Slashdot Mirror
DoD developing Linux-based "Soldier's Radio"
Blind RMS Groupie writes "According to this article at EE Times, DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) is developing a voice/data unit for infantry soldiers based on multiple StrongARM processors and embedded Linux. The radios will link together in what is characterized as a "mobile, ad-hoc, peer-to-peer network that uses frequency-hopping technology to avoid communication intercepts and location-finding capability.""
It's odd that this just made it into the media, as this project (known as SUO SAS) has been around for the better part of 2 years now--not counting the previous phases of development, which go back several more years.
While the article got a lot of things right, it was also a good portion of hype. I worked on the networking software for this (which is built on top of the TAO CORBA ORB, btw), and while it is conceivable that it might scale up to 10,000 nodes, it is unlikely to do so in it's current form (well, as of a few months ago, anyway). In fact, we faced more or less the same scalability problems that any ad-hoc wireless network system faces, plus the added complexities of having to guarantee consistent tactical picture maintenance (how do you keep a consistent data 'picture' of an entire battlefied among 10,000 separated nodes, with no guarantees on connectivity, or even addressing between any two particular nodes? Now, how do you tackle message-based quality-of-service on top of this mess?). So, for those of you wondering, the problem tackled by this system is a lot bigger and more complicated that than faced by peer-to-peer filesharing systems (think superset of the gnutella problem), and the algorithms we were developing weren't perfect--or even good, necessarily. The problems facing ad-hoc networking are certainly as unsolved and difficult as they were before.
Another important note is that while we ultimately got our way and were able to use Linux for development (partly because we absolutely refused to work with a platform where we didn't have access to the network stack code), it was kind of an uphill battle with DARPA to do so. Linux still isn't qualified to be running on any type of deployed military system, and believe me, we heard about it constantly (I still shudder at the thought of trying to do our development in Windows...)
All that said, the concept of the project was/is pretty cool, but, as always, reality is less dramatic than its press release. If you want more info on the project and related research, here are some links:
Info on geo-routing algorithms (directly relevant to the SUO SAS problem)
A blurb on SUO SAS by SRI
The DARPA ATO web page describing SUO SAS
Let's try not to let fact interfere with our speculation here, OK?
I considered this in writing the OSD and decided that I could not prohibit it without reducing some important freedoms.Bruce
Bruce Perens.
A central problem is that all the efficiencies possible in a large-scale network are lost without some aggregation, some centralization. Kleinrock worked a bit on the idea of allowing groups of soldiers to cluster together to form temporary hubs close to where additional bandwidth was necessary, but the problem is extraordinarily difficult both mathematically and physically--it's taken a long time for systems to get small enough for the research to be feasible.
Moreover, ARPA/IPTO/ITO really lost steam around the 80's, when Bob Kahn stepped down (no offense, Saul). And they didn't have no Linux, neither. So maybe the time is right, now.
--
--
Make mine methylphenidate.
I gotta wonder how Linus and most of the kernel development group feels about this. While Linux probably isn't guiding missles yet (and I honestly doubt it ever will be) it is being deployed (buzzword alert) in what could be considered a life or death situation (in the end). Not only does this give Linux some impressive standing-groud, it says something about Linux, open source and (while Allchin may not agree) the "American Way". I hope to hear more stories similar to this one in the near and distant future.
Cheers and congratulations to the kernel development team and Linux in general. Keep up the amazing work!
Geoff
Believe it or not, individual soldiers in the Army generally still don't have personal radios down past the squad leader level.
There's a reason for this. Most field tactical radios are bulky and heavy. An individual soldier doesn't really want to carry one.
Also, it's "SINCGARS", not "SINGGARS".
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
many of the officers and NCO's (as opposed to rank&file soldiers) have been among the most clueful customers I've ever dealt with...
Commissioned Officers and Non-Commissioned Officers are more clueful because the ranking system works somewhat like the Moderation System here at Slashdot.
All of the really Intelligent and Insightful people earn promotions, and all of the idiots stay at the bottom.
It's a wonderful system that works as well to ensure that there are high quality officers in the Army as the Slashdot Moderation system ensures that there are high quality... uh... nevermind.
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
Moderation Totals: Wrong=2, Stupid=3, Total=5.
Better watch out for Colonel Panic then...
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
There's a higher than even chance that this will be akin to a press release about .NET from Microsoft. The initial concept of the product and the actual (if any) end result are likely to have significant variance.
However, this is part of a larger DoD trend toward providing soldiers with ubiquitous communication. Believe it or not, individual soldiers in the Army generally still don't have personal radios down past the squad leader level.
While it's been pointed out that special ops units have lots of sophisticated personal communications devices, for the average soldier or marine on the ground, there's a lot of room for improvement.
This DARPA project is one out of many different options the military is exploring, so be happy (or upset, if you're not fond of the military) that they're exploring multiple paths before committing to a massive restructuring of their tactical communications setup.
Also as has been noted elsewhere, signal-hopping has been used for years by the US military in SINGGARS systems.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
I understood the DoD chose Linux over Windows because they didn't want their soldiers to take orders from General Protection Fault! :)
Last night I shot an elephant in my pajamas. How he got in my pajamas I'll never know.
[Background: Men running everywhere, tanks crushing the trenches in the middle of a battle. Two soldiers hide at the end of a trench. One is cursing at a small, handheld LCD screen with a packet radio connection to the internet]
First soldier: Goddamn it, submit!
Second: Lets get out of here, man! That's tanks gonna crush us!
First: Just a second, I nearly got the first post!
[Second soldier runs away, and the tank crushes the first soldier while he continues to yell at the computer. Afterward, another soldier runs up, to find the screen showing this: