China arms combat robots with controversial thermobaric weapon in urban warfare drill

A chilling AI-generated video circulating on Chinese social media depicts a dystopian urban battlefield where a robotic dog, wielding a machine gun and humming a nursery rhyme, hunts human combatants in a blacked-out building.

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.

Dang Chenguang, lead author of a December study in the Journal of Ordnance Equipment Engineering, said modern cities had become “vortexes of warfare” where GPS jamming, electromagnetic interference and dense structures neutralised the advantages of traditional weapons.