Whoaah!! Fox News reports that the Pentagon has now contracted a Maryland company to develop a robot that will gobble up everything in its way, from grass and wood - to dead bodies! With the cute name EATR (Energetically Autonomous Tactical Robot), this machine will forage around and in a war zone, there will be no shortage of food sources around.

Fox reports: "The advantages to the military are that the robot would be extremely flexible in fuel sources and could roam on its own for months, even years, without having to be refueled or serviced. Upon the EATR platform, the Pentagon could build all sorts of things - a transport, an ambulance, a communications center, even a mobile gunship."

Someone should let the Pentagon know this is in contravention of clauses in the Geneva Convention which requires parties to "search for the dead and prevent their being despoiled". When soldiers die on the battlefield, their families want their bodies returned for burial.

Alarming stuff! John Scott Lewinski at Wired notes that the scientists have probably never one scary sci-fi movie. "If you picked up anything on flesh-eating robots over the years you know they'll ignore that tasty soybean field and make a chow line right to the nearest dead body. And, if the machines can't find enough dead people to eat, they can always make new ones."

What's going on inside the heads of the people at the Pentagon? And what exactly is the military purpose of a robot that eats dead bodies?

Jason Linkins at the Huffington Post has some suggestions: "Maybe the idea is these robots will make it difficult for independent observers to quantify casualties? Maybe President Sarah Palin will nominate one to the Supreme Court?"