Robo-recruits to the army's rescue?

Victory goes to the big battalions - does it matter if they're human?

‘How many divisions has the Pope?’ – Joseph Stalin is said to have asked, sneeringly. Vladimir Putin might be asking the same of the British army. That possibility certainly seemed to be on the mind of Patrick Sanders, Chief of the British General Staff this week, when he called for a citizen army and a ‘whole of nation undertaking’ to prepare for possible war in the next few years. He stopped short of the dreaded word 'conscription', but his speech certainly set that hare running in the newspaper columns. All this in the context of a recruitment crisis for the armed forces, including the army, which looks set to undershoot its already modest headcount target.

But what’s that coming over the hill? Is it a robot? Perhaps autonomy could provide a way to offset the shortage of willing humans – in defence as in other parts of the British economy.

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