Footage of a Chinese-made drone carrying a ‘robot dog’ that is armed with a machine gun has started to make its rounds on social media, and it looks like it was taken straight out of a dystopian war movie. It isn’t immediately clear if the video was recorded as part of a Chinese military exercise or rather in an effort to demonstrate how the pairing will operate, but even without that context, the clip could serve as a foretelling of the technology that may populate future battlegrounds.
The one-minute video was originally posted yesterday to Weibo, a Chinese micro-blogging website, by a user either affiliated with or representing the local defense company that reportedly develops the drone being used to deploy the robodog.
The footage begins with a shot of the drone as it approaches the rooftop of a building in a nondescript urban area with the compact armed robot dog being carried under the drone’s frame. The drone, acting as a robotic dropship of sorts, then lands atop the roof, releases the robodog, and flies away. Shortly thereafter the robodog unfurls from its folded position and begins navigating its new surroundings with what looks to be a Chinese QBB-97 light machine gun (designated as Type 95 LGM in the United States) mounted on its back.