‘Game change’: S. Korea to create robots resembling humans & animals for future wars

In news that may stir fears of a Robocalypse among the faint-hearted, South Korea’s military unveiled plans to design robots that would mimic animals and humans. The ‘biorobots’ could be deployed in five years.

South Korea’s Defense Acquisition Program Administration (DAPA) has published a new document offering a glimpse into the country’s grandiose plans to put several kinds of sophisticated biometric robots into military service within the next several years, Yonhap reported.

The DAPA said that it would galvanize efforts to design robots that would resemble humans and other living creatures, such as insects, birds, snakes, and possibly other marine life. For the moment, priority has been placed on developing human and insects-like robots. If the effort pays off, the know-how might be brought into the South Korean Army as early as 2024.

The agency called the proposed biometric robots “a game change in future warfare” that will set the direction for the future of the defense industry. 

Once “enrolled” in the army, humanoid and animaloid robots would be used for a variety of tasks, including rescue and search missions and reconnaissance.

That robots will one day replace humans on the battlefield or will make up the majority of the combat troops is no longer an idea from the world of science fiction, but a firm conviction of some security experts. 

In 2016, the head of Russia’s military hi-tech body – analogous to the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) in the US – said the notion of people fighting battles on the ground will soon be obsolete.

“Future warfare will involve operators and machines, not soldiers shooting at each other on the battlefield,” Andrey Grigoriev, head of the Advanced Research Foundation (ARF), said. 

The push for replacing humans with advanced killer robots has stoked fears of imminent destruction of humanity. Concerns were raised by the late Stephen Hawking, Elon Musk, and other tech leaders calling on governments to halt the development of potentially lethal autonomous weapons.

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