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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."
I can think of some other technologies that I would have liked to have available at work, some days.
of soilders taking Playboy into battle. Why bother when you can get thehun on your HUD?
I don't know about anyone else, but I'm starting to see scenes from 'Spaceballs'...
Anybody knows if FCC has some advisories about wireless devices touching your body for long periods of time? A booklet I have (from my wireless router) states that "The FCC with its action in ET Docket 96-8 has adopted safety standard for human exposure to RF energy emitted: 1) Do not touch or move antennas while unit is transmitting or receiving."
With DARPA and DoD's never ending penchant for technology to solve every problem, I see potential for numerous problems with the "wired soldier". DoD has a bandwidth problem now trying to control and get imagery from airborne Predator UAV's, what happens when you wire the individual soldier? Where is this bandwidth going to come from? Can this be subject to monitoring and how is it going to be secured? For that matter can it withstand an EMP pulse? If I wanted to take out communicating enemy forces using modern comm gear that is not hardened, a small tactical nuke would do just fine. And what about the possibility of interception even if it is secure? What if a unit that has a base unit to receive updates is captured, then parts of the system (or the whole system) is compromized. This will take years of testing before it ever becomes reality, I wouldn't hold my breath.
The date is 2199. A unit of the Fourth French Resistence, a ragtag bunch, hide in a canyon. The commander listens into his radio for a minute
[commander [in french]] the americans are coming. we should shortly be attacked by a robotic flying drone capable of dropping bombs sucking all air out of a 500 foot radius, followed by a mopup crew of several hundred armored networked hive soldiers. everyone put on your air mask.
the commander begins to get a piece of equipment out of a duffel bag. he hovers intently over a red button on it, watching.
[recruit] What's that?
[commander] EMP blast. It's the only weapon we have against them.
Sounds like these guys are going to want to put a check in the box for "Do not function as a Supernode". =)
FYI, being a pacifist doesnt make you immune to violence from others.
This guy is way out there
...each platoon has a cracker or a few, who is able to jam the opponent's displays temporarily, hack into older models to confuse the enemy's friend-or-foe identification, protect his own people from such attacks, snoop on enemy data transfers, fry their heads or change the intelligent helmet into guided missile attractor beacon...
Future? Maybe not, but certainly a good idea for a computer game.
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For those instances when we *all* want to just bang our heads into the wall - eg. 'My internet is broken.' or 'The laptop won't turn on!' etc.
.. all that fancy equipment will do if the enemy has some of those EMP bombs that they were itching to try out in Iraq. (Did they ever use one, or is that classified?)
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
This is also why I'm against putting additional electronics in guns. Sure, a gun that self destructs if an identity check fails seems like a good idea, right up until someone loses an arm because the mechanism malfunctioned. Sometimes keeping it simple is still the best policy.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
I think the point of the article is that this technology already exists and it's the implementation that's really innovative. The challenge is making such a system practical for use on the battlefield so that a soldier isn't lugging around a couple of car batteries, a PC, bulky wireless equipment etc...
Linux:
any other suggrestions?
Designed especially for the American Law Enforcement user
providing the operator with sixty rounds of available firepower right on the weapon.
So American cops reguarly need to shoot 60 people without the inceonvenient delay of a reload? Blimey, it must be like living in a war zone over there.
Beep beep.
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.
Nah ... they're just REALLY inaccurate.
A Minesweeper clone that doesn't suck
So American cops reguarly need to shoot 60 people without the inceonvenient delay of a reload? Blimey, it must be like living in a war zone over there.
You misunderstand the special and dramatic needs of Drug law enforcement officers. It isn't a matter of 60 people, it's just a matter of sometimes, they really need to shoot one person 60 times very quickly. After all, think of the horrors that could happen if they only shot them 30 times; some of the people these brave officers are up against are armed with wallets. God knows what the druggies could do if they were only shot 10 or 20 times in quick succession by an unmarked officer busting into their house in the middle of the night with no explanation. They could retaliate. Do you want to put policemen in the line of danger like that?
60 people? No. Try to stop a car by shooting out the tires/engine? Yes. Also, remember "law enforcement" covers SWAT teams; using 3-round bursts, this will give you 20 pulls of the trigger before it needs to be reloaded. Still a bit excessive for most situations - but better to have too many rounds than to be first into a drug den, and be up against 11 people with only enough to take out 10...
Blimey, it must be like living in a war zone over there.
Not from what I've seen - and no, the police don't carry these things on patrol! They just have a lot of stuff "just in case", for dealing with really serious problems. Everything from adapted tanks for breaking down doors, to helicopters for chasing getaway cars without endangering other traffic.
Here in the US, we're pretty generous with our "bullet to person" ratio, so 60 bullets does not imply anywhere close to 60 people. I mean, seriously, even when running with the counterstrike cheats, nobody's that good.
P.S. Last time I was in England, we couldn't find a trash can anywhere. They had mostly been removed because of the possiblity that someone would leave a bomb in one. How's that war zone thing going with you guys?
I am more then willing to give peace a chance, and as soon as you talk the middle eastern counties (among others) supporting terrorists groups and religious nuts in to giving it a chance too I will join you on stopping the arms race. Seems how I do not think you have much of a chance in succeeding at that I am going to go ahead and support my military so they can protect my civilian ass.
I say thank you to those men and women, I do not yell at them to stop protecting me!
man
No manual entry for
Seriously, though, this sounds very much like the comm units described by Robert Anson Heinlein in Starship Troopers (the BOOK not the movie!).
...
Properly designed and used this sort of communication capability can greatly expand effectiveness and survivability.
Just don't let Microsoft do the software
--
Tomas
And just how long before someone creates a smart bullet to home in on the EM emissions of this helmet -- and at a whole lot lower cost than the helmet itself?
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
1. "Retreat NOW, they try to surround us".
2. "Red markers on your HUD are the enemy positions. Blue are ours."
3. With current wind and angle, your grenade launcher will reach THIS point."
4."Friendly fireline comes through here. Stay cautious"
5. "A friendly soldier wants to walk past your fireline. Cease fire for 10 seconds"
6. "Red marks enemy positions behind the wall as seen from friendly camera"
(think WallCheat in counterstrike)
7. "Nearest medic: 300m North ( --->that direction)"
8. Map with all positions marked.
9. "SOS, they are two steps away from my foxhole and my gun has jammed, but they don't see me yet!"
10. "The 2000 pound bomb will fall here: X"
Aww, that sight "+300" rising over enemy's corpse and score counter running up by 300, what could possibly encourage you to fight more effectively?!
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What is being proposed has been tried before.
The Royal Navy led the world in the mid-19th century in adopting steam propulsion, with ships proceeding in formation at constant speed, with evolutions being carried out as per flag signals from the flagship. Signal books became more complicated; signalling became a job for the brightest and best, among both officers and seamen. New signalling mechanisms such as Morse code over wireless, or Morse over signal lamp, were adopted with alacrity. People sent signals because they could, and having sent signals to the commander, whose orders they were supposed to follow, they expected replies.
Consequently, after a couple of decades of this, the Royal Navy couldn't fight worth shit.
There are two anecdotes involving Nelson and signalling -- the "blind eye" at Copenhagen, and the "England expects" before Trafalgar. These weren't tactical signals. These were Nelson having a laugh. Nelson had no truck with centralised command and this signalling malarkey; he trained his commanders as he was trained, to understand their job and to get on with it as they saw fit. Nelson and his like put the fear of God (or rather, the fear of the Royal Navy) so thoroughly that it lasted a century.
This "the soldier is the network" business means that a soldier is going to get flooded with urgent requests for tax records at a moment when he might expect to be being given information about at which window to point his grenade launcher. But then, that information would probably be coming from a major in a bunker in the Pentagon who's never handled a grenade launcher, and whose orders are going to be at best meaningless and at worst horribly counterproductive.
Maybe the DoD should consult at the militaries of other nations, that have efficient armed forces and smaller budgets, and see what'd spend the money on, given the choice. Wouldn't be this. But it might be a smaller, lighter, more reliable, more powerful, strongly-encrypted radio comms system with extensions for a whiteboard mode.
You make a very good point. One thing we know about our law enforment officers is that they tend to fall down when shooting at unarmed people and are prone to uncontrolled exclamations of "he's gut a gun!" when people pull out their wallets.
War is necrophilia.
SWAT teams do, yes. Most cops carry only a pistol with them, but speical units like SWAT teams need more firepower. PArt of it is simply the threat of overwhelming force can often difuse a situation. If a gunman is faced with 10 heavily armed SWAT members, they are much mroe likely to give up than if they are faced with one normal officer. However, part of having that threat is the need to be ready if you get called out on it. It wouldn't do any good to have guns that just LOOK scary, they need to be powerful as well.