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U.S. Army To Develop "JEDI" Soldiers
Patrixmyth wrote to us with the CNN story about the U.S. Army's attempt to build Jedi Soldiers. Yes, they're going to dress up Sir Alec Guinness...er, rather Jedi is Joint Expeditionary Digital Information, which, essentially, is the Wired Soldier of Tomorrow. Palmtops, GPS, satellite up-links, oh my!
I wonder if the military picked the acronym first, then hunted around for words to fit?
This sounds like yet another way for people to kill other people without even having to be in the same zip code. Seems to me it's easier to kill people if you don't have to look at them. I vote we go back to bashing at each other with swords - I have a strong feeling people have gotten so soft in the last hundred or so years that the amount of dead people would dwindle quickly. Besides, it's far harder to hide a 4 foot long bastard sword in one's backpack when going to school.
  Not to mention the fact that given the military's nature to train (read brainwash) grunts to react to any situation in an instinctive manner, what happens when it does fail? Will they know what to do without it?
  Any military man will tell you that this can be an infantryman's worst nightmare, and not because they are afraid that it may happen to them and they won't know what to do. Quite the contrary, grunts (esp. Marines) are well equipped to "adapt and overcome", but as we all know, there's always one knucklehead, and he's the one that gets his fireteam killed.
  Were I still in, the idea of such fragile technology on the battlefield would terrify me, although it would be a great toy for back in the barracks.
"I got a half gallon of Jack, and 2 dozen Ant Traps. I'm about to get wild." -me
Considering that these things run WinCE straight from the Evil Empire, I think they should be called SITH: Soldier's Information and Tactical... um, H-something...
Handheld
Please reboot for the changes to take effect.
Ryan
Well, maybe they'll have a nice paperclip friend on their palmtop, to help them with their system on the battlefield. :)
EPLRS, which is the location-finding part of this, uses spread spectrum burst transmission and sends very small packets of data. I am told (though I admit it sounds too good to be true) that it is virtually impossible to use direction-finding equipment to pinpoint the user's location. We don't have the technology to do it and neither does the enemy.
The people who make decisions about purchasing this kind of stuff are smart enough to ask the same questions as you. More importantly, they know what artillery does to signal sites that's give away their positions. So don't sweat it. Personally, I am more worried about my boss being able to track my location. Questions like "Why did you spend all day at that location?" are way too much micro-management for my tastes.
This is intended as just one more way to give situational awareness to soldiers, and in that respect it's a good thing (tm)
oni
think of all the geeks who will rush to enlist only to find out they fall miserably short of the physical requirements.
Someone please send them the cluestick. I'll even pay for postage.
Ugh!
darren
Cthulhu for President!
(darren)
...or at the veryleast require royalties?
BlackNova Traders
Once you start down the dark path, forever will it rule your destiny. UNDERSTAND THAT, DO YOU, SOLDIER?
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Considering all the arms that the U.S. exports, either legally or illegally, maybe this is not such a bad idea...
Sign me up! I'm a crack shot as long as I have my glasses on.>:)
Of course, I prefer the Apple Newton to those Cringe devices.... But I'm sure that won't set me back to much. Probably keep me out of officer training though.>:)
Kintanon
Check out JoshJitsu.info for Brazilian Ji
why not /. readers as JEDI soldiers? simple..
an officer's diary
day 1: the new recruits came in, and got handed their hand-helds. So far so good.
day 2: It seems some of the new recruits installed some software on their hand-helds. it's probably games or something. Most of the new recruits just beat me at quake, so they can't be all bad.
day 3: The new recruits are really getting into these hand-held things. We had to let off one of the new recruits. he kept whining about our dinners not including grits, and poured his dinner down his pants.
day 4: wtf did those guys do with their hand-helds? Not a decent window inside, just this silly dos-prompt. when I asked them about it, they started yelling that this was linux, not dos
day 5: I have no idea what the recruits are on. they keep talking about beautiful-wolf or something.
day 6: our encryption has been broken. It's been safe for at least 10 years, but the new recruits used their wolf (I havent seen any canine around) to crack it, and they knew the orders before I did.
.........
//rdj
No one can understand the truth until he drinks of coffee's frothy goodness.
--Sheikh Abd-Al-Kadir, 1587
Not only that, but what about the article regarding the jamming of GPS? Let's make our troops dependent upon easily corruptible information that can, quite possibly, be spoofed and make them shoot at themselves.
That's kinda funny, the US army beaten by a couple of Uber-geeks from sweden with long hair, tee shirts and an understanding of E&M and computers...
"I thought IBM was born with the word..." Stereloab
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
Considering that these things run WinCE straight from the Evil Empire, I think they should be called SITH: Soldier's Information and Tactical... um, H-something...
You figure the Army could have asked the Navy about Windows' reliability in mission-critical applications...
Someday, you're going to die. Get over it.
This is not insightful, its just windows bashing. what kind of security do these things need??? they all talk via sat. if you want to get into them you either have to hold them in your hand or be able to crack the sat. system. for the former the soldier better have erased the thing before the bad guys got it. in the later the system would have bigger problems than its OS. as far as intercepting the transmisions, what the hell does that have to do with the OS? they are going to be encrypted in some way and any OS can be coded to be able to read the stream if you know how. plus when these things we being designed, mobile linux/BSD most likely didn't even exist! it was either start from scratch or use CE or Palm. Palm just really isn't very good at this sort of thing plus it didn't do color. and CE was right there ready to go, just write the new drivers and the apps. The palmtops are just dumb clients, they send and receive data and if the enemy gets a hold of one intact, then its only a matter of time, no matter what OS is being used before they can crack it. So come on guys, security????? this has nothing to do with security, they aren't running a web server where anyone can push and pull at it all they want!
Not sure about the Newton part, but there was some work done with wearables and HUDs, and the USMC was doing some testing.
I also recall some work done with Linux by the USMC in testing various computing platforms for possible future deployment. Seems to me there was a Colonel who was in charge of the operation (forgot his name) and he had good things to say about Linux and that they planned to use it for simulation and other things.
I'm pretty sure that was the USMC, but this was like, four years ago and I could be remembering incorrectly.
Just be sure to wear the gold uniform when you beam down -- you know what happens when you wear the red one.
Yes, yes, we're heard this before.
Back when I was in, the Army equipped a maneuver brigade with all the latest goo-gags and sent them down to the National Training Center at Ft. Irwin. This was the early to mid 90s.
They got trounced, but then everyone gets trounced at Ft. Irwin.
After all the AARs (after action reviews) they discovered that the EXFOR (Expiramental Force) didn't get trounced nearly as bad as the thought, which translated to: they did pretty well.
However, it was also noted that all that high-tech gear really sucked in the desert - it broke... a lot. Quite often the command structure had to drop the digital equipment and wip out the grease pencils and map overlays and fight the "old fashioned" way.
In short the Army basically said: (my words) Neat stuff, works OK, has problems though, maybe next time.
This is my PocketPC. There are many like it, but this one is mine. My PocketPC is my best friend. It is my life. I must master it, as I must master my life. Without me my PocketPC is useless. Without my PocketPC, I am useless. I must boot my PocketPC true. I must hack faster than my enemy who is trying to kill me. I must hack him before he hacks me. I will. Before God I swear this creed. My PocetPC and myself are defenders of my country. We are the masters of our enemy. We are the saviours of my life. So be it .. . until there is no enemy ... but peace. Amen. Good night ladies!
and they're left with nothing but 50lbs of useless scrap to lug around... :)
I'll accept the concept of outfitting troops with high tech interfaces suitable for the modern battlefield. But I'm wondering about some things. The enemy (presuming we're fighting a war against a modern army) will have radio detection capabilities. One of the things you didn't do when I was in the army was use your radio for long transmissions, or it might invite artillary fire on your coordinates (even back then! and the detectors are faster now). I hope they have a way to avoid detection of their electronics transmissions.
Gonzo
No light sabers? No Laser Guns?
Come on, this is another showing of the us government having it's heads up it's collective ass. Don't call it JEDI until it's Jedi damnit. When will they learn?
Boycotting the US Government until they learn
SgtPepper
The preceeding was an attempt at humour, feel free to ignore it
Yesterday there was an article about the WinCE base PocketPC and everyone kept pointing out how often these crashed, including C|Net
So today the US military decides that they should use these same WinCE systems for the "wired soldier." Does anyone else smell the impending doom here?
Mmmph. A GPS. A cell phone. WinCE. A JEDI needs not these things.
"This is your world. These are your people. You can live for yourself today, or help build tomorrow for everyone."
"Use the force Luke!"
So Luke switches off the damn thing and blows the Death Star out of existence! Hey! Even a JEDI knows that! Why doesn't the Army?
Who comes up with these names? Let's keep Star Wars in the realm of imagination, please...
to err is human, to forgive is divine, to forget is... umm...
Issue one of this to every soldier, with a fill copy of the bible attached (A old fashioned paper bible, not electronic form built in) Said soldier puts device/bible in front shirt pocket and is proected from bullets going through his heart, and the army doesn't have to serprate the christian soldier (which is protected by the bible) from the geek soldier (who is protected by the electronic device)
#2: When you're as big an outfit as the US military, you don't need to build a new system from consumer products; you can do it better and cheaper (and hella secreter) if you spec and build it yourself. Do you think the NSA does they're decrypting on a giant beowulf of x86's running NT or TurboLinux somewhere? 0f f**king course not. Even the frogs (i'm part French so can the flames) have enough clue to build a custom system, albeit from high-grade (read Alpha) consumer processors; I'm under the impression that the NSA has custom DES-cracking chips in their crypto supercomputers (I don't have any proof, but if i did i'd prolly be dead in 10 minutes anyways ;)
#3: The name JEDI is a dead giveaway that something's fishy here. Ever heard of Reagan's "Star Wars" initiative? The project was impossible from the start because in the day, creating the estimated minimum 2 million lines of code, cleanly enough to direct something as precise and dangerous as a satellite anti-missile system, was NOT POSSIBLE. Reagan was informed of this, apparently he didn't care. This falls in the same category, not because the names come from the same fictional work but rather because they are both obviously foolish tasks to anyone who has a working concept of what's involved in making it work.
So why is the DOD doing this? I have a couple guesses, listed in increasing likeliness IMHO:
a) It's a big PR stunt. The DOD is trying to impress either US citizens, or scare foreign militaries. Since the latter are probably laughing their asses off right now, I'd say the former is a little more likely. Maybe they are just trying to drum up some semicomputer literates, who are just gung-ho (or dumb) enough to run through a battlefield with $30K in useless equipment (or worse than useless, since it isn't weightless).
b)Our government wants to see how effective a force a smaller government could field with off the shelf mobile computers. Still unlikely because any smart government (read, any other government) would have enough sense to run OpenBSD at the very least, if not build their own in house solution from *BSD linux scratch whatever. Do you think the Viet Cong would have chosen winCE? hmmmmmmmmmmmmm.
c) Advanced research. The D0D really thinks winCE is great, and that microsoft can and will provide military-grade security in the first place and support in the second place. The article is true, not misinformation; I find this unlikely but possible. hey, stranger things have happened and even the military may still be lagging the way the FBI did in the 80's when they started trying to catch phreakerz. Unlikely but possible.
d) Our government actually Doesn't have its head up its ass, they're only outfitting like 2 guys with the lamed out CE vests, but last year they finally perfected their BSD based vests, and now they need a cover story. As a bonus, enemy crackerz will think they are hacking a lame win system, and if they are just script kidz they won't get past the decoy defenses. Meanwhile the BSD JEDI ('s?) will already have kicked Saddam's sorry ass for the 90th time.
e) Bill Gates is fronting the entire operation, hardware, software, even hired ex-US military mercernaries, just to showcase winCE. The troops will never see combat, and assignment to the JEDI corps will replace KP and using your toothbrush to make those latrines shine like a drill seargents' boots. Honestly possible, however silly it may seem; Bill has tons of money that may not be worth anything soon (ms stock) so why not spend it on silly things that might make some slight difference?
I honestly don't know which is more likely d) or e), but this is /. so the order was inevitable. However dumb the military may be, their purpose remains to fight and die to protect the sovereignty (sp?) of the US and it's colonies err i mean strategic third world partners. I really don't think that this is for real because when it comes down to it, they don't enjoy throwing american lives away frivolously. Obvious PR/coverup or both. thank you drive through.
"A witty saying proves nothing." -Voltaire
"A witty saying proves nothing." ~Voltaire
"d'Oh!" ~Homer
That our proposal for a Linux/Slash-based system was turned down by the Pentagon. We called it the General Reference Information & Tactical System. I guess JEDI sounded better.
Information wants to be free -- but informants want to be paid.
Lucasfilm, Ltd. vs. US Department of Defense...
See the landmark trademark dilution suit that has Washington on its heels!
See a team of Lucasfilm lawyers impersonate Wookies!
See a President beholden to Hollywood interests utter "Let the Wookie win!"
A long time ago on a West Portico far away... a B-movie actor escaped the evil clutches of Hollywood and became President of the Galactic Republic, or a reasonable facsimile thereof. Ever since that time, the Department of Defense has been obsessed with stealing Lucasfilm's trademarks, from "Star Wars" to "Jedi". So, hiding in their outpost off the sixth exit of the Marin system, a team of Lucasfilm lawyers are preparing a counterattack....
This is my opinion and my opinion only. Incidentally, IANAL.
MOO;IANAL.
There used to be a picture linked here.
The military is a machine. Soldiers are the "commodity components". Giving soldiers expensive, breakage-prone, training-intensive, high-tech gear is going to have on of two effects:
1) Raise the cost of running the military without substantially raising it's effectiveness. Think of the people you knew in high school who were joining the Army because they didn't know what else to do. Now give that person a palmtop, a GPS and a 24 hours to find their ass. Come pick up any pieces that remain tomorrow.
2) Give the military a false sense of unbeatability: "Gentlemen, we are the best-equipped fighting force in the world." Yeah, until 3 guys with AK-47s in Jeeps come knock down your satellite transceivers. When your GPS-dependent droids don't know which way is north, it's unlikely they'll come running to your aid.
It has been proven over and over again (from the Goths to the American Revolution to Vietnam) that distributed, guerilla-style fighting is less fragile (and thus usually more successful) than centralized, top-down fighting. This money could be better spent teaching soldiers how to navigate via astronomy (with a homemade sextant) and some memory-enhancement and "fast math" skills (to replace the palmtop).
--
Linux MAPI Server!
http://www.openone.com/software/MailOne/
(Exchange Migration HOWTO coming soon)
Perhaps the government should look into purchasing Iridium and using it to both transfer military use transmissions and earn some money back by selling services to phone companies around the world. For once the military might could pay for its own satellites.
Bad Mojo
Bad Mojo
"If you can't win by reason, go for volume." -- Calvin
.... I had, as an infantryman, exactly one job: wait around until told to go somewhere and kill the enemy. I had one tool: Uncle Sam gave me an M16A2, for use the said job (sure, I had others, but that was what my main tool was).
Lets not forget, I believe it was Heinlen, who basically said "The more gadgets you load a grunt down with, the easier it is for someone to walk up and bash his head in with a rock". See above; my life as an infantryman was simple and uncomplicated. I can bet you I was much more effective than anyone trying to locate map points w/ a PDA and calling for help on a cell phone. We relied on maps, and each other. Primitive, huh.
Given, also, that my main tool - my weapon - was fragile and sensitive to even the most minor of abuses that occur in the field, do they really think something like a PDA and a CELL PHONE are going to survive a grunt's life?
ZOMG I WOULD LOVE TO KNOW ABOUT YOUR FEELINGS ON MACINTOSH VERSUS WINDOWS, VI VERSUS EMACS, AND HOW YOU'RE NOT A DORK
It would be much better if they were running Linux. I think they should make their own distro and call it LiPalm (as in: "I love the smell of LiPalm in the morning")
kwsNI
MIA
KIA
POW
GPF
human://billy.j.mabray/
"Every good system has a backup." -- Dale Hanchey
Let's just hope the Pentagon is not as stupid as the Trade Federation. Otherwise they'll put all their battlefield CCC&I on one satellite like those idiots... and watch a whole battalion of "JEDI" stumble around blindly (well, at least they aren't droids, yet) when it goes down....
#include "disclaim.h"
"All the best people in life seem to like LINUX." - Steve Wozniak
#include "disclaim.h"
"All the best people in life seem to like LINUX." - Steve Wozniak
Soldier1: That's it.. Jim's dead. Never had a chance.
Soldier2: What happened? What was the cause of death?
Soldier1: Blue Screen.
BilldaCat