Source: The New York Times
John H. Cushman Jr.
Dec 01 2002

In soldier slang, the interval between a gun's recoil and the shell's explosion is known as ''flash-to-bang time.'' In combat, the shorter it is, the better.

With war looming in Iraq, the term has taken on broader significance -- in both the business of war and the business of supplying warriors. Everyone wants shorter flash-to-bang -- from the moment a target is spotted to the moment it is destroyed, from the moment a march is ordered to the moment troops arrive, from the moment of invention to the moment of production and delivery.

That is why, here in the rural hills of Maryland, at a robotics laboratory owned by General Dynamics, the engineers boast that their new driverless vehicles, little armored off-road trucks bulging with lenses and antennae, can maneuver through the woods and fields at a snappy 15 or 20 miles an hour (10 at night).

And that is why General Dynamics, after just two years working on the vehicles, is ready to brief the brass on how robotic vehicles like this could transform combat units. The company says the firepower of a full infantry battalion could be packed into a unit of about one-third the people: 270 soldiers equipped with 140 robots.  [click on the title to link to the article]