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The Brief Rise and Long Fall of Russia's Robot Tank

Posted by timothy on from the pew-pew-pew dept.

malachiorion writes with this report from Popular Science"Seventy-four years ago, Russia accomplished what no country had before, or has since: it sent armed ground robots into battle. These remote-controlled Teletanks took the field during one of WWII's earliest and most obscure clashes, as Soviet forces pushed into Eastern Finland for roughly three and a half months, from 1939 to 1940. The workings of those Teletanks were cool, though they were useless against Germany, and Russia proceeded to fall behind the developed world in military robotics."

53 of 79 comments (clear)

  1. In Soviet Russia, by LynnwoodRooster · · Score: 4, Funny

    Tanks, er, ah... I got nuthin...

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    1. Re:In Soviet Russia, by myowntrueself · · Score: 4, Funny

      In Soviet Russia robot tanks you!

      --
      In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
    2. Re:In Soviet Russia, by cold+fjord · · Score: 1

      In Soviet Russia, attacking robots help defend you.

      --
      much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
    3. Re:In Soviet Russia, by ppanon · · Score: 1

      Maybe he meant as on "order of magnitude" difference. But yeah, it's not an obvious thing.

      --
      Laissez lire, et laissez danser; ces deux amusements ne feront jamais de mal au monde. - Voltaire
    4. Re:In Soviet Russia, by bkmoore · · Score: 2

      Tanks, er, ah... I got nuthin...

      Tanks, but no tanks.

    5. Re:In Soviet Russia, by Chris+Mattern · · Score: 1

      ...tank drives you!

    6. Re:In Soviet Russia, by Hognoxious · · Score: 1

      Maybe he meant as on "order of magnitude" difference.

      Which it doesn't mean either.

      --
      Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
    7. Re:In Soviet Russia, by malachiorion · · Score: 1

      I meant way, way fewer. Like dozens of tanks and over a hundred planes for the Finns, versus thousands of both on the Russian side.

  2. Perhaps the first but... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    By no means not quickly followed. In 1942, the Germany military fielded the Goliath tracked mine (basically a remote controlled bomb on treads.)

    Military robotics is by no means new, its just that brutal battlefield conditions meant that the military shelved it knowing that it would be a VERY long time before it ever became battlefield useful (in spite of UAVs, we're still a long ways off from robotic tanks)

    1. Re:Perhaps the first but... by peragrin · · Score: 2

      This is it exactly. Up until the 1990's we really didn't have bandwidth and control systems that could really do something like drive a tank remotely.

      Look at it this way up the until the 1980's In order to course correct a missile or torpedo after it had fired that weapon had to trail a wire all the way behind.

      Digital remote control took a long time coming, only in the last 20 years has it taken off. Still there is not enough battlefield bandwidth for a column of tanks to be remotely operated and be effective.

      --
      i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
    2. Re:Perhaps the first but... by sumdumass · · Score: 3, Interesting

      There is enough bandwidth, our control systems are still a bit off though. We use laser communications in some situations and radio in others but tanks have since the 90's been able to communicate and coordinate their weapons systems for a while now. This makes them more effective in picking targets so 4 out of 5 tanks aren't shooting the same target and invalid targets can be eliminated before a shot is fired.

      The biggest problem is the automation of the drive units. We can't seem to get a real time terrain picture in a way that the tanks can auto pilot around on or relay to an operator. This is an enormous task compared to flying a drone that doesn't have to deal with obstacles in or on the ground that can change in a matter of seconds in a combat situation.

      Of course that is changing a bit with work done by DARPA and their autonomous challenges but as of now, it makes them a sitting duck to often trying to negotiate terrain. But the weapons systems have had the bandwidth for a while now and can pretty much pick the target, aim and fire while moving at great speeds with little assistance from a human. It's quite amazing really.

    3. Re:Perhaps the first but... by myowntrueself · · Score: 2

      (Apache) AH64D, millimeter wave radar, radar hellfires and preferential fire zones. Ouch. Each missile is like a little robot. Drag a rubberband around clusters of targets on the display, unleash several missiles, each missile finds a target and boom, next missile, next target. That was so cool.

      ('Janes Longbow' was a way cool game yay)

      I always wondered why my mechs didn't have these missiles :( (in the Mech warrior games).

      --
      In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
    4. Re:Perhaps the first but... by malachiorion · · Score: 1

      I probably should have clarified, but if you read the piece, I was talking about armed the unprecedented—and still unique—use armed UGVs, like ground bots with guns. No one else has done that. The Goliath, on other hand, was a rolling bomb. You could call that an armed UGV, but, to me, that's like calling a Tomahawk an armed UAV.

  3. Did they say by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    "Exterminatesky! Exterminatesky!"?

    1. Re:Did they say by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

      "Voisiko joku ystävällisesti kutsua Tohtorin?", the Finns lamented, watching the tanks rolling in the snow and occasionally colliding with the pines.

    2. Re:Did they say by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Daleks aren't robots.

    3. Re:Did they say by bkmoore · · Score: 2

      "Remember, you must think in Russian..."

  4. Runner up? by cold+fjord · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Goliath: The Nazi Remote-Controlled Bomb

    --
    much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
    1. Re:Runner up? by cold+fjord · · Score: 1

      An interesting bit of synchronicity here. If you go to the link above you'll see this as to where the Goliath was used:

      First Battle: Sevastopol

      Sevastopol is in Crimea, Ukraine, where Russian troops have recently moved in as they did in Finland. In both cases, Finland and Ukraine, the Russians (nee Soviets) said they were there to fight fascism. That would be so much more convincing if they didn't have this going on:

      Russia: Far-Right Nationalists And Neo-Nazis March In Moscow

      I doubt that the Ukrainians will give the sort of bloody nose to the Russians that the Finns did in the Winter War.

      The Soviet-Finnish Winter War
      Battlefield Scandinavia the Forgotten Front Finnish Winter War

      --
      much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
    2. Re:Runner up? by TWX · · Score: 2

      If I remember what I read somewhere, the Russian/Soviet side lost something like 2500 tanks in the Winter War, mainly due to the Finns figuring out how to interfere with the treads to immobilize the tanks before setting them on fire...

      A tank without a crew would go a long way in explaining how that happened, as there wouldn't be personnel to see the attack on the tank or to repel it while clearing whatever was used to jam the treads.

      As a side note, that war explains why Biathlon is so culturally significant to the Scandinavian countries...

      --
      Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
    3. Re:Runner up? by tragedy · · Score: 2

      As a side note, that war explains why Biathlon is so culturally significant to the Scandinavian countries...

      No kidding. That's the war in which the White Death, Simo Hayha was personally responsible for around .4% of Soviet deaths through his skill as a marksman and outdoorsman.

    4. Re:Runner up? by CptPicard · · Score: 2

      As a side note, that war explains why Biathlon is so culturally significant to the Scandinavian countries...

      Well, I am Finnish and I'd like to point out that the Winter War is historically and culturally very much specifically a Finnish thing. The Scandinavians (Nordic countries west of Finland) had nothing to do with it, they don't consider it "their" war and they do not remember it as a substantial part of their history. The cultural image of "skiing and shooting" is equally as much Finnish.

      --
      I want to play Free Market with a drowning Libertarian.
    5. Re:Runner up? by TWX · · Score: 1

      Ah. My apologies, I assumed that the Scandinavian label applied to the Finnish.

      --
      Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
    6. Re:Runner up? by CptPicard · · Score: 1

      It's a somewhat vague label; even some Finns who have a very "Nordist" political inclination insist that we should be called "Scandinavian" even though even the Scandinavians themselves have never done that. The more appropriate geopolitical term is "Nordic".

      But, as we might share a lot historically and culturally, the Winter War we definitely don't :-)

      --
      I want to play Free Market with a drowning Libertarian.
    7. Re:Runner up? by Hognoxious · · Score: 2

      If the Ukrainians were intending to massacre the Russians, they'd have done it straight away before the Russians got their goons in. They didn't.

      Russia is secretly attempting to provoke what it's publicly claiming to prevent.

      --
      Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
    8. Re:Runner up? by cold+fjord · · Score: 1

      The US isn't the one invading Ukraine, is it?

      --
      much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
  5. Link no longer there. by dov_0 · · Score: 5, Informative

    Couldn't find the story the article originally linked to, but here's the wikipedia article on the teletanks. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T...

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    1. Re:Link no longer there. by rtb61 · · Score: 1

      Give popular science a big miss, they are weird ass copyright freaks, articles not available in other countries, articles deleted at random intervals etc. Just give them a big miss and go somewhere else and never ever link to them, really rather pointless to attempt to do so.

      --
      Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
    2. Re:Link no longer there. by cold+fjord · · Score: 1

      The linked article is still there.

      --
      much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
    3. Re:Link no longer there. by Tubepunk · · Score: 2
      Okay, here's a link to the blog cited by the PopSci article. The blog appears to contradict the summary that the Russians were alone in developing these primitive robotanks:

      There were similarly designed tanks also in the German army. There was the teletank V-4, there were small anti-tank “torpedoes” such as the radio-guided “Springer” and the “Goliath”, which would unwind an electrical control lead behind itself. A “Goliath” is found in the armoured vehicle museum at Kubinka. It is difficult to consider all of these designs as being successful. It was very difficult to direct a “Goliath” up to a tank even from a distance of 100 meters. The battery had a charge, which allowed for only eight minutes of movement, and the low clearance did not provide for sufficient mobility. Equipping these tankettes with a petrol engine did not save the situation. Nevertheless, they were able to carry out certain functions – including mine clearing and attacking fortifications.

      The Russians tanks had the advantage in having a longer autonomous range, as the German tanks appear to be wired ("unwind an electrical control lead") rather than radio-controlled.

    4. Re:Link no longer there. by dov_0 · · Score: 1

      Give popular science a big miss, they are weird ass copyright freaks, articles not available in other countries, articles deleted at random intervals etc. Just give them a big miss and go somewhere else and never ever link to them, really rather pointless to attempt to do so.

      The link was pop-sci Australia. I'm in Australia, can read all the other articles, but it says that one isn't there. Strange. It was however while reading my first article on the main page that I realised that I didn't want to bother with any more...

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      sudo mount --milk --sugar /cup/tea /mouth /etc/init.d/relax start
    5. Re:Link no longer there. by malachiorion · · Score: 1

      Guessing you've moved on, but the link above is location-specific. You could try this one: http://www.popsci.com/blog-net...

    6. Re:Link no longer there. by malachiorion · · Score: 1

      I mentioned this in another response, but I don't necessarily think the Goliath is in the same league as the Teletank, as far as gun-toting ground bots go. I should have specified that, though, in the piece.

  6. Robot? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It was remote controlled. The V1 and V2 are much closer to a "robot" in the sense of a self-guided machine.

    1. Re:Robot? by meerling · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I agree, anything piloted by a human, even if remotely, doesn't really qualify as a robot.

  7. Grooming propaganda for Google's Robot Tank by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Google is spending billions attempting to build autonomous robotic tanks for America's future wars of aggression. Google's 'pitch' when meeting generals, senior politicians and other significant figures in the West is "what would allow the US to choose to take out Iran TODAY".

    Before US drones were commonly used to slaughter every Muslim attending some funeral in the Middle East, US movies depicted exactly the same scenes. Tom Clancy would specifically include events and ideas in his ultra right wing masturbation fantasies with the express and stated goal of having the USA implement such ideas for real. The vile neo-fascist director from South America who made the recent 'reboot' of Robocop chose to depict Google's wet-dream of a US robotic holocaust of Iran at the beginning of his movie. Unlike the anti-war, anti-fascist director of the original, satire was not a motivation of the reboot.

    The owners of Slashdot have been previously grooming you by constantly promoting the nonsense of 'self-driving' cars - the first stage of Google propaganda to prepare the way for their robotic killing machines. The self-driving algorithms, while utterly useless for a vehicle that could tolerate not even one mistake, are perfect for robot tanks that can crush and slaughter a bus full of the 'other' without a murmur of complaint from the sheeple of the USA. By self-driving, the LAST thing Google means is 'safe' for civilians.

    But this article is about 'Russian' tanks, you dribble, if you an unusually dim specimen of sheepleness. YES, but that is how grooming propaganda works. You NORMALISE an idea in the minds of the sheeple, so when it becomes actual, it seems as if that is a consequence of inevitability, NOT permission. So, previously on Slashdot it was ANY excuse to push the nonsense of coming self-driving cars on our roads. Now Google is buying up every available military robot research company, even the owners of Slashdot think hiding the truth from you i hopeless, so the second stage begins.

    1. Re:Grooming propaganda for Google's Robot Tank by WarJolt · · Score: 2

      The owners of Slashdot have been previously grooming you by constantly promoting the nonsense of 'self-driving' cars - the first stage of Google propaganda to prepare the way for their robotic killing machines. The self-driving algorithms, while utterly useless for a vehicle that could tolerate not even one mistake, are perfect for robot tanks that can crush and slaughter a bus full of the 'other' without a murmur of complaint from the sheeple of the USA. By self-driving, the LAST thing Google means is 'safe' for civilians.

      Tin foil hats are pretty fashionable, eh?

      Car companies are investing millions in this stuff.
      Without the DARPA we wouldn't have ARPANET, the precursor to the internet.
      Of course this technology is going to emerge out of defense research, but it doesn't mean it won't be used for automobiles.

    2. Re:Grooming propaganda for Google's Robot Tank by rtb61 · · Score: 2

      Robots to replace troops. Two big problems with people as soldiers, most of them don't want to kill people and avoid it even when commanded to do so, especially unarmed people. Those all to happy to pull the trigger quite often end up pulling the trigger when they aren't order to do so or at inappropriate targets. Training can exacerbate the problem especially when you fail to promote honour and integrity, then killing becomes all too much fun especially when you start enrolling all to inappropriate narcissists and psychopaths.

      Robots eliminate the emotion on the battlefield, problem is it now takes much fewer personal and selecting those most willing to send those robots out to slaughter human beings means you are far more likely to end up with narcissists and psychopaths at the controls. Who when they start seeking to feed their ego and lusts, will cause a hell of a lot more carnage, especially when they are safe from the battlefield and believe they can blame everything on the robot.

      Then of course that might be exactly what those who are willing to deploy robots to slaughter people are after, massive population reduction in targeted zones with no witnesses, either those idiots who want to brag about their slaughter activities or those soldiers with honour and integrity who oppose. I would never ever trust a country willing to deploy robots in the battlefield to slaughter people, whether it be airborne drones that fire at mobile phones with missiles or ground based killing devices. Their measure of contempt for human life pretty much equals my contempt for them as individuals, not as human beings of course, I would never ever condone their and their families random execution.

      --
      Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
    3. Re:Grooming propaganda for Google's Robot Tank by Hognoxious · · Score: 1

      you are far more likely to end up with narcissists and psychopaths at the controls.

      It'll be damned quiet round here if that ever happens.

      --
      Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
  8. And the USSR trained "Anti-Tank Dogs" by jayveekay · · Score: 1

    A cruel and useless Soviet WW2 tactic: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A...

    1. Re:And the USSR trained "Anti-Tank Dogs" by dbIII · · Score: 1

      A few Russians that got promoted under Stalin spent a bit of time in exile in Australia and would have come across this story:
      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Loaded_Dog

      However it's not unexpected from the sort of regime that drew inspiration from the defeat of the Tutonic Knights on a frozen river by sending in swarms of poorly armed peasants until the ice broke.

    2. Re:And the USSR trained "Anti-Tank Dogs" by Hognoxious · · Score: 1

      Were the peasants standing on different ice? Because usually when it breaks everyone standing on it goes in.

      --
      Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
  9. Re:Tubepunk? by cold+fjord · · Score: 1

    It's a bit too modern to be Steampunk, but a sci-fi world where vacuum tubes rule? Let's call it Tubepunk.

    That would be enough for the internet, which as we know is tubes.

    --
    much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
  10. Badly wrong by dbIII · · Score: 1

    They all drowned. Please don't make up shit about such a famous part of history.

    1. Re:Badly wrong by dbIII · · Score: 1

      Fair enough - your gut feeling can trump very famous and oft repeated details of history in your own mind. Just don't expect me to listen to your gut.

  11. Not a Bolo? by AbrasiveCat · · Score: 1

    But according to future history the first robot tanks were Bolos made by General Motors. The Russians have screwed up another timeline. (Dang Putin)

    1. Re:Not a Bolo? by RobertinXinyang · · Score: 1

      Somehow I doubt that the T-26 Teletank was self aware.

    2. Re:Not a Bolo? by RobertinXinyang · · Score: 1

      The reference was to the Bolo was this on (from Wiipedia) "A Bolo is a fictional type of artificially intelligent superheavy tank. They were first imagined by Keith Laumer, and have since been featured in science fiction novels and short story anthologies by him and others."

      I doubt that the person I was responding to was thinking of the Douglas B-18 "Bolo" medium bomber.

  12. Article is a Definition Fail by TrollstonButterbeans · · Score: 2

    ^^ We have a winner. A robot is self controlled.

    A remote control plane or a remote control tank is not a robot.

    --
    Priest: "Universe from nothing, no laws of physics, sped up time"+ huge discrepancies. Creationism? No. Big Bang Theory
  13. Re:Tubepunk? by chthon · · Score: 1

    Tuberpunk?

  14. Re:Tubepunk? by cellocgw · · Score: 1

    Tuberpunk?

    No, I think that would mean strange gadgets covered with, or made out of, potatoes.

    --
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  15. Ogre by Chickenlips · · Score: 1

    This brings to mind Steve Jackson's Ogre game, where a huge robotic tank was pitted against forces of conventional tanks and weapons.

  16. Re:Tubepunk? by Hognoxious · · Score: 1

    Anything by the Pogues.

    --
    Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."