U.S. Military’s Tech Primacy Challenged by Private, Foreign Development

U.S. Military’s Tech Primacy Challenged by Private, Foreign Development
An operator controlled robot is run through an obstacle course in a "robot rodeo" at the New York State Preparedness Training Center in Oriskany, NY, June 24, 2015 (U.S. Army National Guard photo by Sgt. Harley Jelis).

The U.S. Navy and Air Force have begun preliminary work on developing a sixth-generation unmanned fighter. In an email interview, Peter Singer, a senior fellow at the New America Foundation and co-author of “Ghost Fleet,” discussed the next generation in U.S. military technology.

WPR: What are some of the already operational next-generation U.S. military technologies that emerged from, or were accelerated by, the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan?

Peter Singer: In some ways you can think of Iraq and Afghanistan as akin to World War I, where a number of science fiction-like technologies made their bones. Back then it was things like the airplane or the tank, today it's weapons like the MQ-9 "Reaper" drone or ground robotics like the Packbot system, made by iRobot, itself a real company whose name is inspired by science fiction.

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