Are U.S. Special Forces Quietly Using Armed Robots?
▻https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidhambling/2021/03/09/are-us-special-forces-quietly-using-armed-robots
Meanwhile the U.S. Army has been deploying remote-controlled weapons by the thousand. The Commonly Remotely Operated Weapon Station (CROWS) in an unmanned turret which enables an operator inside a vehicle to find and engage targets with a machinegun from under armor.
It seems Special Forces had an urgent need for an armed robot and bypassed the existing Army projects. An R&D budget document from the Office of the Secretary of Defense reveals that Special Operation Command developed a Lightweight Remote Weapons System (LRWS), a miniature version of the CROWS turret:
“Description: LRWS rapidly developed and evaluated a remote weapon station with significant size weight and power reduction to enable operations on remotely operated small ground vehicles.” (My emphasis).
The LRWS cuts the weight from 350 pounds to just 70, making it small enough to be mounted on vehicles like the Talon. It may be adapted from the commercial Super Lite version of CROWS which also weighs 70 pounds. It includes a daytime zoom camera and thermal imager plus laser range finder. It supports 5.56mm, 7.62mm, and .50 caliber ammunition – either a machinegun or a sniper rifle. Such weapons can be extremely accurate, as shown by the remote assassination of an Iranian nuclear scientist.