Daylia, the army are actually way behind the curve on this one. I've previously mentioned remote-control bomb-disposal robots, which are very old technology. The latest-and-greatest are search-and-rescue robots, which are little mini things which can crawl through holes in collapsed buildings to locate survivors. IIRC they were used in the WTC, and they're showing definite promise.

BTW, there's a slight misnomer in calling these things "robots". When someone says "robot" to you, you think of something self-contained, possibly self-aware, certainly capable of making decisions for itself about what it does. In fact, this is not the case - every one of these so-called "robots" is actually about as robotic as your kid's remote-control car. They're all controlled by a human operator with a remote-control link, with a TV camera transmitting the "bug's eye view" back to the operator. The robot plane I'll admit is a stage further on - this is as robotic as "BigTrak" in that you give it a path to follow and it blindly goes round that path.

Bobert, the point is that without the robots, it's impossible to know what's going on. The robots are sent in as surveillance to see what's down there. The cave complexes in Afghanistan are a prime example - capturing/killing fighters in there is incredibly dangerous, bcos the defenders have had ample opportunity to rig booby-traps, ambushes, etc. As you say, the home side has a major advantage. Send a robot in first, and if the robot gets blown up then you know where to take extra care, otherwise a half-dozen guys turn round a corner and get mown down by an Afghani with a machine-gun.

Graham.