Jon Anderson has seen a lot of gawkers pause at his Northrop Grumman booth in the Association of the U.S. Army’s Washington conference. Not that he’s odd-looking or off-putting: He’s a gregarious guy. The stares he’s getting are about the .50 caliber M2 machine gun he’s got mounted on a treaded robot — something Northrop isn’t even selling right now.

“Quite frankly,” explains Anderson, a Northrop advanced-systems employee with short white hair and a whiter smile, “a weapon on a robot brings people into the booth.”

That it does. For the past few years, Northrop has produced a treaded, 60-inch robot vehicle to help troops haul their gear called the Carry-all Mechanized Equipment Landrover, or CaMEL.

http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2010/10/what-robo-haulers-need-now-big-guns/#ixzz13bONTR48