Nearly 10 years ago, the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency, or DARPA, showed that a self-driving car could navigate a 132-mile stretch of desert. That proof-of-concept test, DARPA Grand Challenge (2005), sought simply to illustrate how military resupply might be made less risky. (It also became the basis for Google’s self-driving car program.)

What does the Army want from robots 10 years from now? In short, to make human soldiers more lethal in combat, make the job of soldiering less deadly, and turn dismounted patrols into a high-performing mix of soldiers and semi-autonomous machines. That includes programs that haven’t been formally announced, such as one called Mobile Infantry, also from DARPA. (You read it here first.) It will mix soldiers with, essentially, self-driving all terrain vehicles during combat operations.

Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster, deputy commander of the Training and Doctrine Command, or TRADOC, has commissioned a doctrine on autonomy and robotic systems. Expected for release in January, it will be a followup to November’s Army Operating Concept for 2020-40, and will lay out the Army’s expectations for robotics. But its outlines are already visible in the Operating Concept, which says, “The application of emerging technology creates the potential for affordable, interoperable, autonomous, and semi-autonomous systems that improve the effectiveness of Soldiers and units. Autonomy-enabled systems will deploy as force multipliers at all echelons from the squad to the brigade combat teams.”

For months, military leaders eagerly have emphasized robotic autonomy as a key component of future science and technology development. But not everyone is looking to replace every human in every situation with a bunch of metal and wires. Ten years after the onset of self-driving cars, military officials are still asking themselves how smart, or autonomous, they want robots to be, and what they want robots to do.

The doctrine will be a “clear articulation,” of the Army’s near, mid, and far future expectations and desires for robots, Army Lt. Col. Matt Dooley recently told an audience at the National Defense Industrial Association in Virginia. “Autonomy-enabled systems are the next revolutionary capability for force 2025 and beyond. The Army envisions a future operational concept where autonomy-enabled formations augment the warfighter as team members, not just as tools.”

Here are some of the things the Army wants from its future bots, according to Dooley:

1. Allow forces to maneuver out of contact and exploit known enemy positions. This requirement has to do with the military’s efforts to avoid the homemade bombs known as improvised explosive devices, or IEDs. The military recently all but shuttered its Joint IED Defeat Organization, or JIEDDO, but “that mission is not going away,” said Dooley.

2. Conduct logistical resupply. Robot resupply programs aren’t new, but the need for them is growing. As the Army loads more gear on its patrolling soldiers, knee and back injuries have risen quickly, according to Brad Tousley, who directs DARPA’s office of Tactical Technology.

“One of the things we’re very concerned about is reducing that burden,” said Tousley, “treating the squad as a system…not giving everyone in the squad the same thing [heavy piece of equipment]. Using robotics on the squad level can add to that.”

That imperative led to BigDog, the famously loud four-legged robot pack animal from Boston Dynamics. The company emerged from the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency’s Legged Squad Support System program, or LS3 , and was acquired last year by Google.