Wars were once fought with spiked clubs, swords, flails and bare fists. It’s ancient technology when compared with todays assault rifles, IED’s (improvised explosive devices), missiles, artillery and droids.

Perhaps one day ground-level battles will no longer claim the lives of so many foot soldiers. Instead, remote controlled SWORDS (miniature ground robots reminiscent of a child’s toy) armed with machine guns and bomb detection software will be used to gain the upper hand.

Currently, the US government has a few operational SWORDS in Iraq, with plans of deploying more, all part of a plan to reduce the number of human casualties.