The annals of warfare are replete with technological innovations that brought lasting change, altering the balance of geopolitical power: the introduction of submarines and machine guns during the U.S. Civil War, aircraft and chemical weapons in World War I, and radar and the atomic bomb in World War II. But the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan show evidence of what could well be the most profound change in military history.

For the first time since the earliest antagonists went at each other with sticks and stones, the U.S. military is on the verge of what might be called no-fear warfare — with human combatants replaced by mechanical robots manipulated by people thousands of miles distant. Military robots already are being designed and deployed to perform an array of disagreeable tasks, including forward reconnaissance, stopping and questioning suspicious individuals, and launching artillery. They are being built to navigate rough, hostile terrain, to creep along the ground, patrol waters and skies, and climb up the sides of buildings — all without drawing salaries or objecting to multiple tours of duty.

But what makes military robots profoundly different from human soldiers is that they are incapable of fear — the one battlefield constant since the dawn of history, implicit in the writings of every military theorist since Sun Tzu. Strange though it may sound, within a decade or so, the world’s most advanced military could largely eliminate fear as an accompaniment to doing battle — for individual combatants as well as for generals and political leaders charged with deciding how and where to commit their forces.

ABSENCE OF FEELINGS

As in a work of science fiction, a robotic, no-fear military will have no concern for self-preservation; no feelings about the enemy or toward fellow robotic soldiers; no impulse to turn and run; and no motivation other than a set of programmed instructions. An army of robots could be the ideal way to combat fanatical insurgents, including suicide bombers, and it could be a force multiplier against a more conventional enemy. The best-equipped, most physically fit jet pilot, for example, can withstand an acceleration force of about nine Gs — that is, nine times the force of gravity at sea level. With no human aboard, an advanced jet fighter could easily withstand 16 Gs, giving it unprecedented ability to turn, dive and climb.

Robots under development have the potential not just to fire upon an enemy, but also to defuse mines and roadside bombs. Shallow sea beds have long posed a problem for sonar and radar because rocks, reefs and other jagged formations can make it difficult for them to pick out an enemy mine or submarine. For tiny submersible robots crawling along the ocean bottom, such tasks might be routine.

To date, there has been little discussion of the far-reaching cultural and political implications of a robotic military. The advent of robotic warfare cannot help but affect the basic character, structure and practices of the armed forces. Indeed, the U.S. military’s very soul could be at stake. What kinds of people might be suited and attracted to military life in this brave new world of no-fear combat? What kind of leadership and training will be needed, and, on a more philosophical level, what’s to become of such timeless military values as courage, valor, honor and self-sacrifice? Would these concepts still have meaning in a military in which only the enemy’s lives would be at risk?

These are but a few of the questions and concerns that surround the prospect of a robotic military. What will happen when increasingly sophisticated robotic technologies allow the U.S. armed forces to wage war without putting its human soldiers in harm’s way? And, most frighteningly, what if some foreign military power backed by superior engineering talent manages to assemble an advanced robotic force before the U.S. does?

The era of no-fear warfare lies just over the horizon. The technology is progressing rapidly, and its appeal is apt to prove irresistible. Within one to two decades, it is likely that our military front line will be dominated by an array of high-tech gizmos, with increasing ability to move and act autonomously. When that happens, on whom will we pin medals — and whom will we hold accountable when something goes wrong?

The U.S. already has deployed a few thousand robots, chiefly UAVs, in Iraq and Afghanistan, and many more ingenious devices are on the way. By 2010, a third of all U.S. deep-strike aircraft likely will be unmanned and, by 2015, Congress insists that a third of U.S. ground combat vehicles be unmanned, as well. When fully developed, these robots will be ideal for what militarists call “3-D work” — tasks that are dirty, dull and dangerous, which describes a great deal of what military forces do. Some robots will be as large as trucks or planes, others as small as dust mites, which may invite troubling comparison with chemical and biological warfare. South Korea already is considering deployment of a fully armed, Samsung-built sentry robot. Because the SGR-A1 robots are unaffected by severe weather and fatigue, Samsung says, “the perfect guarding operation is guaranteed.” You can see the SGR-A1 in action on YouTube (http://www.youtube .com). Search for “Samsung robotic sentry.”

Will future robots think and act of their own accord as they do in movies such as “Star Wars” and “The Terminator”? At the moment, most military robots are in a first evolutionary phase in which, like puppets, they are under direct human control — although some have semi-autonomous traits. It is almost inevitable, however, that military robots will gain increasing autonomy — first, because advances in artificial intelligence will permit it; second, because the sheer number of robots likely to be deployed will challenge the ability of human controllers to remain hands-on; and third, because any network-centric approach to controlling robotic forces eventually could invite enemy hacking.

As with any new technology, it also is predictable that accidents will occur and innocent people will be harmed before the advent of no-fear warfare. When that happens, military and civilian authorities, not to mention tort lawyers, will face the challenging prospect of assigning blame for any deaths or injuries. Such developments will not, of course, be confined to the armed forces. Writing in Scientific American in December 2006, no less a seer than Bill Gates predicted that robots were destined to become a “nearly ubiquitous part of our day-to-day lives.”

Gates’ article compares the present-day state of the robotics industry to that of the personal computer 30 years ago. Indeed, robots offer vast potential for increasing convenience and creating wealth. Few would object to robots taking on dangerous, repetitive tasks, helping the infirm get in and out of bed or even walking the dog on a rainy day. But there’s a hitch where the military is concerned, and it’s a big one: The introduction of increasingly effective, increasingly autonomous military robots may threaten the values and esprit de corps that always have bound together troops and for which our fighting forces are justly celebrated. Can military culture and the military’s basic operating model survive the advent of no-fear warfare? Possibly, but not without substantial changes.

Some early signs of strain already are visible. For example, many of the pilots who control UAVs in Iraq and Afghanistan are stationed in the U.S., where they are safe from harm and routinely go home at night to their families. Nonetheless, some of these desk-bound pilots have claimed to suffer post-traumatic stress disorder as a result of what they’ve witnessed on their computer monitors; some are even clamoring to receive combat decorations. One veteran who recently returned from Iraq says such claims are stirring active resentment among the “boots on the ground” who must endure daily artillery fire and the risk of attack by improvised explosive devices.

BAND OF BROTHERS?

At the heart of our basic military model is a set of assumptions known to every general, every drill sergeant and every grunt who survives boot camp. Fanatics and psychopaths aside, few people take naturally to armed conflict. In other circumstances, faced with the terrifying prospect of face-to-face combat, many people would simply turn and run. Armies throughout history have learned to counter this most human of instincts by carefully instilling their troops with a close band-of-brothers camaraderie. Drill sergeants are famously adept at molding recruits into an effective fighting force, not by preaching righteous abstractions at them but by instilling a sense of mission and fostering strong ties of loyalty among fellow troops. By the same token, every good general and every good platoon leader shares the same basic goals upon entering battle: to subdue the enemy forces with minimal loss of their own troops’ lives.

With robots replacing people in battle, a fundamental shift in needs and priorities will occur. Rather than technology supporting human combatants, it will be the other way around. The military will need more people with the talent and experience to devise and maintain robotic forces and many fewer — or perhaps none at all — who exhibit the classic traits of a warrior. In other words, the ideal military recruit may come to resemble Bill Gates more than Audie Murphy or Rambo. Or if not Gates, how about a 12-year-old Doritos-munching couch potato who happens to be an ace at playing video games?

In truth, there may be little real difference in the skills required to master a computer game and those required to fly a UAV. Every middle-class parent knows that children born in the computer age far exceed their elders when it comes to electronic gamesmanship. The arrival of military robots, therefore, coincides with a generation of young people whose thumbs and fingers can manipulate the controller of an Xbox or PlayStation with amazing dexterity and confidence.

Moreover, it is often observed that those born in the age of computers, video games and BlackBerries have an unusual facility for multitasking — possibly at the expense of acquiring better face-to-face interpersonal skills and deeper analytical capacity. What could be more adaptive for an age of video-controlled military hardware?

A robotic military model has important implications for recruitment and staffing. When the role of military technology is mainly to support human warriors, it shares many operational characteristics with the industrial manufacturing model: Mass-production of technology allows the military to maintain an effective fighting force despite an ever-changing roster of human combatants. When guns displaced the bow and arrow in the 13th century, for example, it was not because they more accurate or deadly. Armies first took up guns because they were easier to produce than bows and arrows and because a soldier could be trained to fire one in about half an hour, whereas a good archer might take years to master his weapon.

But consider the nature of a military in which people’s primary role is to support the technology, not the other way around. Such a military would demand increasing levels of technical expertise, rendering the idea of a two- or three-year tour of service unthinkable. Once trained, good military roboticists would be much too valuable to let go.

One option might be outsourcing. The military always has relied on the private sector for specialized technology — for designing and building its fighter jets, for example. Because robotic warfare will require intense technological expertise, might we eventually outsource combat operations to companies such as Microsoft, Google or Electronic Arts?

More frightening to contemplate is the possibility that our military’s most iconic and enduring figure — the drill sergeant — might become extinct. After all, with human soldiers no longer needing to engage in armed combat, why prepare them for it? Just as muscles tend to atrophy when they go unused, it is conceivable that after a long, successful period of a robotically oriented military, our knowledge of how to organize, train and motivate people for combat could evaporate.

ETHICS AND PRAGMATISM

The ethical implications are, of course, profound. The automaton that acquires human consciousness and then turns hostile toward humanity has been a staple of popular entertainment since Czech playwright Karel Capek coined the word robot in his 1921 drama, “R.U.R.” (Rossum’s Universal Robots). In 1942, Isaac Asimov, the prolific science-fiction author, introduced three rules that builders of all robots in his stories would have to obey:

1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.

2. A robot must obey orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.

3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

As an example of life imitating art, South Korea’s Ministry of Commerce, Industry and Energy says it might draw upon Asimov’s rules in issuing formal ethics rules for the manufacture of non-military robots, the BBC reported in March 2007.

But rules can be broken. Some roboticists say we are only 10 to 15 years away from having robots that can think and learn like humans. And as robots acquire self-learning mechanisms, said Gianmarco Veruggio of Genoa’s Institute of Intelligent Systems for Automation, their behavior will become impossible to fully predict. Noel Sharkey, a professor of artificial intelligence and robotics at the University of Sheffield, asserts that robots’ autonomy will make them different than other weapons systems.

“We are going to give decisions on human fatality to machines that are not bright enough to be called stupid,” he said.

It is also worth contemplating the effect a no-fear robotic army would likely have upon an enemy. Any human foe faced with the impossibility of confronting and defeating any live soldiers on the field — after all, what glory or satisfaction would there be in killing a robot? — might be all the more tempted to adopt terrorist tactics that strike directly at civilians. In the long run, therefore, a no-fear military has the potential to simply transfer fear from the battlefield to society at large.

These considerations notwithstanding, the U.S. military has little choice but to continue its aggressive pursuit of robot technology — because of its potential to spare the lives of U.S. soldiers, because of the enormous advantages that will naturally accrue to the first-mover in robot technology, and because allowing any other military power to get there first would be unacceptable.

And as with the atomic bomb, the introduction of robotic, no-fear warfare is all but certain to spur an intense global arms race. As that happens, the greatest threat to continued U.S. military leadership would come not from insurgent extremists but more likely from any nation with the commitment and discipline to educate and train a superior work force of robotics scientists and engineers. å

Mark Herman leads Booz Allen Hamilton’s modeling, simulation, war-gaming and analysis work. Art Fritzson leads Booz Allen Hamilton’s defense information technology business with a focus on emerging technologies.