US Army Looking to Cut 25% of Soldiers in Combat Brigades by Potentially Using Robots

Seems that the Army’s idea to cut about 1,000 soldiers out of each Brigade Combat Team and replace them with unmanned systems and robots has now been floated by two different 4-star Generals in the Army.

Last week, TRADOC Gen. Robert Cone revealed that the Army is mulling the feasibility of shrinking the size of the brigade combat team from about 4,000 soldiers to 3,000 in the coming years, and replacing the lost soldiers with robots and unmanned platforms.

“I’ve got clear guidance to think about what if you could robotically perform some of the tasks in terms of maneuverability, in terms of the future of the force,” he said, adding that he also has “clear guidance to rethink” the size of the nine-man infantry squad.

In an interview published in the Army Times on Jan.20, the Army’s Vice Chief of Staff Gen John Campbell said essentially the same thing, telling the Times that “our brigades will go to about a 4,500-man brigade, and what we’re looking to in the future is having the same capability or even stronger, but with only 3,000.”

It’s pretty clear that this is very much a work in progress, or in Pentagonese, “predecisional” since neither Cone nor Campbell was able to really articulate what this might mean.

“If we downsize a brigade, how can we keep the same types of brigades out there but be smaller?” the vice chief asked. “With technology, how can we do that? Robotics, how can that help us? Do we need a nine-person vehicle, or can we go to six-person? Do we use avatars?”

link.

To start with, logistics trucks ought to be TerraMaxed.