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MilSpec Biotech
Glurx writes: "The US Army commissioned a report so they could explore how the biotechnology revolution can enhance their ability to execute their missions on battlefields in the next few decades. The SF Chronicle has a story about it. You can read the report here."
So... once we crossbreed humans with cockroaches, we'll have the perfect soldiers?
Don't get me wrong, biotechnology might have some interesting applications here, but it's easy to see how this could be taken too far. Quite readily taken WAY too far.
Personally, I'd be more in favor of CLONING the perfect soldier than actually creating something non-human. Somehow I find that less frighteningly creepy.
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Actually, if you look at the history of modern armies in the last 200 years, you will see that the vast majority of the time spent by the vast majority of soldiers is spent in the barracks or training.
Enhanced abilities to execute a mission, is simply another way of saying, "We are more capable than anyone else's army, so don't mess with us."
Nice try at trolling though, or perhaps it's a lack of understanding of how a modern army works. For a better understanding of that, look into military history books by Keegan, he always does a good job and he taught military history at Sandhurst.
That's exactly what they are doing. Technology like this will enable problems to be dealt with quickly and efficiency, with minimal loss of life and collateral damage. And it will act as a deterrent. If you want peace, you must prepare for war.
Beautifully written troll.
Actually, I would liken it more to the use of animals to pull wagons, chase down criminals and fight to the death for our amusement in Tiauana.
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"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
Perhaps you should consider looking for positive uses, rather than concentrating only on the bad possibilities?
if only he could use his trolling for good instead of evil...
this is just a placeholder till i send back my real sig from the future.
The Main benefit of this, in addition to Friend or Foe ID, is in the event a US soldier/airman is a POW. This would enable the ability of our soldiers/airmen, etc... at risk of capture to ingest such a device prior to a mission, and assist in identifying location, initiating recovery, etc...
Encoding a low powered signal would be the best way to conceal the device from the enemy's reception equipment, while having more sensitive reception abilities would be the way to acquire the signal.
A potential for POW status, such as in special operations where exposure is greater, also explains the need to have it ingestible for at-risk personnel, as opposed to externally worn. Such a device would have enabled the recovery of our pilot in Mogadishu and the pilots and others who were captured during the large desert warfare exercise we had a few years back.
War is a fact of life and of history. It is inevitable. But it can be controlled and the likelihood reduced. The only way to reduce it, though, is to make warfare cheap for oneself and expensive for the other guy--this means that he would be a fool to start hostilities.
The higher ups aren't the ones doing the dying, but they're the ones calling the shots. Some of the brass spends their entire lives preparing for war, and you can bet that can sometimes create a desire to have one. They want to prove themselves, their theories, their plans, it's human nature.
Naturally this isn't a generalization about everyone in the upper echelons.
Applied Digital Solutions, an e-business-to-business solutions provider, acquired the patent rights to the miniature digital transceiver it has named "Digital Angel®." The company plans to market the device for a number of uses, including as a "tamper-proof means of identification for enhanced e-business security."
[source]
Some technology they're looking at
Want Root?
brain implants, real- time monitoring of gene expression and performance-enhancing drugs.
maybe allow sensor equipped snipers to distinguish friend from foe God help the poor soldier that takes a shit and leaves the device behind. Even worse, someone suggested tracking POW's with it. I can see our special forces going in to rescue POW's as their unerring soldier tracking devices leads them directly to a latrine.
I'm the big fish in the big pond bitch.
Grad: Hmmm, well MegaTech Inc are offering me the chance to work on cutting edge technology, a massive salary, pension, health plan, car and other benefits, so why should I sign up for the armed forces?
Captain: We can make you bionic!
I know I'd be tempted ; )
Nothing wrong with that, as long as the Department of Defense focuses on defense.
Sorry but this begs the obvious quote:
"The best defense is a good offense." - Vince Lombardi
Offensive deterence is a way better defense than any kind of literal defense, IMHO.
Some people have a way with words, and some people, um, thingy.
Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose that you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.
Give a man a fire, and he'll be warm for a day, but set him on fire, and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.
Also, if you'd have looked at the Army report, you would have seen that the things they're talking about using aren't living organisms, but proteins, DNA, RNA, antibodies, and such. I didn't read the report fully, but the most that they might have been considering using living organism was using bacteria to make holographic materials with some interesting properties (and even then I think it was probably using proteins from the bacteria). And I sure hope that no one on Slashdot considers bacteria to be intelligent on any level.
Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose that you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.
Give a man a fire, and he'll be warm for a day, but set him on fire, and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.
It also allows enemy sensor equipped snipers to have a field day...
-- Wrist-top biosensors to guard against germ warfare, combined perhaps with vaccines that could be developed rapidly in the field and "functional food" rations laced with edible vaccines."
The anti-ebola tastes best when you add the reto-virus ketchup.
-- Armor as flexible as skin, tough as an abalone shell and enhanced with "living characteristics," such as the ability to heal itself when torn.
This damn armor healed itself when I went to the latrine and now my **** is stuck!
-- Even more far-out possibilities fall under the general heading of biology- based "performance enhancement" for soldiers, including brain implants...
Brain implants? I knew a Captain who could have used one of those...
No Zen is good zen
Don't be silly. Ground forces are vital to any armed conflict, for reasons too numerous and obvious for me to detail here. Besides, Great Britain already tried to commit to a "missiles-only" military (and failed). But I'm sure your implementation is far superior to whatever feeble plan those silly Brits came up with.
Any sufficiently well-organized community is indistinguishable from Government.
And the best thing is: Everybody else is doing exactly the same
It's just a fact of life!!!
<RANT>
Now WHAT REALLY GETS ON MY NERVES is all those self-righteous (US; non-US; martians; i don't care) that come around saying
Oh, we're all goody-goody and our weapons are only for show so that all those mean foreign baddies don't do us any harm...
Please ... either you're a fool or you think everybody else is a fool
</RANT>
Some things that were mentioned in the article are permanent/semi-permanent. While it is laudable to "improve your fighting capabilities," does anything think that these things are going to be implanted through volunteering only?
I sure as one dont think so. In the armed forces mentality, these enhancements would probably be an "all-or-nuttin" bid -- every soldier under their command will have it done. How could this actually be forced on them? Instead of talking to their buddies in 50 years about this shot they took in their arm, they can talk about the permanent "brain enhancement" they experienced...
We infect more people before 6AM than you'll infect all day!"
-OzJuggler
Life's a buffer; you can only get out of it what you put into it! C:-)
(a little explanation)
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Army Medic: "Yah. It's a self-replicating system. It's still in the testing phase, but since we suddenly found ourselves at war, we had to avail ourselves of every advantage. Sorry."
If you can heal a soldier that would have died, temporarily so he can kill 5 more of the enemy, before dying a more excruciating death than the otherwise would have, do you do that?
I think this is the big question of biotech medicines in military applications...
--CTH
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--Got Lists? | Top 95 Star Wars Line
Capt:
There are a thousand forms of subversion, but few can equal the convenience and immediacy of a cream pie -Noel Godin
Apparently Digital Angel combines a muscle-activated power supply, a GPS receiver, and some sort of transmitter. (If it didn't have a transmitter, it couldn't broadcast your location.) For most civilian purposes, that could be a cell-phone transmitter. But remember, holding a cell phone near your head for a half-hour a day has been neither proven safe nor proven dangerous. Having it implanted under your skin and on 24x7 is rather more likely to be dangerous. And it will need a little extra transmitting power to get the signal out.
But for military applications, this thing has to work where there is no cell-phone network (or the USAF has just targeted all the towers to make sure the other guys aren't using encrypted cell-phones to communicate or even to tie together detection networks). So you need a transmitter powerful enough to reach a satellite. I don't know, but I suspect that is quite a few watts, as compared to the 5mW peak signal of a cell phone. That burning sensation? It's your tracking device cooking your biceps...
Do I even need to comment on the stupidity of having our troops walking through the woods while broadcasting a signal anyone with a $25 radio receiver can home in on?
No, we wouldn't want to protect any foreign interests like, say, oil, upon which we are dependent.
Don't be naive. The United States doesn't get into a war or battle or peacekeeping missions just because it believes thats "the right thing to do." Most of the time, such participation is sparked by a very specific interest. With regards to middle-eastern countries, you can rest assured that the interest is in oil. The United States depends upon it. Take that away, and we are crippled. Why do you think there is a strategic oil reserve that people are reluctant to touch? It's not really there for consumers.
GreyPoopon
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GreyPoopon
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Why is it I can write insightful comments but can't come up with a clever signature?
Bacteria can be engineered to "eat" toxic chemicals in contaminated areas, thus cleaning the place up after an attack from Saddam's illegal stock-piles. There was an army project to do this some years ago, and it was shown to be fesible. (I don't know if they followed through with the idea.)
Though I suspect the original accusation of a double-standard was just a troll to begin with, it's a fair question nonetheless, and somebody had this great rebuttal censored:
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" I'm not sure what you're not understanding about it. Back during the Gulf War, Iraq was tired of the coalition forces kicking its ass, so it agreed to certain sanctions in exchange for a cease-fire. The UN Security Council later decided that Iraq would have to destroy its chemical weapons (among other things) before it would consider lifting the sanctions.
The Iraqi goverment only brought the restrictions on itself by being a destabilizing force in an already shaky region. "
All those old useless gadgets are no different from what the hawks are planning for future recruits. It is supposed to give them a false sense of security as they are being fed to the cannons. A soldier with his legs blown off won't have much need for automatic band-aid.
Gotta give them some credit for their openness. The brain implant idea might cause a little trouble for their recruiting, or maybe they can cut a deal with the prison system.
-- Another senseless waste of fine bytes.
Nothing wrong with that, as long as the Department of Defense focuses on defense. However, most of the resources seem to go towards making better weapons for offense. Coastal forts, anti-air defense, domestic air force, and a reserve-based army, navy patrols, sub patrols, border patrols should go a long way towards defending U.S. All those blitz wars in foreign countries has nothing to do with defense.
-- Another senseless waste of fine bytes.
I have to say that your crack dealer must be a chemical genius.
The military of this nation's primary purpose is to protect the borders of this nation and what lies within them, but their secondary purpose is to protect American interests abroad.
Just like every other military force that has existed throughout history, there is more than one use for our military.
If the military were cut back to 1% of its current size, it would have trouble defending a playground.
Our military's best tactic is intimidation. People who are inclined to cause trouble with us have to think twice because of what our military is capable of. On the whim of the president, any building, any place on the planet can be reduced to rubble within 24 hours.
Even Saddam Hussein's underground bunkers couldn't protect him from our airforce. Having more spare parts than we currently need lead to the development of a bomb built with spare howitzer barrels. Those barrels were heavy and strong enough to penetrate several hundred feet into the ground (through reinforced concrete) to destroy a bunker.
Without that extra inventory some weapons might have been on the drawing board for several years, and some of the conflicts that we've had would have been drawn out, costing many more lives.
Remember you don't have to kill them all if they know that you're capable of doing it.
-You can cry, but you'll still die. There'll be no tears in the end.
Are you kidding?
After about a decade or two of this I'll happily line up.
I couldn't imagine how my CS kill/death ratio would improve if I could decrease my reaction time by 20-30 ms.
Where do I sign up?
-You can cry, but you'll still die. There'll be no tears in the end.
Several HUNDRED feet?? Do you have a reference for this?
I saw it on the discovery channel.
I could not tell you the name of the program however.
-You can cry, but you'll still die. There'll be no tears in the end.
Funny, I thought Saddam Hussein was still in power...
It was not our goal to unseat him. What we wanted was for Saddam to withdraw his forces from Kuwait. Funny, last time I checked, he had.
-You can cry, but you'll still die. There'll be no tears in the end.
The term 'national defense' means protecting a nation. It may involve some degree of fighting, but it need not be synonymous with 'fighting'.
I certainly wouldn't be surprised if such research were indeed being done, and things like diplomacy and encouraging peace have probably been researched further back than recorded history. Failure to implement such measures can often be traced to political or bureaucratic obstruction.
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Mmm... delicious white marbles...