Robots are cool.While my job only tangentially and occasionally involves robots, I have always enjoyed the opportunities I’ve had to see them in action and to learn about the many new uses the US armed forces are finding for them. A good friend of mine Stateside works on robots, and I’ve been reading Wired For War about the growth of robotics in the military.
One of the contractors who falls under my lead here works with a particular UAS, but because he’s stationed at another FOB, I rarely see him or the system. By contrast, when I was in Iraq, I worked side-by-side with a young lady working with the Hunter UAS. She and I would chat about their mission, and on a few occasions she brought me to the unit.
My favorite part, by far, was hanging out in the control room while they were flying a mission. The camera mounted on the system was beaming back live video of someone they were tracking – and the person on the ground had no idea the UAS was circling above them.
I could have stayed in there for hours, it was so damn cool.
Not all robots are aerial, of course. The Johnny-5-like robots with treads are wheeled out to investigate possible explosives, disarm them, and the like. They come with a wide variety of payloads – primarily sensors and grasping arms – and I have seen their use grow during my time with the Army as well. One could do a lot worse than to steer a career toward robots of either kind – they are undoubtedly the future of the military, in ways both obvious and as yet unknowable.
Today, I took advantage of a long-standing offer of a friend to tour a UAS hangar and control center here on Bagram. I invited Izzy, knowing that he would find it of interest, and in the hopes that he’ll remember to invite me on any field trips he has access to in the future.
While there is much about the system, the unit, and their mission I can’t discuss, suffice it to say that it was as interesting as ever. There happened to be an aircraft landing while we were there, so we saw the feed from the camera: the mountains, the surrounding town, the base. The runway got closer and closer and then we walked out to see the plane land and wheel into the hangar.
On the drive back to our hooch, the conversation hits on television and I make a comment about the poor quality of the AFN channels here. Of the 8 AFN channels I get, 2 of them are in black and white, 1 has no audio, and another has the audio offset from the video enough to make it unwatchable.
Izzy looks at me skeptically. “Mine are fine,” he says. “Have you programmed your television?”
I, of course, have not programmed my television. I fell in on the room and television and (stupidly) trusted that the previous occupant would have done so.When I get to my room, I program the television and let it automatically search for channels, rearranging all of them and correcting the problems I’d been experiencing with AFN since, oh, August.
So as the US military grows increasingly high-tech, I needlessly watched a season of football in black & white.
AFN = Armed Forces Network
UAS = Unmanned Aerial System or Unmanned Aircraft System
FOB = Forward Operating Base
