A battlefield is a terrible place for a person. War, as a profoundly human endeavor, requires humans, and there is no way around fighting most wars without, at some point, putting humans on the ground. In the future and, increasingly, the present, those humans will be accompanied by robots, often remotely guided machines carrying some share of the burden of the fight. Or, in the case of gun-toting robots like Russia's Nerekhta, the robot will actually be firing a weapon.

The gun on the back is operated remotely, with a human picking targets. But a new version of the robot, reported in Russia's Izvestia daily, will swap the turret for a one-time payload, turning the roving robot into a one-use bomb. The robot, around 600 pounds and just over 3 feet long, is powered by an electric motor and can go as fast as 7 mph while carrying hundreds of pounds of explosives.