Russia’s newest line of robotic soldiers took part in their first wargames recently. They may look suspiciously like Wall-E, but Russia’s Platform-M isn’t nearly as benevolent.
The robotic combat platform has been developed the Progress Scientific Research Technological Institute of Izhevsk, which describes it as such:
Platform-M is a universal combat platform. It is used for gathering intelligence, for discovering and eliminating stationary and mobile targets, for firepower support, for patrolling and for guarding important sites. The unit’s weapons can be guided, it can carry out supportive tasks and it can destroy targets in automatic or semiautomatic control systems; it is supplied with optical-electronic and radio reconnaissance locators.
The Platform-M carries a Khalishnakov rifle — of course — as well as four grenade launchers. That seems like a lot of firepower to hand over to a semi-autonomous robot.
Still, the war games near Kaliningrad showed that the Platform-M is capable of conducting armed combat exercises alongside human soldiers without killing everyone in sight. The Platform-M is reportedly already in mass-production, although it will not make it to active duty until at least 2018. [RBTH – Soviet Outpost]