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The Soldier is the Network
Roland Piquepaille writes "This article from InfoWorld says that "in the battle of the future, the helmet becomes a data retrieval device." It describes a scenario where soldiers are equipped with sensors and other networking equipment. "Each person is a network with routing capability to everyone else," says Peter Marcotullio, director of development at SRI International. This technology should be available in five years for the military, which probably means that we'll become networks ourselves ten years from now. Check this column for a summary. Please note that this article is part of a special report called "From the battlefield to the enterprise" which looks at why some key technologies -- deployed on a massive scale in Afghanistan and Iraq -- may hold promise for corporate IT."
Nowadays EMP protection is not a big problem in military environment - the "faraday's cage" is simple and effective enough. (Put an electronic watch ON TOP of a working microwave oven. Nothing happens. Now put it inside.) so either the pulse would have to be VERY strong or the equipment would have to be "civil grade" (unprotected) or quite old (pre-EMP-threat). I guess such a helmet would be quite easy to protect. Maybe except the antenna.
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Before everybody starts thinking that the generals at the top of the DoD will have real-time information on what the individual soldier is doing, it's a misinterpretation of what the military is trying to do with their technology.
Basically, the first tenet of war has been "massing of firepower at critical locations," which has been said very inelegantly as "get there the fastest with the mostest." This has been a strength of units such as calvary, who rely on strong reconnaisance to defeat a stronger enemy with a smaller force by being smarter and faster. What the systems that are being developed bring to the battlefield is better communications to mass at decisive places. We aren't to the point where every soldier has a network sensor system on their bodies, because we really don't need that.
It's called the "Rumsfeld Doctrine" and it's a doctrine that uses our technological advantage to do more with less manpower because we can mass faster and better when we know the situation.
What's happening is that from the commander level up to the higher commanders, there is a very good information flow. That has always existed, in reports sent in by radio, such as a situation report (sitrep), mainenance report, or kia report. The only changes are that it's now faster because of the technology, and that we're starting to see information being collected at the higher levels then pushed down to the lower commanders in the field.
This helps the decision-makers because they have better situational awareness. If you've never been on the ground looking for stuff to kill, you'd be amazed at how easy it is to focus on your little part of the war, and then get surprised when you forget that you're one little piece of what's going on.
I do what the voices on my console tell me to do.
They don't have a bandwidth problem, CNN, FOX.. et. al have a bandwidth problem. The Military bought all the commercial sat times for the war. It was very cost effective. They have enough bandwidth using commercial sats, and that will last them until the new comm constellation goes online in 2010. Not to mention, their stake in Global Crossing keeps their terrestial bandwidth in huge supply.
When all your soldiers are routers and are sharing spectrum, the aggregate of them ADDS to your bandwidth, not subtracts. You no longer have just one path (humvee->sattelite->another humvee) you now could possible relay over a 'human' network. The more nodes, the more possible paths. Setup a fixed node with some high long range emf link back to home base, or bounce it off a sat.
I laugh everytime I see a statement like this on slashdot. I sometime forget everyone on slashdot believes they are somehow unique and think of things noone else could. Gee, do you think they should encrypt the network? Gee can it be monitored? The fact you even thought of this should tell you the military has thought of it as well.
Probably not. But just because their is some way for the enemy to take away your advantage doesn't mean you shouldn't use it. If they EMP you, it won't be a big area. A few units in close proximity to each other could all go down at once, but again, so what. They are trained to use the advantage when they have it. When they don't, they issue orders using vocal resonance called SHOUTING.
Umm, a small tactical nuke will kill them. Lack of communication at that point is moot. See above comment.
Well then it wouldn't be secure would it.
What if you capture and torture a prisoner for the information? Is the war lost? No, you expect and antcipate your enemys move. You anticipate that they may get to a Humvee which the engine is still running (the keys reset when the engine is turned off, and after a idle timeout). You are vulnerable while that stolen humvee goes unreported. But your troops should never be out of contact. At worse, you enemy has a few hours of information to the whereabouts of some of your troops. At best, you know they stole the humvee, you know they are using it, and you feed them false data. So the enemy knows your location, again, you lost an advantge, not the war. They still have to act on that information, and in the end, some grunt with a finger on the trigger can save the day by killing before being killed.
It was used in Iraq. So you could have held your breath. Not the full power of it, and not as many sensors, but Captains in the field had realtime data and video communication via a distributed wirless net. The net had to be setup by grunts, and pushed forward with the troops, but it was done. There's lots of space the EM world. Especially when you dont have to care about the FCC.
I know slashdot is home of the cynics, but for once, i'd like to see comments about "wow, this is cool technology, i wonder how we could find out more about it, i wonder if we could get an interview with people making this stuff, talk to the geeks, discuss their routing choices...etc". Instead of all this "this is dumb, some script kiddie is going to DDOS our soldier, as they look up porn on their embedded internet connections.
-malakai
-Malakai
A Dragon Lives in my Garage
Hmm, seems FARK had slashdot scooped here. This story has a picture and some more information:s tory001.html
http://www.rednova.com/news/stories/3/2003/06/01/
Remember, there were no nuclear weapons before women were allowed to vote.
They do. Special Forces do reconnaisance missions, and there is such a large capability developed for electronic warfare that almost all of the command and control centers are known well in advance. It becomes a cat-and-mouse game trying to destroy the alternates that aren't in use at the beginning of hostilities but pop up when you destroy the primaries.
I do what the voices on my console tell me to do.
Seriously, though, this sounds very much like the comm units described by Robert Anson Heinlein in Starship Troopers (the BOOK not the movie!).
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Properly designed and used this sort of communication capability can greatly expand effectiveness and survivability.
Just don't let Microsoft do the software
--
Tomas
"Police doctrine varies by department but generally involves hitting your target, so the rounds don't go downrange and hit innocent bystanders."
If you look at the shootouts between Police and criminals when there have been officers or civilians down between the criminals and the police, the police will use high volumes of fire with semi-auto or burst weapons.
Usually the Police use shotguns or 9mm submachine guns in urban settings since they lose energy quickly and don't penetrate walls/cars/doors well. The danger is since the North Hollywood shootout and the loss of officers in Portland and Waco to high power pistols and 5.56 and 5.45mm assault rifles, the police are going to M-4s and M-16s whose rounds will go a long ways and go through houses.
Sounds like your brother is telling stories again, man. :P
All the folks in a M1 tank (in the Army, I believe the marines are similar) are crosstrained. Why?
Well, we've got 4 man crews. Loader, Driver, Gunner, and Commander.
You report to a tank, you're usually a buck private who's assigned as a loader. There, you learn the driver skills, then the gunner skills, and when you make SSG or so you command the tank.
Take out the driver? The gunner or commander can take over, or the loader who's half-trained can prolly take over if he's not too new. Gunner? The commander can take over, if neccessary. And so on.
Take out a track? Yes, the tank's a mobility kill, until the repair folks come up. But if you're running around without infantry support in the first place, you're prolly in a situation where you don't *need* that infantry support. (ie, highly mobile warfare). If you've got infantry with you, but *still* need that disabled tank's crew to come out to play infantry, you've got bigger problems thank lack of cross-training. (Although every US soldier and marine can function as basic infantry).
I'm curious why (with one exception) you never seem to point out that ''this column'' is YOUR BLOG?
If you want to be a karma-whore then that's your business. And that's the only conclusion we can reach considering the sheer number of submissions (33 as of this one, not counting however many were rejected) in the 2 months since you set up your account, and the frequency with which you discourage people from reading the original articles (always pointing them to your blog).
I find some of the articles you post interesting so by all means continue to contribute. But please don't pretend that you aren't pointing people to your blog.
Presumably you're trying to turn yourself into another Internet pundit or get the traffic on your site up high enough so that you can charge big bucks for advertising. That's cool too if you want to do that.
But please ... just stop pretending that you're directing people somewhere other than your own blog.
Sincerely,
HardcoreGamer