Future Combat Systems (FCS) is the U.S. Army’s ongoing modernization project, consisting of everything from new armored vehicles and unmanned air and land drones to new body armor and individual equipment. Some of the systems in development will inevitably be cut due to failures in testing or budget cuts, but many of its components are scheduled to enter active service, with field testing beginning as early as this year. One of the unmanned vehicles currently being tested is the mundanely-named XM1216 Small Unmanned Ground Vehicle (SUGV), developed by iRobot, a company probably best known for its robotic vacuum cleaners and name similarities to Will Smith movies. True to its name, the SUGV is essentially a small rover that a soldier can easily lift and carry around. It’s unarmed, and is designed to conduct reconnaissance into areas that would be too unsafe for soldiers to venture, with the soldier operating it on the scene via remote control. But wait, that’s not just any remote control. Looking at the pictures reveals that the robot is actually being directed with an Xbox 360 controller. No articles go into specific detail on how the robot is controlled (and I couldn’t find a source saying that it actually is a 360 controller, but just looking at it, I have no doubt that it is), but the pictures give the impression that the SUGV operator uses a wired 360 controller that is connected to a back-mounted computer system, along with a small head-mounted display attached to his helmet or goggles. Now, I think many people would agree that the 360 has one of the best-designed controllers out there, but I would never have guessed that the Army would solicit their use in controlling their unmanned vehicles. At any rate, I guess we know who would win the console war now, eh? Sorry... bad attempt at humor.   

Soldiers test the XM1216 Small Unmanned Ground Vehicle

I’m curious to think what people think about this. With realistic portrayals of war and violence in gaming already being a huge issue, and with claims that such violence desensitizes players being a concern among many people, does this suddenly make gaming too real, or conversely, make war too much like a video game? Is it going too far when hardware and peripherals designed for a video game console are being employed in actual combat by actual soldiers? Or should we embrace that technology derived from gaming can be used to support soldiers in combat situations and be proud of that contribution? Furthermore, does Microsoft have a contract with the Department of Defense for such use of their hardware, or is it just something that the developers of the robot and soldiers who are testing it came up with on their own?

I don’t necessarily have any answers to those questions right now, but with video games becoming ever more mainstream and the controversy surrounding games becoming more and more of a political issue, I think it’s important that we ask ourselves such questions. But whatever your opinion is, next time you sit down and play Call of Duty 4 or any other similarly-themed game, remember that it is just a piece of fiction, and meanwhile our soldiers and the soldiers of our allies are out there every day doing the real thing... even if they’re doing it with the same controller.

UPDATE: I just came across an article on the Fort Bliss Monitor, the news website of Fort Bliss, Texas, that confirms that the SUGV is indeed controlled by an off-the-shelf 360 controller. The article makes several other mentions of gaming, its training value, and how young soldiers are familiar with video games.