The U.S. Marine Corps have new target robots to practice with and they look strangely like the Taliban. With beards, AK47s and Afghan Pakul hats the ‘Tali-bots’ have a number of features that will assist in training the Marine Corps.
Alex Brooks serves as Marathon Robotics’ chief executive officer, the Australian firm which produced the ‘Tali-bots’. He said that the target can move unpredictably in a way that no other target on the market can. The robot is named Rover and is built on the Segway platform. They can zoom in and out of doors at 8 mph and cost $2 million for the 8 of them.
The marines who are training for Middle East combat will now have to practice against this new, smart enemy target. However not everyone will benefit from shooting practice against them, since they will be with the Marine Corps Systems Command and only a handful of Marines will actually get a chance to fire on them.
Similar robots built on an armoured Segway have been used by the Australian Special Air Service and other elite units since 2008. Lt. Col. Walt Yates, who leads research and testing of Marathon’s robotic targets for MARCORSYSCOM said that the Marine Corps will give the feedback from the chosen students a great deal of weight for future improvments.