that, what did they do for us?
Modern medicine and democracy?
As far as getting recon from the Air Force, as others mentioned, the Army has their own UAV program (supposedly, they even let enlistedmen fly their UAVs, but we’ve been told in the Air Force that this is surely an Urban Legend ;)).
I have also seen articles recently about both robotic pack mules (basically a robot that would carry extra ammo and gear so the soldiers don’t have to when patrolling dismounted) and what looks like a sort of mini scout tank drone. The latter I saw in a magazine (Popular Mechanics or something like that) as a prototype, but it was pretty nifty.
The thing looks like a smallish tank, pretty quick on its feet, but relatively light armor plating (the idea is that it needs less armor with no crew compartment to protect). Also, at least on the prototype, the only weapons were a remote-controlled Ma Deuce gun, the idea that this guy could scoot ahead of convoys to ferret out potential ambushes and call in artillery or air support on anything bigger than it… I don’t see why you couldn’t put a few missile launchers on one of those things as well for a more close-in-and-personal how-do-ya-do, ala the Bradley and Linebacker vehicles.
Of course, both of these vehicles would tend to operate in relatively close coordination with a larger ground unit, either carrying gear for troops immediately nearby, or patrolling ahead of another unit. This could help alleviate some of the distance problem. Otherwise, they could be controlled remotely via air or satellite relay.
The BILL 2 is wire guided. The missile uncoils a wire as it travels, allowing the operator to guide the missile to the target. It can bob about a bit as it orients itself after launch.
