Low-cost killer robots may replace soldiers

Adam Gettings is a 25-year old who helped design a toy-like but gun-wielding robot aimed at replacing human soldiers on the battlefield. It is two feet tall, travels ten miles an hour, and spins on a dime. Remote-controlled over an encrypted frequency that jams nearby radios and cellphones, it can blow a ten-inch hole through a steel door with deadly accuracy from 400 meters. Jeffrey O’Brien writes in Fortune that Gettings’s company, Robotex, has teamed up with a wild-eyed Tennessee shotgun designer to rethink the development strategy for military technology. The idea that one can use investor money rather than government research money is not very common in the weapon design field. Military contractors typically get the funding to build, test, and sell new weapons systems from federal agencies. It can take forever. Robotex, based in Palo Alto, is financed by angel investors and went from idea to product in six months. “This is the new defense, Silicon Valley-style,” says Gettings. “You build only what’s necessary, iterate quickly, and keep the price low.” It is low: Between $30,000 to $50,000. A similar bot, the Talon, which was developed by defense contractor Foster-Miller and is being tested in Iraq, costs six times that amount. “Our system does all the same things as the Talon, weighs half as much, and costs a fraction,” says Gettings.

Robotex is the brainchild of Terry Izumi, a filmmaker who worked both at DreamWorks and in Disney’s Imagineering division. In 2005 Izumi decided to build a better war robot, and recruited Nathan Gettings, a former PayPal software engineer and founder of Palantir Technologies, who brought in his brother Adam as well as a fourth (silent) partner who hails from both PayPal and YouTube. They had a prototype in no time, but they needed a weapon, so they contacted Jerry Baber, founder of Military Police Systems, an arms manufacturer and ammunition distributor. Barber was a good choice. His company’s $8,000 Atchisson Assault-12 (AA-12) shotgun was fresh off the assembly line after a dozen years in development. It is made of aircraft-grade stainless steel, never needs lubrication or cleaning, and will not rust. It will also not clog if sand is poured through it. It does not recoil, so it is accurate even when it is firing in automatic mode, which it does at a rate of 300 rounds per minute. “It delivers the lead equivalent of 132 M16s,” says Baber. “When they start firing from every direction, it’s all over.” The AA-12 is also versatile. In addition to firing powerful FRAG-12 ammo — shell containing a whirling miniature grenade — the AA-12 can handle non-lethal Tasers and even bullets which are deadly up to 120 feet but fall harmlessly by 800 feet. Limited-range bullets are important in urban combat situations because once an insurgent gets between the robot and a soldier operating it on the ground, the bot is rendered useless — unless the soldier wants to shoot at himself. Baber has paired the AH and its smaller sibling, the MH, with a remote-control mini-helicopter called the AutoCopter, which holds two AA-12s and can carry the bots into battle. He plans to buy the robots from Robotex and the helicopter from Neural Robotics in Huntsville, Alabama. He is going to arm them, resell the systems, and split the profits. O’Brien writes that it is a classic Silicon Valley tale of a few engineers who do what they are best at, team up with some kindred spirits, and together build a product to take on the establishment.

There is a big question remaining: Beltway bureaucracy and public sentiment. Is the military really ready for low-cost killer robots? s the public?