MECHANISM IN WARFARE

Press, Volume LXXXVI, Issue 26120, 24 May 1950, Page 3

MECHANISM IN WARFARE

CANADIAN SCIENTIST’S FORECAST (From a Reuter Correspondent) OTTAWA. Robot” mechanisms may replace the infantry if a third world war should occur, according to Dr. O. M. Solandt, chairman of the Canadian Defence Research Board, and one of the world's leading military scientists. Scientists, he says-, already have the knowledge necessary to produce these mechanisms, and it only remains for the engineers to set to work and apply this knowledge. Dr. Solandt. whose position gives him equal rank with the chiefs of staff of the Canadian Army. Navy, and Air Force, says that the next 10 years will see mechanisation of armed forces on a scale fantastic by any standards. In his most recent speech on the subject Dr. Solandt said that the new servo-mechanisms will do everything in combat that a man can do—and in most cases do it quicker and better. They would have sense organs or rece vers to collect data, nerves to transmit this data to the brain, a brain to assess the significance of the incoming information, choose the right course of action, and send out impulses to muscles or servo-motors which accomplish the desired result. These servo-mechanisms can be made to see objects by television, by radar, or by infra-red rays. They can be made very sensitive to small changes in light or sound or pressure or. indeed, to any change in their physical environment. Once the information is collected it can be transmitted electrically to any required distance. Dial indicators can be linked by radio so that one wil] instantly follow changes in the other. The greatest advances being made st present are in the field of guided missiles. ‘‘The pilotless aircraft,” says Dr. Solandt, “will ultimately evolve into the inter-continental rocket of contemporary fiction. This tendency to replace men with machines will spread rapidly through all the Services. All major armament will soon be fully controlled by automatic mechanisms’* But Dr. Solandt gave this caution: ‘lt is very important to keep this new mechanisation in proper perspective. The introduction of machines to perform tasks formerly done by men will

not eliminate men from a future war. The men will merely have to do more complex and difficult, though possibly safer, jobs in devising, building, controlling, and repairing the machines.”