The U.S. Army is reportedly calling for defense contractors to work on artificial intelligence robots to build bridges under fire to save soldier and engineers' lives and facilitate combat operations for tanks and ground forces.
"The fielding of autonomous powered floating bridges will enable the Army to conduct unpredictable dispersed river crossings, increase crew survivability by removing the man from the craft, and reduce logistics footprint over the Improved Ribbon Bridge in use today by combining both payload capacity and powertrain into a single craft," the Army's Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) solicitation read, Business Insider reported.
The U.S. Army, watching the casualties of Russia in its war against Ukraine, had previously raised concerns about its engineers bridge-building capabilities, particularly over water as unmanned drones have increase strike capabilities in modern warfare.
"Future Gap Crossing technology must consider near peer adversarial capabilities and support sustainment operations in a lethal contested logistics environment when the enemy can attack targets at virtually any depth within the battlespace," the SBIR warned.
The project solicitation calls for two phases: First, contractors specifying the AI, sensors, and communications needed to coordinate the bridge-building robots. Second, delivering a prototype that can overcome loss of GPS due to jammers and can overcome a cyberattack.
The Army noted the innovation can ultimately be used commercially, too, including "pipeline inspection, package delivery, undersea exploration, agricultural work, and space exploration," according to the report.