Thirty thousand robots could be walking side-by-side with human soldiers, as an integral part of the British Army in the 2030s, said Gen Sir Nick Carter, recently. 

Gen Sir Carter said that the army needed “to think about how we measure effects differently." He further suggested that “an armed forces that’s designed for the 2030s” could include large numbers of autonomous or remotely controlled machines. “I mean, I suspect we could have an army of 120,000, of which 30,000 might be robots, who knows?” Gen Sir Carter said, although he stressed he was not setting any particular target in terms of future numbers.

Investment in robotic warfare is at the heart of the United Kingdom's planned integrated five-year defence review. However, the future of this plan has been in dark after Rishi Sunak, the chancellor, postponed the cross-government spending review which was scheduled last month. However, Gen Sir Carter did say that the negotiation to salvage the defence funding settlement with the UK government and the Treasury were going well. 

“Clearly, from our perspective, we are going to argue for something like that [a multi-year budget] because we need long-term investment because long-term investment gives us the opportunity to have confidence in modernisation,” the general said.

The British Army has been facing issues in recruiting personnel since the past few years. The current strength of trained personnel is 73,870 which is almost a 10,000 less than the 82,050 targets. However, after the integrated review with technology being used to plug some of the gaps, the target will be further lessened to 75,000. 

In the past few years, the British have been engaged in various research projects around drones and remotely powered land and underwater vehicles. Currently, various technologies are under-development, one of which is i9 drone, a six-rotor and two-shot-gun, remote-controlled machine. The intended use for the i9 is to storm buildings, especially during urban warfare situation, to avoid as many casualties as possible. 

While there is a growing concern by various rights-based groups about the potential danger of unrestricted robot warfare, the British Ministry of Defence has clarified that only humans will be permitted to fire weapons.