Regimental Robot Duty? The British Army and Robots.

 

The British Army is looking to significantly increase the number of robots in its force by 2030. This news, announced last week by the Chief of the Defence Staff highlights the way that the Army wants to change and transform over the next 10 years to take best advantage of new technology.

On paper this seems a fairly punchy timeline, and it also raises a number of fascinating questions about what this means for the Army as a whole. For starters, what does an army where robots make up a quarter of its fighting strength actually look like?

The move to increased automation and use of technology is not new, armed forces around the world have, throughout history, relied on the power of new technology to change how they do business. Navies in particular have benefitted from new technology to drive down head counts, with crews today often being significantly smaller than 40 or 50 years ago.

The challenge for armies though is that while technology can increase manoeuvrability, or lethality, it doesn’t necessarily act as a substitute for ground holding mass that is required in many situations.  Trying to work out therefore how to incorporate technology into a force that, at its heart, needs people to dig into ditches and hold the line is perhaps more complex than it first appears.

Robots offer significant potential advantages in many areas, from carrying logistics, carrying out routine patrols to survey a route or spot for changes (e.g. identify earth disturbance or other changes that could suggest an ambush has been laid),  and otherwise add value. They do not tire, and do not need a rest in the same way as an exhausted soldier does, and when one is destroyed, it lacks the political impact of a soldier being killed.

But there are it seems two sets of challenges to consider. Firstly, how does the Army adapt its processes and procedures to make the best use of this technology? If the aim is to enhance the ability of soldiers to operate, how is this delivered? There needs to be implicit trust in the system of technology that it will work, as intended, each time it is used, or else many of the benefits will be lost.

If troops are not 100% confident that they can set a robot up to do certain roles, without intervention or monitoring locally, then it adds value. The challenge is if the trust is not there, or if people want a human in the loop ‘just to be sure’. All it takes is one failure and so many more checks and balances will be put in the system to monitor it that many of the benefits could be lost as human intervention grows.

Given the risk averseness that permeates much of Defence, often for very good reason, it is hard to imagine a culture growing in the next 10-20 years whereby robots are given autonomy and the trust exists that they will do the job as planned. Rather we are more likely to see plenty of people watching the robots, monitoring them and making sure they work as planned – potentially reducing the opportunity for headcount reductions as new duties emerge as robot supervisors.

This is added to the challenge of what does an army that uses robots look like in terms of order of battle and structure, as well as its laydown on the ground? There is perhaps a dangerous assumption that robots will be bolted into existing units with relatively little fanfare or change – but this seems to assume that they will work without maintenance or support.

Much like the average Army ‘tooth’ unit requires various detachments from other cap badges to support it (e.g. REME, Royal Signals, RLC etc), there will almost certainly need to be a support chain put in place for robots to keep them serviceable and operational.

In the same way that armoured vehicles have an extensive support system in place, with workshops at various levels providing repairs and servicing, it seems inevitable that a similar system will be needed for robot capabilities.

This raises interesting questions around how you provide this – is it contractor delivered, or do you re-role some of the support arms to provide this level of support? More to the point, how do you create a robot servicing and support system to support a deployed formation – if a British Army Brigade is deployed in the field, what level of support will be needed with workshops, servicing and logistical chains to provide all the spare parts needed to keep them operational?

It may be interesting to speculate what a deployed division would look like in 15 years time in terms of footprint and ‘boots on the ground’. Will the need to expand the supporting arms change how it looks, and will there be an ever smaller number of tanks and APC’s but what seems like a bloating of technical workshops and supporting infrastructure?

The Army is likely to look very different in the future, and will need to think carefully about how it communicates its new path. There will be those who see the loss of perceived fighting capability in the traditional metrics (e.g divisional strength or numbers of guns) and rail against what they’d see as the bloating of HQ’s or supporting arms.

There are going to be real challenges in making the case for this change in a way that explains that what emerges is different, but far more lethal than before. It will also be important to explain that HQ’s in future conflicts will be much more about analysing and understanding data, and acting appropriately on it, than they will be about just controlling troops – this may lead to a growth in the tail to facilitate this, which is unlikely to sit well with some commentators.

There is of course a debate to be had about whether a robot force is more or less vulnerable than a human one. While robots may increase capability, and make it easier to carry out some missions, they are also reliant on support and servicing, in a way that humans are not.

What happens, for example, if the workshops for servicing are destroyed, or if the operators are killed? If there is a loss of power, how long can the robots be operated for remotely, or what happens if access to the networks is denied? This is not saying that they are uterly vulnerable, but we should be wary of assuming that just because a robot is capable, that the entire support and supply chain is equally protected and assured. 

There may be the unintended law of consequences here – on paper a roll out of robots may potentially permit significant headcount reductions, or changes to how the Army is structured. But the potential rise in people needed to service and support them is such that any savings are quickly offset by growth in the more technical corps.

This in turn leads us to asking what does this mean for recruitment and training? Is the intention that the robots being provided are so simple that a non-technical person can operate and support them, or do they need technical expertise and lengthy training.

For starters, how much training will be needed – will this add to the training time required for new troops, and what impact will this have on delivering trained soldiers to units? It may sound a small thing, but trying to understand how you can roll out the right level of training and education so that the teeth units which will operate these is important – what impact will this have?

More widely, what does it mean for recruiting in general – will the rise of robots lead to a shift in focus, with the Army competing for people with the technical aptitude and knowledge to operate and maintain then? There is a risk that as robots become more widely used in life, that there will be not only a battle for recruiting talent, but also retaining it – how does the Army offer a credible career to support people with the in-depth skills and experience needed to support a detachment of robots?

There is also an interesting sociological problem too, namely that of the impact that robots have on society and reducing the need for people in many routine jobs. The British Army is likely to face the odd position of trying to reduce headcount and focus on robots, which could lead to a perception that it no longer needs or wants the unskilled and uneducated individuals that have for so long formed the raw talent that make up the recruiting pool.

The socio-economic impact of the Army wanting to focus on people with the skills and aptitude to work with the robots, and being seen to abandon its recruiting base, could come as a kick in the teeth to people whose local areas and communities are those most likely to be negatively impacted by robots. They will be among the first to see jobs lost in the name of automation, saving money on low-skilled jobs – if the Army is no longer seen as the way to escape, what hope is there for their young?

Right now recruitment is going extremely well – the Army recruitment campaigns of the last few years have been extremely successful, and very well pitched. The flow of recruits, often of a very high calibre continues to impress, and great strides are being made to get people into units.

But, if the perception grew that the Army was increasingly technical robot focused force, would this damage recruitment into the infantry and other areas, as people felt it wasn’t’ for them? Arguably a lot of work will need to be done to carefully calibrate the recruiting pitch for the next 10years – if people feel the Army will want fewer, more technical soldiers (even if this isn’t true), then it will be much harder to persuade them that there is still the need for a soldier with a steel bayonet as the ultimate front line.

Overall the next few years potentially herald very exciting times for the British Army. The arrival of new technology may act as a huge game changer for how it operates, and is structured. But the challenge will be to do this in what can, politely, be described as a ‘challenging’ resource environment.

The risk at the moment is that with the likelihood of delay to the Integrated Review, the spending settlement that is reached may prevent long term investment in the technology and reforms needed to bring this about. But it would also need short term savings made that could have a very damaging impact on the near term ability to deploy and operate in order to make the budget balance out.

This needs to be coupled with the risk that the technology may be slower to materialise, or take longer to produce than is intended. Without wishing to sound like its taking a cheap shot, but the last few years have not been a great advert for the speed of procurement in the Army, with lots of decisions on major programmes deferred or delayed, and the growing spectre of block obsolescence of much of the vehicle fleet seems likely.

The worry must be that a similar combination of rapidly changing aspirations, requirements and funding problems means that the programmes suffer delay in being introduced to service. If this is done against the backdrop of having to ‘sunset’ some capabilities to pay for this, then the risk is the Army finds itself without the new, but also lacking the old, and then in the worst of both worlds. It cannot afford for there to be any delay in this.

It is likely that the Army of 20 years time will be significantly different to the Army of today, which is, arguably, little changed from the Army of 20 years ago.  This will be a voyage requiring significant challenges, and potentially fundamentally reshaping the structure and nature of the Army for decades to come.

There will be opposition to some of the politically difficult choices ahead, but the potential gains are significant too. The Army that emerges will, if it gets right, not only be able to operate as a peer of the US Army and play a leading role in NATO, but also be able to go toe for toe with peer rivals in a way that uses technology to negate the need for mass. This is a potentially significant prize worth investing time, resource and effort in.

If nothing else is gained though, at least in future a robot pilot is likely to land CGS in the right field in Salisbury Plain!