Part of what I imagine, thinking about how a military force might employ this sort of technology, is the use of the telefighters as backup to actual troops -- and backup to police to (as you say) give civil society a breathing space to grow into.

Of course, there could be far less benign applications, including the domestic.

By the way, my stance on developments of this kind is that they are almost impossible to stop, but somewhat easier to direct. This requires adequate understanding, creative thought, and the political will to push in best available direction. Part of this general strategy is to avoid squandering effort on the impossible.

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The potential is for the new era of war to cause fewer military casualties but more civilian ones.

The US secret service may be able to protect top national leaders against almost all likely human adversaries. How would they do against a foe who could deploy a lot of disposable assets.

So what we're going to see is the rich deploying robots and the poor deploying terrorists.

What fun.

A society committed to the notion that government is always bad will have bad government. And it doesn't have to be that way. — Paul Krugman

By the way, to those who think this stuff is science-fiction, think of the latest unmanned NASA missions to mars, with their little autonomous all-terrain rovers.

A few years ago I got all excited about the insectoids coming out of MIT in a Scientific American story. I suppose this particular breed of autonomous robots was a necessary spinoff of that kind of engineering work.

A society committed to the notion that government is always bad will have bad government. And it doesn't have to be that way. — Paul Krugman

That will also be the civilian spinoff of this research.

The fact is that what we're experiencing right now is a top-down disaster. -Paul Krugman

Fuel cells should give performance in the roughly the same range. Solar cells would work for something that moves very slowly, or that mostly stands still except for bursts of activity (think guard duty).

One option, for machines far from human aid, would be to have them defend a perimeter and air drop supplies inside it. Sucking up fuel should be easy compared to the problems already solved. What this option says is that telefighters could operate far from any at-risk soldiers. Of course, maintenance could be a major sticking point for this scenario, at least with today's technology. Sand is nasty, and many machines don't need any help to destroy their own parts.

Words and ideas I offer here may be used freely and without attribution.