The US military has test-fired an M72 Light Anti-Tank Weapon (LAW) launcher attached to a robotic dog, and filmed the whole thing.
A Marine unit attached to the Tactical Training and Exercise Control Group, Marine Air-Ground Task Force Training Command together with scientists from the Office of Naval Research conducted the testing at the Marine Corps Air-Ground Combat Center in Twentynine Palms, California back in September.
Footage shows the characteristically creepy-looking Boston Dynamics-style remote-operated robotic dog powering on, moving around, and standing up to "beg" as Marines and engineers discuss its capabilities. Off screen, engineers attached an M72 to the dog’s back via a special adaptor kit, with the piece of equipment then placed in a U-shaped sandbag formation on the range, and the M72 firing off a reloadable 21 mm trainer rocket.
The robot dog, dubbed a “goat” by the Marines for some reason, looks similar to a machinegun-toting robot dog shown off by a Chinese defense contractor over a year ago.
And that’s no accident.
The Marine-tested robotic Fido in the footage is clearly a Go1 Pro search and rescue quadruped available on Chinese ecommerce giant Alibaba for just $3,500 apiece (for comparison, Boston Dynamics’ famous Spot went on sale in 2020 with an eye-watering price tag of $74,500 – more than 21 times as much). The Go1 Pro was created by Chinese tech company Unitree Robotics, which describes itself as a “global quadruped robots pioneer.”
Unitree Robotics Go1 Pro Robot Dog available on Alibaba.com
© Photo : Screenshot / Alibaba.com
However, while the Marines’ LAW-equipped Fido got a measure of praise in US media as a “good sense” design potentially useful in "close quarters urban environments," Western media’s appraisal of the Russian robotic dog design, which was demonstrated over a year earlier, was nowhere near as generous, with the latter dismissed as a “fake” and possibly even a sign of China dastardly evading sanctions on arms exports.
Turns out when it’s the US doing it, it’s no longer a problem.
RPG launcher-equipped robot dog design by Russian company Intellect Machine.
© Photo : Intellect Machine