von ELROB 2010 – A commentary
Die ELROB 2010 organized by the German Army and the Bundeswehr Armaments Directorate showed for the third time (M‑ELROB*) the state of development of the land robotics systems. The first time visitor of the trials could experience a well organized, informative and interesting event. The visitor who attended the event for the second or even for the third time unfortunately had to realize that the land robotics systems had barely further developed and partially the observer had the impression to be part of an exhibition for remote control cars with a mounted webcam than for land robotics systems.
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| Exemplary for some of the shown systems Click to enlarge |
It has to be mentioned that regretfully less companies had attended the trials as exhibitioners and participants than in 2008. Big companies like Rheinmetall Landsystems, Thales or Diehl which were at the ELROB 2008 did not participated this year.
The land robotics systems have been designed to reduce and in the best case to eliminate any danger and to support the deployed soldiers. Whether for EOD, reconnaissance, NBC-detection or as means of transport the various systems are used in action nowadays.
While the unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) and the unmanned underwater vehicles (UUV) are field-tested for years, the unmanned ground vehicles (UGV) are still at the beginning of their service. The following headline of the press release of the US Army shows the backlog and lack of expertise and development in the field of UGVs in Europe: “Army Reaches 1 Million Unmanned Flight Hours in the U.S. Central Command area of operations”.
You can only hope that the Europeans and in particular the Germans/Bundeswehr do not keep neglecting the field of landsystems and that Germany becomes in the sense of the security of our soldiers a center of high technology again.
*Military ELROB
