When the Republican Party harps on and on and on about how the United States needs to “cut government spending,” they are of course referring to the government spending money on stupid, useless things like education and health. Money spent on anything related to the military is money well spent, as seen last week when Boston Dynamics was awarded a $32 million contract to develop a prototype robotic pack mule:
Within the next three years, the U.S. military will test the feasibility of sending a quadruped robot out into the field as a trusty pack mule to carry supplies for its troops, wherever they go… The military already uses unmanned aerial vehicles for reconnaissance or to attack enemy targets, and DARPA has sponsored several contests in recent years to determine the feasibility of developing autonomic ground transportation. Automation has been much more difficult to introduce to the infantry, however, because of the need to traverse rough terrain where robots operating on wheels or tracks cannot go.
Maybe you could, I don’t know, use actual mules? Crazy!
Grub Street 
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February 14, 2010 at 9:40 pm
Smileyfax
Well, when we eventually get a fully-robotic armed forces and don’t have to send people off to die anymore, I think that’ll be pretty good.
(Really, though, $32 million is barely a drop in the bucket compared to our total military spending. I remember we spent somewhere near eighty to a hundred billion dollars in Iraq in the first year alone — RoboMule is a fraction of a percent of that).
February 17, 2010 at 1:03 am
grubstreethack
“We already waste fuckloads of money” isn’t really a good counterpoint.
I’m not against the development of technology in general, and I think the robot is pretty cool. But when you have a problem with a cheap, simple and immediate solution, you shouldn’t blow millions and millions of dollars developing something less efficient that won’t be available for years to come simply for technology’s sake. Especially in the middle of a recession, with the nation trillions of dollars in debt.