(Washington, D.C.) While the visible Chinese effort to fast-track new carriers, fighter jets, destroyers and armored artillery vehicles shows no sign of slowing down, a lesser known but equally impactful commensurate initiative can be seen in China’s apparent attempt to match or exceed the U.S. explosion in production and development of surface, air and undersea drones.
China also appears to be accelerating development of land and undersea robots to conduct forward surveillance, deliver supplies, search for targets and even launch attacks.
People’s Liberation Army “Pathbreaker”
A Chinese newspaper report says the People’s Liberation Army “Pathbreaker” robot is a small, 1.2-ton unmanned vehicle able to hit speeds of 30km. It is a tracked vehicle, meaning it is configured for rugged terrain and off – road missions and intended for what the Chinese paper calls “armed reconnaissance, fire assault, patrol, search and destroy operations, as well as strike guidance in complicated terrain at high mobility.”
The technical description of the robot indicates it can be tele-operated or programmed to “automatically follow combat personnel and independently avoid obstacles.”
This seems quite interesting, given that the U.S. Army has been tele-operating or remotely controlling robots for more than 15-years as well as operating with what’s called “leader follower” algorithms wherein an unmanned system mirrors or follows a manned vehicle leading the way. The U.S. Army refined this technology, along with obstacle avoidance, nearly two-decades ago and is now operating robots with extremely advanced levels of autonomous navigation.
While it is certainly possible that Chinese robots are more capable in terms of autonomy than what may have appeared in the newspaper report, however advanced degrees of autonomy or man-machine networking were not mentioned as potential mission options presented by the robots. This leads to the question as to whether China can in fact truly compete with current U.S. Army unmanned systems technology.
At 1.2 tons, the new Chinese “Pathbreaker” robot may or may not be similar in size or form factor to the U.S. Army’s emerging Light Robotic Combat Vehicle, a now-in-development program to introduce a new fleet of highly-capable unmanned systems able to independently operate forward, network with air drones and manned vehicles and, for instance, test an enemy perimeter, move to contact or conduct an actual “breach.”
