Two Iraqi brothers have built a homemade UGV, or unmanned ground vehicle, designed to take on the Islamic State. Armed with rockets and machine guns, the robot will reportedly be used against IS fighters in the upcoming offensive to liberate Mosul. Although the robot claims some fairly advanced capabilities, don't expect much of it during its combat debut.
Dubbed "alrobot," the Iraqi fighting bot is about the size of a golf cart. Footage from Iraq posted by DefenseOne appears to show a green, four-wheeled vehicle with a turret housing a 12.7-millimeter heavy machine gun, probably some variant of the Russian NSV. The turret is also equipped with two "Katyusha rockets," a generic term for Russian artillery rockets. However, the tubes appear too small for known Russian artillery rockets and probably fire RPG-7 anti-tank and anti-personnel rockets.
According to the Daily Mail, alrobot has "teflon armor" and four cameras. The vehicle is driven by remote control from ranges of up to a kilometer away.
Alrobot may have a hard time on the battlefield. The vehicle's armor appears thin and unlikely to survive the rigors of even small arms fire. It's also unclear how Teflon, a synthetic polymer once used to make better penetrating bullets, would be applied as an armor. (There may be some confusion with the terminology; the vehicle may actually be equipped with bulletproof Kevlar.)
Alrobot's weapons do not appear to have any remote targeting system that would allow the operator to deliver machine gun and rocket fire with any kind of accuracy. There's no indication that any of its four cameras actually feed back to the operator, allowing him a vehicle's eye view in real time. They could be just sports action cams like the GoPro. At best, Alrobot would be a platform for providing inaccurate, suppressive fire to pin enemy forces down on the battlefield. At worst the robot's operator could become disoriented and open fire on friendly forces.
Though well-intentioned, Alrobot may prove to be less than the sum of its parts. Iraqi troops individually armed with its weapons would be more accurate—but probably less mobile. As a morale booster, Alrobot is probably a winner. As a weapons system fighting on your side, it might be a good idea to stay far away from it.
Kyle Mizokami is a writer on defense and security issues and has been at Popular Mechanics since 2015. If it involves explosions or projectiles, he's generally in favor of it. Kyle’s articles have appeared at The Daily Beast, U.S. Naval Institute News, The Diplomat, Foreign Policy, Combat Aircraft Monthly, VICE News, and others. He lives in San Francisco.
