Shape of things to comeAutonomous see-shoot systems drawing interest

Here is another idea for an autonomous system which has been gaining ground: Remotely operated Weapons Systems, or RWS. DID notes that there are already a few of them on the market: CROWS (for Common Remotely Operated Weapon Station) from Barrington, Illinois-based Recon/Optical, Protector from Kongsberg, Norway-based Kongsberg, Thales’s SWARM, BAE’s LEMUR, RAFAEL’s RCWS-30, and Elbit’s ORCWS. All these systems are attached to or mounted on combat vehicles, and they allow an operator inside the vehicle to see screen displays from the RWS sensors, then direct and fire the weapon from inside the vehicle.

Security and military planners in two countries with tense borders, South Korea and Israel, had an insight: Why have the weapon operator so close to the RWS sensors and the weapon systems? In both cases, they concluded that there was no no need for this, and the “remote” in “remotely operated” should live up to its billing.

South Korea is already deploying Samsung’s SGR-A1 gun-cam robot along the DMZ which hugs the South Korean-North Korean border.

The border between Israel and the Gaza Strip will become even hotter in the wake of Hamas’s take over of the territory, but even before this week’s events, Israel had begun to deploy RAFAEL’s Samson Jr. RWS as part of its fencing system there. Samson is mounted in pillboxes and protected by folding shields. The system, which RAFAEL markets under the name Sentry-Tech, uses fiber-optic communications back to an operator station or operations center, and still requires a human to activate and fire the gun. Sources at RAFAEL say that the company is now developing an autonomous “see-shoot” system which will not require human intervention.

Now, it may be true that along the border between Israel and the Gaza Strip they ask fewer questions before they shoot, but still, it is not beyond the realm of possibility to imagine critical infrastructure facilities — nuclear power plants, chemical storage facilities — entertaining the idea of deploying see-shoot systems for perimeter defense. DID’s reporter concludes that “As RWS systems proliferate and birth rates in most advanced countries remain low, it seems inevitable that RWS systems will soon find themselves in static and mobile defense roles, mounted in pillboxes or even on robots in order to provide a first line of perimeter and border security.”