LONDON: In 1941 science fiction writer Isaac Asimov set the ground rules for robots when he penned the commandment: “A robot may not injure a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.”

Sixty years on, humankind is well on the way to breaking that law.

Military forces worldwide are rewriting the rules of engagement to take into account machines that can search, recognize and destroy an enemy — without a human hand guiding it.

“We are at the dawn of the age of robotic warfare,” says Clifford Beal, editor of Jane’s Defence Weekly, published by the London-based Jane’s Information Group.

“We’re already entering the age of the 24-hour battle,” he said, referring to night vision, spy satellites and other technologies that make combat a round-the-clock affair. “Robots will actually take that farther — a robot doesn’t get hungry, doesn’t get tired and can see in the dark ... there won’t be any constraints that hinder human beings.”

One needs to look no further than Afghanistan to see the beginnings of robotic warfare.

Remote-control aircraft flew over Afghan skies from late September, after Osama bin Laden and his Afghan-based Al Qaeda network became the chief suspects of the 11 September terrorist attacks on the United States.

The US military relied on its Predator and Global Hawk unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) for reconnaissance and identifying targets for the Afghan campaign.

“We’re really developing some incredible technological ability on these unmanned vehicles,” Beal says. “The next step is weaponizing them.”

In fact, that has already happened — Predators were carrying armour-piercing Hellfire missiles in Afghanistan. “It’s the first use of an unmanned aerial vehicle carrying air-to-surface missiles, ever,” Beal says.

Unmanned aircraft have appeal: they’re cheaper than manned warplanes and countries don’t risk losing pilots on dangerous missions.

While the technology is new, the concept of recruiting automated machines for combat is an old idea. Just before the end of the Second World War, the Germans were developing an explosive-packed remote-controlled bomber aeroplane to deliver a devastating blow to British targets.

Twenty years later, in Vietnam, the US military strapped a bomb onto a UAV called the Firebee in an experiment with limited success.

In 1973, Israel began dabbling in remote-control ‘drones’ to confuse enemy radar. By the 1980s these UAVs were used in southern Lebanon and along the Israel-Syria border.

Today some 50 US companies, research institutions and government agencies are developing more than 150 UAV designs. The US is the world leader in these automatic systems, distantly followed by Israel, Britain, France and Germany, and to a much lesser extent Russia and China.

It may be only a matter of time when man’s role is diminished. “The weakest link in the chain will be the man-in-the- loop,” Beal says.

This too is already happening. Israel’s latest piece of military hardware, the Harpy — a ‘fire-and-forget’ assault UAV that detects, attacks and destroys radar emitters and missile sites — is already sold abroad.

Rear Admiral Richard Cobbold, director of Britain’s Royal United Services Institute for Defence Studies, says. “The way war is going, the human being is still going to be required because the nature of conflict is such that human contact — particularly at lower levels — is going to remain a key component,” he said.

“Robots are not going to take over the world for a very long time,” Cobbold says, “but the reliability of robots and artificial intelligence will complement the contributions of human judgment in the future.” —Dawn/Gemini News Service.