America’s Robot Tank the M5 Ripsaw

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Allow me to introduce you to American Army's new Ripsaw M5 Robotic Combat Vehicle it’s absolutely terrifying and awe inspiring. It’s the world's first fully electric engine and fully autonomous super tank. It only weighs 10 and a half tons or 3 times less than a Bradley while still delivering the same firepower. You might have already seen them in giant blockbusters like Fast and Furious 8, Mad Max fury Road and GI Joe.

Written by: Chris Cappy & Armando Duarte Galán

Edited by: Maksym

This youtube video description from the developers howe and howe state that its deadly yet silent while housing a 173mmx30mm cannon. That's because its electric motor produces almost no noise and reduces its thermal signature. It has been reported that you can’t hear the vehicle until it's 100 m away while you can hear an abrams on pavement from over 1,000 meters away. Imagine a ripsaw sneaking up on you in the field and the last thing you see is its cold robotic voice as it says “you have 20 seconds to comply” edit audio onto image of ripsaw.

Howe and Howe technologies is run by identical twin brothers. They originally designed the robot tank as a project in their backyard garage way back in the early 2000s. They’d been investors since they were seven years old building log cabins with each other in Maine. It wasn’t until they entered it into a DARPA challenge in 2005 that it got the attention of the US military. It’s cool DARPA I guess my robot tank design got lost in the mail I’ll just keep waiting to hear back from you. Their sweet promo video shows the ripsaw ripping some sweet snow donuts. This thing flies at a top speed of 60 miles per hour other variants can reach that in just 3 seconds. Apparently it could have hit 100 mphs but remotely operating it at that speed was a receipt for disaster.

The M5 robotic combat vehicle has all your favorite buzzwords including modular design so you can swap out autocannons for missiles or anti-air weapons that can be launched from out of the line of fire. But Will this system be a major part of US army future doctrine or is it not really all its hyped up to be?

It was Brig. Gen. Geoffrey Norman. Director of the Next Generation Combat Vehicles Cross Functional Team Said quote “Human-machine integrated teams are the future of successful ground combat in the land domain” this gives us a hint as the armys future plans here. They want these M5 robot tanks to wingmen to the new M10 booker, the abrams and the bradleys. The strategy calls for these to be sent out first ahead of human troops to do all the recon and scouting. This is how the us military plans to offset the fact that they might be outnumbered in future wars.

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