The experimental four-legged, pack-hauling robots aren’t gonna be ready for duty at the front anytime soon. So the Army is considering a big step backward in front-line logistics.

In place of the ultra-sophisticated BigDog cargo ‘bots that have been slowly trudging their way through the development process, the ground-combat branch wants more flesh-and-blood mules and donkeys. The Army is even considering the revival of a long-defunct headquarters, the “Animal Corps,” to oversee the four-legged recruits.

The goal is to take some of the weight off soldiers’ backs during long war-zone foot patrols. In Afghanistan, it’s not uncommon for soldiers to carry 100 pounds of gear, even when they’re scaling mountains.

If everything works out, the future Army could look a lot like the Army of the 19th century, with trains of braying, kicking mules trailing behind the foot soldiers as they stomp through fields, slog through streams and wheeze up steep hillsides. As in the Army of the 1800s, teams of specially trained veterinarians and animal handlers would ensure the combat mules stayed battle-ready.

The idea for a 21st-century Animal Corps was publicly broached by Jim Overholt, a scientist with the Army’s Tank Automotive Research, Development and Engineering Center, based outside Detroit. “Maybe it would be better to go back” to the days of institutionalized real-life pack mules, Overholt said at an industry conference in Washington, D.C. this week.

“They are not saying ‘don’t stop moving out on this real key robotic capabilities in [a] challenging environment,’” Overholt told a National Defense reporter, echoing the sentiments of top Army officers. ”It just might be more cost-effective” to use animals, he admitted.

That sentiment reflects the understandably slow process of building lifelike, workable, animal-style robots — particularly Boston Dynamics’ BigDog. That robot existed in prototype form as far back as 2004, and has since progressed through several different versions, each adding more power, better sensors and more sophisticated algorithms allowing the bot to detect and follow soldiers, instead of requiring a human operator with his hand on a joystick.

But despite years of work costing tens of millions of dollars, BigDog still isn’t viewed by the Army as rugged enough for a war zone. Plus, it’s big, heavy, noisy and expensive.

Progress has been equally slow on wheeled robotic mules. The Marines have tested a driverless All-Terrain Vehicle, and the Army is plugging away at the software for automatic supply convoys, but these too are easily foiled by rough terrain and unexpected objects appearing in their paths.

The good news for Overholt and his bosses is that the front-line Army is primed for animal reinforcements. Since the beginning of the Afghanistan war, a growing number of ground-combat units — Marines and Special Forces, especially — have “gone native” with their supply trains and adopted Afghan mules.

The mainstream Army started getting into pack-animal operations in a big way two years ago. I was embedded with soldiers from the 10th Mountain Division in Logar province in the fall of 2009 when it occurred to some enterprising soldiers that a rented donkey might be the best way to move gear up the province’s steep hillsides.

This early experiment in routine animal-based logistics could not have gone worse. (See video above.) But it was a big step toward the man-animal teams Overholt envisions.

The 10th Mountain Division troopers needed to move a 300-pound generator a quarter-mile up a steep slope to a hilltop observation post. For that demanding task, they calculated they would need just one small donkey.

They were wrong. The overloaded animal, in extreme pain, simply quit walking just a few yards up the slope. To get the generator to the waiting OP, the soldiers had to carry it themselves … as the relieved donkey trotted happily behind them. “It seemed like a good idea at the time,” Sgt. Donald Coleman mused.

But the idea itself wasn’t bad — just its execution was. Two years later, the 10th Mountain Division, again deployed to Logar, has learned its lesson. For short missions in areas with roads, they use John Deere ATVs — the regular kind, not the driver-less models.

And for long treks across rough ground, the division’s troops keep their own donkeys, and enough of them, to handle heavy loads. Animal-loving soldiers volunteer for the critters’ care and feeding, and Army vets pay regular visits to look after the four-legged enlistees’ health.

It isn’t quite the Animal Corps, but with more mules, more formalized training and tactics and a wider acceptance of flesh-and-blood cargo-haulers, it could be.

Meanwhile, the Army could continue working on BigDog and other cargo ‘bots, confident that until the robots are ready, their animal counterparts will keep the combat troops well-supplied.

Video: David Axe; photo: U.S. Army

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