PARIS \u2014 The French army is looking for new robots to provide increased mass and endurance on the future battlefield, but is still working out the details of what kinds of robots will fit the bill.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Last year, the army launched a new study dubbed \u201cVulcain\u201d with the goal of establishing firm requirements for a new tactical robot to be fielded by 2040, service officials said this week at the biennial Eurosatory defense conference outside Paris.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The study should be completed by the end of 2022, said Lt. Col. David Schuster, robotic development leader in the Army\u2019s plans office, at a Tuesday briefing here. For now, the requirements are somewhat of a blank slate, save for two key areas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cMass and endurance are particularly important\u201d factors for a future robotic capability, he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe French army has worked a lot on agility, but little by little, it has lost its mass,\u201d he added. \u201cAre robots a way to rebuild our mass?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A soldier can get fatigued during long sessions of reconnaissance and surveillance, he continued. \u201cCan the endurance of a robotic system compensate for this issue?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For now, both unmanned aerial systems and ground robots are under consideration for surveillance missions, Schuster said. \u201cI don\u2019t presuppose what kind of platform will do that, whether it\u2019s a drone or if it\u2019s a ground robot.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He emphasized that France has no intention of procuring fully autonomous lethal systems, but is interested in \u201csemi-autonomous lethal weapons,\u201d where there is always a human decision maker in the loop.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Vulcain study is intended as a bridge between the army\u2019s two behemoth modernization programs, Schuster said. The ongoing Scorpion program aims to replace the service\u2019s light- and medium-weight tactical vehicles and implement a new unified combat information system and UHF radios through 2030, while the future Titan program will focus on replacing heavy-lift vehicles \u2014 weighing more than 25 tons \u2014 along with artillery and combat helicopters through 2045.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There will be some \u201ccoherence\u201d with the army\u2019s other future capabilities, such as the Main Ground Combat System (MGCS), a new battle tank co-developed by KNDS \u2014 a joint venture between France\u2019s Nexter Defense Systems and Germany\u2019s Krauss-Maffei Wegmann \u2014 and scheduled to be operational by 2040, Schuster noted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There have been no \u201cformal links\u201d with industry on Vulcain to date, Col. Arnaud Goujon, chief of plans at the French army headquarters, told reporters at the conference Monday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But the goal is to move quickly and field initial robot units by 2025, so the pressure is on to finalize requirements by the end of the year, he noted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Schuster said the service wants to get out of the habit of asking industry what capabilities can be developed, and industry asking what capabilities the service is actually looking for. \u201cThis vicious cycle can go on for a long time,\u201d he noted.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Vulcain study is intended as a bridge between the army\u2019s two behemoth modernization programs, Schuster said. The ongoing Scorpion program aims to replace the service\u2019s light- and medium-weight tactical vehicles and implement a new unified combat information system and UHF radios through 2030, while the future Titan program will focus on replacing heavy-lift vehicles \u2014 weighing more than 25 tons \u2014 along with artillery and combat helicopters through 2045.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":44454,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-noindex":"","_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-nofollow":"","_yoast_wpseo_canonical":"","_acf":"","_yoast_wpseo_primary_category":46,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_smg_distribution_targets":[]},"categories":[160,29,46,86,11,36],"tags":[],"coauthors":[3420],"class_list":["post-21882","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-daily-news-roundup","category-digital-show-dailies","category-europe","category-eurosatory","category-global","category-newsletters"],"acf":{"subheadline":"","legacy_arc_id":"YCBUGVWKXVERZJO2JM5LNK242A","arc_canonical_url":"\/global\/europe\/2022\/06\/17\/french-army-honing-requirements-for-future-vulcain-robotic-capability\/","remove_feature_photo":false,"is_sponsored":false,"subtype":"","redirect_url":"","disable_inline_ads":false,"native_logo_pretext":"Presented By:"},"yoast_head":"\n