The Army's plans for robotic wingmen in vehicle formations, a drone on every soldier and robotic mules carrying gear all aim to take the load off the fighter. But how will the two communicate, robot and human? Voice commands like automated assistants on smartphones are great, but not when the threat of incoming fire means the robot battle buddy needs to decipher a range of priorities that humans might take for granted. The next test will come in late 2021 and involve a company-sized maneuver at Fort Hood, Texas. Think more C3PO or R2D2 in the "Star Wars" movies than Hal in "2001: A Space Odyssey" --or better yet, a friendly cyborg from "Terminator" might be the best way to see your robot combatant squad mate of the distant future.

With the addition of artificial intelligence and machine learning, the aim is to make every soldier, regardless of job specialty, capable of identifying and knocking down threatening drones. While much of that mission used to reside mostly in the air defense community, those attacks can strike any infantry squad or tank battalion. The goal is to reduce cognitive burden and operator stress when dealing with an array of aerial threats that now plague units of any size, in any theater. "Everyone is counter-UAS," said Col. Marc Pelini, division chief for capabilities and requirements at the Joint Counter-Unmanned Aircraft Systems Office, or JCO. Army units aren't ready to defeat aerial drones, the study shows.