A chilling AI-generated video that recently circulated on Chinese social media depicted a dystopian urban battlefield where a robotic dog, wielding a machine gun and humming a nursery rhyme, was shown hunting human combatants in a blacked-out building.
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But reality could prove even more terrifying.
Recent People’s Liberation Army (PLA) urban warfare drills suggest that unmanned platforms armed solely with light weapons may struggle to root out enemies shielded in buildings or underground bunkers.
To achieve “comprehensive annihilation”, Chinese military scientists now propose equipping ground robots with thermobaric warheads – weapons of mass destruction second only to nuclear arms in lethality.
This marks China’s first official disclosure of plans to deploy the controversial munitions on unmanned systems.
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Dang Chenguang, lead author of a December study in the Journal of Ordnance Equipment Engineering, said modern cities have become “vortexes of warfare” where GPS jamming, electromagnetic interference and dense structures neutralise the advantages of traditional weapons.