Kids play MoD war games

Should children as young as 12 be involved in an MoD-sponsored contest to develop military hardware?
by James Randerson
Aug. 28, 2008

Last week I had an extremely stage-managed insight into the MoD's Grand Challenge at Copehill Down on Salisbury Plain.

Copehill Down is a mocked-up German village built at the height of the Cold War for training British soldiers in street fighting. But it is currently playing host to a collection of experimental spy robots. The autonomous vehicles include mini-tanks, model helicopters and even a flying saucer.

The idea of the challenge is to develop robots that can scope out an enemy-controlled city for threats such as snipers and improvised explosive devices. On the surface it was all good gung-ho fun, but I couldn't help feeling uncomfortable that some of the 11 teams had involved children as young as 12 in the development of their robots. OK, so they are not designing automatic rifles and cluster bombs, and getting kids into science is good, but this is all part of making the UK military more effective.

Prof Phil Sutton, the MoD's director general of science and technology strategy, justified it thus:

The nation needs scientists and engineers - put aside defence - for the good of the economy. And what we want to do is excite young people to know that science and engineering is a great thing to engage in. Whereas once upon a time you might have drawn a hard line between defence and civil, it's much more fuzzy now.

And there's more on this point in the video.

Is this really something children should be part of ... or am I just being a wooly liberal?