Meet the Chinese army's latest weapon: the gun-toting dog

The Chinese army has debuted its latest weapon: a gun-toting robotic dog. The mechanical canine, which has an automatic rifle on its back, was front and centre of recent joint military drills with Cambodia, according to footage from the state broadcaster CCTV. The dog was backed up by a similarly-armed quadcopter in the drills, which saw the machines paired with human soldiers in dry runs for urban assaults. "It can serve as a new member in our urban combat operations, replacing our human members to conduct reconnaissance and identify enemy and strike the target," Chen Wei, a Chinese soldier, said in the video. While they may be technologically advanced, the killer robots are hardly sleek pieces of military hardware; both dog and drone appear to be off-the-shelf pieces of consumer technology with a conventional rifle bolted on top.