US Army considering possibilities of shrinking force by replacing soldiers with robots

The US Army is reportedly studying the prospect of shrinking the size of its forces by replacing human soldiers with combat robots.

Head of the service's Training and Doctrine Command, Gen. Robert Cone said that the postwar, sequestration-era US Army is working on becoming a smaller, more lethal, deployable and agile force.

He said that the army is considering the feasibility of shrinking the size of the brigade combat team from about 4,000 soldiers to 3,000 over the coming years, and replacing the lost soldiers with robots and unmanned platforms, a report in Defense News revealed.

According to the report, the general said that he has a clear guidance to think what if one could robotically perform some of the tasks like maneuverability, in terms of the future of the force, and rethink the size of the nine-man infantry squad.

He said that using unmanned ground vehicles would require less armor and protection and reduce the weight of a brigade combat team.

The Army is already said to be on a path to shrink from 540,000 soldiers to about 490,000 by the end of 2015, and will likely slide further to 420,000 by 2019.

The report said that the possibility of having a robot-force guarding a nation could be a budget move, borne out of the necessity of cutting the personnel costs that eat up almost half of the service's total budget.