I Robot…Not

James Carafano / January 24, 2010

It seems every time you pick up a newspaper, the headline proclaims another military program cancelled. First, it was the F-22. Then it was missile defense. The list goes on and on. The reason given seems always the same too…“We don’t need that.” This mantra gets repeated so often, one suspects one of two truisms must be at the root of it. Perhaps, everyone in the Pentagon before Obama showed up was an idiot and didn’t know what was really needed—or, all these cuts are a budget driven exercise, gutting the military modernization program (the White House’s chief strategy for tamping down defense spending).

The latest victim is the most advanced robotics program ever attempted by the Army. “Remember that unmanned, pack-mule vehicle the Army was building to carry rucksacks, water, ammo and other heavy gear for combat troops?” asks a recent article in the Army Times, “Forget about seeing it on a battlefield near you. The Multifunction Utility Logistics Equipment vehicle, known as the MULE, was among the unmanned toys that survived from the now-defunct Future Combat Systems program.” No longer. “The Army killed the MULE-Transport and MULE-Countermine vehicles in December because the two concepts were no longer needed in the new Brigade Combat Team Modernization structure, said Paul Mehney, spokesman for Program Executive Office Integration.”

Oh really? (more…)