Robot dogs join high-tech US Air Force exercise

It looked like a scene from science fiction. But the exercise conducted last week, one of the US military's largest ever high-tech experiments, wasn't a movie set. Flying into a possibly hostile airstrip aboard an Air Force C-130, the robot dogs were sent outside the aircraft to scout for threats before the humans inside would be exposed to them, according to an Air Force news release dated September 3. The electronic canines are just one link in what the US military calls the Advanced Battle Management System (ABMS). It uses artificial intelligence and rapid data analytics to detect and counter threats to US military assets in space and possible attacks on the US homeland with missiles or other means.