FORT BRAGG, N.C. - Fort Bragg’s robotics operator training is a three-day course designed to familiarize servicemen and women with operating robots.
In the classroom, the course gives hands-on experience aimed at teaching techniques, tactics and procedural use of robots in the field.
During the training Soldiers are graded and expected to be able to demonstrate their ability to operate each robot with some degree of expertise.
“Instead of losing Soldiers in the field, you may lose a robot,” said Sgt. 1st Class Leon Smith, Headquarters and Headquarters Company, 7th Special Forces Group. “A Soldier takes a lot longer to train and gain enough experience to be out in the field with you. If we lose a robot out in the field I’m sure there is another one on an assembly line that can readily replace the old one.”
For me, if I had to go out in Afghanistan right now, I could take any one of these robots we used in class and use them right now,” said Smith.
“The only thing that could make it better is if we were practicing using live explosives.”
Each robot has individual capabilities that specializes them for unique situations in the field, but all are designed to give Soldiers the ability to recon an area from a safe position through the use of several mounted cameras.
“The whole idea is if you suspect an area to be dangerous, you want to send in this robot,” said Harold Cummings, lead trainer of Robotics System Joint Project Office. “We want to send these into a house or building and give our Soldiers standoff ability.”
Improvised explosive devices have been the number one killer of Soldiers in the field. The use of robots reduces some of the unnecessary risk Soldiers have to take in the field, explained Cummings. The Talon robot weighs 85 to 125 pounds and, depending upon its load, it is used a lot in theater for route clearance.
The Packbot FasTac and the small unmanned ground vehicle or SUGV 310 both are to built give Soldiers mobile recon capabilities, but also in the field have the ability to be singularly deployed and controlled.
“This is a damn good class,” said Smith. “You can do anything with them.”
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