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Will America's Next Soldiers Be Machines?

Foreign Policy magazine visits a U.S. military training exercise that pitted Lt. Isaac McCurdy and his platoon of infantry troops against machines with camera lenses for eyes and sheet metal for skin: Driving on eight screeching wheels and carrying enough firepower on their truck beds to fill a sma...

Foreign Policy magazine visits a U.S. military training exercise that pitted Lt. Isaac McCurdy and his platoon of infantry troops against machines with camera lenses for eyes and sheet metal for skin: Driving on eight screeching wheels and carrying enough firepower on their truck beds to fill a small arms depot, a handful of U.S. Army robots stormed through the battlefield of the fictional city of Ujen. Drones that had been loitering over the battlefield for hours hovered above McCurdy and his team and dropped "bombs" — foam footballs, in this case — right on top of them, a perfectly placed artillery shot. But the U.S. Army is " considering a proposal to add a platoon of robots, the equivalent of 20 to 50 human soldiers, to its armored brigade combat team."

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