China’s military shows off rifle-toting robot dogs

CNN —

It looks like something out of the dystopian show “Black Mirror,” but it’s just the latest adaptation of robotics for the modern battlefield.

During recent military drills with Cambodia, China’s military showed off a robot dog with an automatic rifle mounted on its back, essentially turning man’s best (electronic) friend into a killing machine.

“It can serve as a new member in our urban combat operations, replacing our (human) members to conduct reconnaissance and identify (the) enemy and strike the target,” a soldier identified as Chen Wei says in a video from state broadcaster CCTV.

The two-minute video made during the China-Cambodia “Golden Dragon 2024” exercise also shows the robot dog walking, hopping, lying down and moving backwards under the control of a remote operator.

In one drill, the rifle-firing robot leads an infantry unit into a simulated building.

The latter part of the video also shows an automatic rifle mounted under a six-rotor aerial drone, illustrating what the video says is China’s “variety of intelligent unmanned equipment.”

Military use of robot dogs – and of course small aerial drones – is nothing new. A CCTV video from last year also highlighted China’s rifle-armed electronic canines in a joint exercise involving the Chinese, Cambodian, Lao, Malaysian, Thai and Vietnamese militaries held in China last November.

China's military displayed a machine gun equipped robot battle «dog» during joint drills with Cambodia

In 2020, the US Air Force demonstrated how it used robotic dogs as one link in its Advanced Battle Management System (ABMS), which uses artificial intelligence and rapid data analytics to detect and counter threats to US military assets.

And since the Russian invasion of