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US Military Develops P2P Wireless Network Sniffer
Merlin83 writes "As being reported on The Register, the US Military is developing a new system for monitoring enemy battlefield communication. Called WolfPack, each node is a 6"x4" cylinder, launched by missile or dropped from aircraft. Once the node lands, it stands up, extends its antenna and contacts other nodes. The nodes can also jam cellular communications by transmitting a signal themselves. "
Of "the Diamond Age". We just have to get these things smaller...
Helping with organizational effectiveness is our job.
I would've thought the RIAA would've been ahead of the US military on this one.
I remember when legal used to mean lawful, now it means some kind of loophole. - Leo Kessler
Considering how dependant the US military is on high tech communications, I'm guessing we are only hearing about this because they have figured out how to get around something like this. Anyone care to speculate on what that is?
Galium Arsenide is the material of the future, and always will be.
Radar Tech: Sir! The radar, sir! It appears to be... jammed!
Dark Helmet: Jammed... Raspberry!
Schematics and technical info here:
Cellular Phone Jammers
..hear me now? boom!
Doing more with less (power) may seem unusual
True enough, but you need multiple units.
Doing more with more (money) is business as usual for the DoD. No suprise there.
Each device, which runs on battery, should last approximately two months. When possible, devices can be recovered and reused. The cost of each is estimated at $10,000.
$10,000??!! I bet there are plenty of Linux geeks around Slashdot that could do it for a fraction of that! ;^)
Wooden armaments to battle your imaginary foes!
beowulf cluster of these! No. Seriously. Could you have a impromptu cellular network be put up, perhaps in the Niagara-Mohawk area if power goes out again and the cell-phone tower generators run out of fuel?
I could use one of these on the bus ride to school.... toss a few around the bus and suddenly you don't have to hear about when everyone's dentist appointments are going to be.
I wouldn't think that the US would want something like this to exist. Think what some of these could do in a large city.
And they propose to drop them on the ground in unfriendly areas, where anyone can come along and pick them up!
-1 Idiotic
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
That has to be one of the more poorly edited articles I've ever seen. First off, there were numerous gramatical errors and incomplete sentences. Secondly there's a completely erroneous reference to Napster which was NOT a P2P network.
I consider this as poor as CNN reporting that ConEd was on fire last night. Just 10 minutes of proof-reading and fact checking would show the faults. I hate this bullshit.
Why limit the system to only battlefield? I mean if this works for the US Military it is also usefull in a more civill environment.
The Army could license the technology to companies and earn in some of those tax dollars.
This has happened before with a lot of tech and it could happen again. Just think about the possibilities in for example the fight against terror.
Proud patriot and republican voter.
Light signalling morse code
WAN-mines?
*lick* strawberry too...
Picture now that these devices are equiped not only with wireless, but also with infrared and motion sensors.
;) ), and you have just created a mine field that can be abandond without worring about hurting civilians afterwards.
Slave these to a smart 'expert' system, that creates a 'map' of the area over which they have been spread. Now you can 'see' when anyone intrudes into that area.
Slave THAT to some artilery (or better yet, a jeep towed high energy rail gun
I wrote a high end overview of such a system for my technical writing class in 1989... As I recall, I got a 'D' for it, because my diagrams were not good enough. Ahh, I wish I could have had Visio back then!
If you can jam the enemy's communications, they are in deep shit. They can't coordinate movement of units, call for fire support, report contact with the enemy, request resupply, etc.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
Together, they are cheaper, less like a huge warm cock and a much less obvious target for enemy intervention than the aircraft-based systems used to jam or monitor communications at the moment.
This is informative?
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
For taking part in a p2p network! The pirates!
Commander: "That's it, everybody, shut down Kazaa, the RIAA has found our base!"
Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
Will this thing be able to jam networks that use frequency hopping?
I'm guessing it will since if it didn't it would be pretty useless.
I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!
... Beowulf imagines cluster of YOU!
I know the above is an AC, so modding down won't help much... but "Units can stay powered for up to two months in the field, and can be later collected and re-used. Each node costs around $10,000. Together, they are cheaper, less like a huge warm cock and a much less obvious target for enemy intervention than the aircraft-based systems used to jam or monitor communications at the moment." wasn't in any other copy of the article... At least not the warm cock part.
[if stealsig == true]"They have a cave troll!" "Mod him down!"
I assert that my comment is only my opinion, not that of any employer, past, present or future.
The countermeasure is surely too straightforward - send a bunch of kids out to collect them.
Unless they are fitted with antipersonnel devices (looking unlikely given the current trend towards banning cluster munitions) they will make nice souvenirs of the conflict.
2 days after they are released in the wild we'll be bidding for them on eBay.
... and shouldn't George Lucas sue for copyright infringement?
Next up, an orbital battlestation with a supercharged laser... oh wait, Reagan already did that one.
The nodes can also jam cellular communications by trasmitting a signal themselves.
And if that doesn't work, the military sends in guys with bucket trucks to install Broadband over Power Line and it jams everything from DC to daylight.
Tired of being "punished" by the Slashdot $rtbl since 2002. I'm now over at http://soylentnews.org/ .
Less like a WHAT? (see penultimate paragraph)
That might work, but what if their optic cables get bent?
The term Wolfpack will forever be associated with the Nazi German Kriegsmarine.
Gentlemen! You can't fight in here, this is the War Room!
It was in Marshall's copy. He is a cock tease.
The Registrers version:
A slightly different version you've got there Sir.Proud patriot and republican voter.
Proprietary frequencies? (non-cellular standard)
Digital communications with IFF that are ignored by the jammers? Like the pay-per-view stuff -- if your key code is correct, we don't jam you.
Ultra wideband that doesn't rely on a specifig frequency.
etc.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
Seriously, Operation Desert Storm, Tomohawk Missles, and now the Wolf Pack. Can't the army have more consumer friendly names with more pizazz.
I nominate we rename it the Sniff 'n Shout. Or something in that vein
Photos.
...that seems to be mainly aimed at countering themselfs.
Wait, don't mod me down just yet; let me elaborate on that. Basicly, you have two situations when in a military conflict: Either you are invading, in which cause you depend on mobile, wireless communication. Or you're defending, and that means most of the time relying on fixed lines of communication (fiberoptic cables buried deep in the ground is a favorite). Now, if you're using fixed lines of communications, you don't have to worry to much about these. Sure, some forms of landlines are radiates energy that can be detected by the 'wolfpack', but I've yet to hear about any armed forces worth it's salt that don't use encryption these days. If you're attacking however, you need to carry your own coms. Most armed forces don't roll in money the way the US forces do, so most forces has to rely on older equipment, like the good old AN/PRC-77. And those can't be affected by a jammer designed to knock out cellular transmittions.
On the lighter side, how long until the troops use this P2P-network to share violent videos and hard porn?
Everything in the world is controlled by a small, evil group to which, unfortunately, no one you know belongs.
All the rest of today's stories will also come straight from The Register
This looks like the results of a flashy bid for government dollars through a beurocratic bid system the values WOW glitz as higher than good ole useful application.
"launched by missile or dropped from aircraft"
I wonder if they support only mp3 or also other kind of files. And what about anonymty? Firewalls? Just kidding - nice to see the p2p effecting other areas.Dont just mail it - Maileet
The nodes can also jam cellular communications
Terrorist1: "R U going 2 b at the meeting 2nite?"
Terrorist2: "No I hav 2 complete mission"
Terrorist1: "Plz brng back heads of infidels"
Terrorist2: "Suicide mission. I not b back"
Terrorist1: "I wsh u luck"
Terrorist2: "Allah Akbar!"
I forgot the painfully obvious one...
The devices themselves are used as comm nodes for the U.S. military. They could forward encrypted, digital communications through the network they create.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
Just let them "bomb" you, pick it, hack it and have a cool wireless p2p box. Imagine porting Kazaa to these! :)
:)
Seriously, remembering times from IIWW when in occupied Warsaw people commonly made grenades from dud bombs, that thing with some technology applied, could provide great means of communication network for the enemy
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The RIAA hears of this, the US military is going to get sooo sued...
code division multiple access
They drop these. You pick them. They win the war, conquer your country and then sue you for stealing US government property. Sounds probably, doesn't it?
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That would be silly, dropping comm nodes into enemy territory, where anyone can pick up and intercept US communications.
Nothing like licking a radar dome to give you that warm, fuzzy, freshly microwaved feeling.
This reminds me of when, from the movie The Fifth Element, Zorg's main lackey was using a remote-controlled cockroach to listen in on the President's "secret plan" to send Bruce Willis to meet the Diva Plavalaguna on Planet Fhloston to get the stones and save the world...anyway, the President grabs a shoe and squishes the cockroach, sending a squeal of feedback into the lackey's ears, and sending waves of giggles into the audience... I wonder if, since these are so "secret", if it won't be the same type of situation. They'll be found, dismantled, and disposed of. It was just a thought...
+5, Female
those nodes probably wouldn't even have the capability to decode the signals they would be relaying, the would probably not be useful for determining what the message contained.
Smoke signals.
this seems the complement of the smart dust .
The smart dust was supposed to be a 1 cube mm sensor with some computational power that was also supposed to transmit signals. I also recall that it was supposed to cost very few $ (one?). Clearly, you do not need parachutes for it and you can just deploy thousands on the battlefield or whatever you want to spy on. I don't know if these can send such a strong signal, but I believe that if you deploy enough of them you could. And being much smaller and many thousands, they would be much harder to get rid of. However, I haven't heard of smart dust in a while. Maybe they have perfected it and started using it. Or maybe the project just died.
You mispelled extortion
I'm a chainsmokin' alcoholic sociopath, so-ci-o-path
Apple: The iJam - It's not very effective, but it comes in this neat translucent blue shell
Microsoft: Wolfpack powered by Windows - Never worked, kept crashing.
Linux: Linpack - Worked fine, but nodes kept disappearing, in their place were notes saying something about "Beowulf Clusters"
GNU/Linux: GNU/Linpack - Same as Linpack, but with a picture of Richard Stallman on the front
RIAA: Broadcasts a signal on every node that says "What the fuck do you think you're doing" in seven different languages.
Verizon: Kept calling attention to itself when it kept broadcasting "CAN YOU HEAR ME NOW?"
Here at work we were just warned of the horror that is P2P. My boss' boss' boss was telling us that he would never allow a P2P program on his computer and that running one here at work was grounds for termination. Of course, he was only referring to music swapping. But in his mind, the two are inseparately connected. This is common in the "real" world ( and I don't mean the "reality?" series ).
:). Imagine devices like cell phones which we carry with us at all times running P2P with all other portable devices. Add to that GPS technology and now you have an internet, or more precisely, the next generation internet that can interact more closely with reality. No longer do the cyber world and the real world need to be different places.
P2P is set to be to the internet what the internet was to whatever was before it
How will this be used? Using the cell phones and GPS, the P2P network can compute real-time traffic contiditions based on the speed of the cell phone and route the driver in route. No expensie infrastructure is needed.
How about having your cell phone interact with people in close proximity to you. Maybe at a sporting event or some other. What would it do? Only time will tell.
By having the network not only to other computers but also to the person via the phone and physical location via GPS, the network will become much more useful and timely than anything we have ever seen before. Maybe it could be used for defence even.
Your friend and well-wisher
m0smithslash
http://www.ferociousflirting.com
There was a story "windowsupdate.com falls on sword" it was up for a few seconds and then boom it was gone...
jeez
When asked for a reply,"What the hell was that."
--"Sorry for the inconvience." Gods Last Words to his Creation
DNA, So Long and Thanks for all the Fish
My point isn't that the US Military devices won't screw up US military communications, but that the US military has come up with a mechanism to deal with this if someone else has similar devices.
Galium Arsenide is the material of the future, and always will be.
While you Slasdot lozers drool over the military-industrial complex, Ventriloquist Dick Cheney's latest creation continues
to deceive people.
Thanks and have a marijuana-inspired day,
W00t
The nodes can also jam
I was going to buy their music but after listening to it I think I will download it from KazAa in stead.
Wouldn't satellite communications be immune?
While a humorous post, you wrote that with way too much detail and excitement.
You need to go OUTSIDE and get a life.
"Picture now that these devices are equiped not only with wireless, but also with infrared and motion sensors.
;) ), and you have just created a mine field that can be abandond without worring about hurting civilians afterwards."
Slave these to a smart 'expert' system, that creates a 'map' of the area over which they have been spread. Now you can 'see' when anyone intrudes into that area.
Slave THAT to some artilery (or better yet, a jeep towed high energy rail gun
You, sir, have obviously never been to Area 51.
This kind of device is not made for foreign wars if you ask me. It seems tailor made for countering the kinds of things we (individuals, not the government) would use for countering communication of resistence right here if we needed to. That might sound paranoid and crazy, but looking at all the things the military is doing, it would appear they are getting things ready to fight here more than anywhere else.
When you conquer and put to rest all the external enemies, the greatest threat to your empire is its own people.
A cluster of oscar the grouches came to mind.
The way I'm reading the article, it seems as if the devices can either transmit a signal that jams mobile communications or monitor them.
So if we start jamming all battlefield communications (I guess they're talking about RF transmissions) then how do the devices talk to each other?
I mean, are they linked by physical wires or something?
If these devices use RF transmissions to communicate with each other and then jam RF transmissions, then won't they also jam each other and break their own network?
In order for a system like this to work it sounds like the devices have to communicate wirelessly, so what's to prevent an enemy from learning what freqs are used by the P2P system and then running their own coms on those freqs?
Or better yet, just jam those coms so that the individual devices won't be able to link up.
Oh,
and by the way,
Sniffer is a registered trademark of Network Associates Inc.
"Once the node lands, it stands up, extends its antenna and contacts other nodes."
This just in: The Russians have developed nodes that land next to nodes already present on the battlefield, stand up, extend their antennae, and contact other nodes with information about hostile nodes on the battlefield.
This just in: Americans have developed nodes that land next to Russian nodes that have landed next to their nodes. These American nodes, upon landing, stand up, extend their antennae, and contact other nodes with information about hostile nodes on the battlefield that have landed next to nodes meant to have disrupted the communications networks of the hostile force.
Yeah, it's a bargain until the hostiles discover this device and then use it on us. Wait, maybe the DoD's secret is that it requires a particular sort of battery. Or maybe these countries presumably wouldn't have the technology to missile it into our territory.
Or maybe, as a previous post said, there must be some manner in which the DoD can combat this, as they have released the specs for it.
Could it be that the DoD has an entirely new form of communication that is (presently) immune to the jamming techniques that this thing uses? Is the DoD going back to using smoke signals?
Seems to me this is a decent setup to deploy wireless robots in the battle field, with the added bonus of jamming other communication signals.
Did anyone else connect the reported dimensions with the reported mass? It's supposed to be a 6" tall x 4" wide cylinder...that weighs SIX POUNDS. That's incredibly tightly packed! Which I guess makes sense if you're going to fit a balloon antenna, motors for standing up via the fins, and a CPU in that small package. I wonder if/when the public will reap the benefits of that kind of miniaturization?
4-star general in a one-man army.
If someone else has similar jamming devices, doesn't the military's "workaround" involve pinpointing the device and then hitting it with a missle??
Seems that they dealt with the GPS jammers Iraq was using by following this method in the past war. I've been unable to find references for that particular action, but I seem to remember discussing it in my signals class last spring.
It's occurred to me that lately the US has been developping such a large ammount of high tech waeponary that it will come impossible for other nations or countrys to counter them. At one point the US will become so powerfull (space shield, small a-bombs and such) that they will be able to set the entire globa at their feet. I think it's about time that other nations started doing something about this.
Note in military environment it's not that much.
Assume a typical new generation guided missile is about $1mln. A million pieces of the "dust" could cost maybe a bit more. Reasonably assuming communication range about 2m you can drop it with 1m spread and maintain communication between almost all of them. That's 50m wide, 2km long stripe of ground (and not only ground. Treetops and such too) monitored in such a way that nobody could pass unnoticed or alive. Now hook this to a few robotised machineguns and rocket launchers and you get a barrier nobody could pass through, no matter what. Except maybe switching a part of it off from the command center, i.e. to let allied troops through...
Sounds cheaper and more effective than common missiles.
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$10,000!?! That thing better support popular P2P formats like gnutella. ;-)
Coderz 4 Life
As an Army soldier myself, the first thing that comes to mind is that if these were sold to the civilian sector, it would be just as effective as handing these devices over to the battlefield enemies.
Also, as an infantry guy, I want to have as much advantage when my ass it out there. I want to disrupt their communications and information services as much as possible. If their APCs and shit can't talk, it makes it alot easier for me and my team to slip through, and move on to our objective.
While the apparent commoditization of military hardware makes it cheap for the US to produce weapons/systems/etc, the military usually waits until the civilian sector reaches the level of the military, and then leverages THEM. We see this predominantly with the Navy/Air Force's JDAM technology. The civilian space made GPS trancivers and electronics cheap (though yes, based from military work). This allowed the development of really cheap precision guided weapons.
Anyway, back to my point. As a soldier, I want to have every advantage out there. Communications and denial of information is ever more critical. I want my comm systems working, and theirs not. By NOT releasing this technology for the sake of consumer convenience, I deny the enemy from figuring out just how we jam their infrastructure. Trading that public beneft for my comm/info system being far more superior than the enemy's for a longer period of time is a VERY GOOD THING.
For me, personally and organizationally, those extra tax dollars that could be generated from licensing pale in comparison to the tactical advantages of keeping these device's specs secrect... at least until these specs are stolen, or otherwise made public.
You don't want cellphones to work in restaurants or theaters, I don't want the bad guys passing along information as to where I am. You would give up convenience, I would give up something far greater.
The U.S. military have always been war driving.
*groan*
they patented them, and wolfpack is certainly a registered trademark.
Fleur de Sel
Wonderful news for those of us living in the US.
Maybe I am being paranoid, I mean, the US government does need probably cause to eavesdrop on its citizens (mod -1 paranoid)...wait, Patriot act....I guess we are going to be the test subjects! (mod +1 paranoid)
If pro is the opposite of con, what's the opposite of congress?
The only thing more dangerous than a file named -rf is renaming it -rf\ /
Sounds a lot like this:
http://rajant.net/page2.html
Wouldn't satellite communications be immune? ...not from a jamming signal originating from the local area.
but I've yet to hear about any armed forces worth it's salt that don't use encryption these days.
:) They've been succesfully opposing Russian army for quite a few years now and they commonly use standard unencrypted FM radios to communicate :) They are cheap, they are available, they are effective. And saved money could buy them more weapons...
Hear about Chechenyans
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yes, but if you had access to one couldn't you use it to send your own encrypted message accross the network they create? then the jamming they do to your other signals won't really mean much. though the military would probably then intercept your own encrypted message.
but a few sparse well placed messages cannot easily be unencrypted in a timely fashion to be useful to the party trying to decode it, especially if you continually change your encryption methods.
If I were a low-income thug and the US military invaded my country and sprayed the land with these things, I would probably run around and pick them up for resale. They start at 6x4 inches, but then they extend fins and an inflatable antenna, which should make them pretty easy targets to spot. And I bet to foreign military hands, they're worth more than the $10K they cost the US military. All things considered I could probably feed my family for 10 years by picking up 5 of them or so and selling them on the black market.
11*43+456^2
the logistics associated with networking and deployment of air dropped nodes in battle scenarios would be a fitting origin of the colored hats puzzle:
0 1/ ics151/puzzles.html
http://www.ics.uci.edu/~ebert/teaching/spring20
My point isn't that the US Military devices won't screw up US military communications, but that the US military has come up with a mechanism to deal with this if someone else has similar devices.
I thought that the point was that nobody we're likely to fight uses this stuff.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
i hear large parts of USA need a few
unlike this device
good to see you got your priorities right, enjoy those tax cuts !
ahhh, the modern digital version of Igloo White. Seems like the military has taken an interest in the survivability of P2P networks...
There are numerous articles on this subject, and the Army acyually uses special guidelines when they name operations.
A liutenant Sieminski wrote a article about this (do some googling).
At the end of his article, Sieminski offers four guidelines for naming operations in the future.
Operation Desert Storm was a good name but Operation Iraqi Freedom was even better. The names are altered to fot to the public whom would not accept war unless its sounds "meaningfull".
Personally i liked the Operatin Just Cause (Panama) because of the noble sound it gives, and I think it added something to the justification of he war.
The last operations in Iraq was initially called "Operation Desert Freedom" and later "Operation Infinite Justice". I love the last one as i think it reflects the way the US Military should fight. After that someone wanted to call it "Operation Iraqi liberation" but for some reason they abadonded that. I think this was a good thing as the word "liberation" is a reference to a french word.
I like Sieminski as he has nailed the whole point of naming wars in a special way for the cause of getting the public to accept a war that will beneft the nation:
In a perfect world this would not be neccesary, but as long as the public is so relluctant to wars in general this is a good way to convince them to fight for the country in wars that are neccesary but hard to understand ordinary non-educated workers.
Proud patriot and republican voter.
They could even claim it was 'field testing'.
Best wishes,
Mike.
The DoD has their own spectrum of freqs and they use frequency hopping and encryption (a la SINCGARS field radios) to limit both interception and jamming. The field radios are only on a particualar freq for a fraction of a second before they cycle to the next random freq. I would also surmise that the networking protocol is probably proprietary and not widely known, so even if you interecepted and decrypted the packets, you wouldn't know how to put them back togather.
Slave THAT to some artilery
If camels have nightmares, I think you just summed up what they are about.
You know what?
I've been out for a couple years, but in the late 90's the radios used by most end users, SINCGARs and MSRTs, both used frequency hopping with frequency sets that changed regularly (like daily), so they're already fairly difficult to jam.
To make sure there wouldn't be problems, the SCC (the group in charge of frequency allocations for an area) would certainly be coordinating with the people configuring these critters, and could give them a schedule of frequencies for each day to leave clear. (Most likely giving them a far larger set than they'd ever expect to use)
They could even set them up to act as relays -- its pretty common both on in the military and for local/state governments to setup relays so that people with hand units can have their signal relayed back to central location. (For example, the State of Colorado has a set of relays that cover most of the state -- with the right frequency a HAM operator with a handheld unit can talk to someone in Pueblo from Grand Junction)
I've read about several projects to try to use networks of nodes like these critters for relaying traffic for firefighters or in combat zones, but I'm surprised these are so close to being deployed. Having atleast the subscriber-facing edge of the network be able to set itself up without having to send signal people in would be a *huge* advantage.
The nodes might require messages to be signed to allow them to pass. Messages not signed by the correct key are dropped. You only need the public key installed in the nodes, but to send you would need the correct private key. When used as a sniffer, a unique private key is stored in a tamper proof chip on the node and used to sign sniffer data before sending. If you suspect one node is compromised, just send out revocation messages for the compromised node's key.
from the article: without hindering US forces' own communications systems. Clearly the DoD thought this through a little more than most people here give them credit for.
IMO this is a really cool project. All the people complaining about the gamma ray "nuke" should be happy about this method of disrupting communications without bombing things.
It's quite probable that they got a bit lucky.
I find your lack of faith disturbing.
Well, hey, I didn't spend all those years playing Dungeons and Dragons and not learn a little something about courage.
Haha, you're funny. Maybe in 10 years... most of the signal corps' stuff is 80's technology. When they moved to frequency-hopping stuff around 1990 it was big news...
I've got the case design down pat...
WeebleWobbles...
They're self righting... "They weeble and they wobble, but they don't fall down"
I even have the project name down:
WWWWF
(WeebleWobbles with WiFi)
Who's With Me???
Why worry? Each of us is wearing an unlicensed "nucular" accelerator on his back.
Sig changed for readability by G.W.
Why not just spring-load the legs, then have them pop open on impact? If you have three legs, it should "stand" on most terrain without needing motors (which would shorten the battery life, anyway).
In Afghanistan they bombed a Canadian division killing 16 or thereabouts, despite having been told about the Canadian's presence in that area. In the Gulf War 1 they killed more UK troops by accident than the Iraqis managed to do deliberately.
Sure, it's a war and accidents do happen, but it seems that it's usually the US military that causes them.
Windows Tweaks
last summer.
I don't think they are that new.
--Michael
Want to see every step I took to start my company? http://www.rowdylabs.com/blogs/pitchtothegods
maybe an early alpha version? :)
Unfortunatly it didn't seem to work very well : the Viet Cong gathered the probes, and hacked them into traditional radio transmiters, and used them as a communication device.
This time, the probes are more sophisticated, but the idea is the same.
Just locate..aim high powered EMP gun from space....WOMP, no more signals, heck no more anything electronic to aid the enemy, or anyone else for that matter but deal with the obvious first.
The function of a single can would be some combination of:
Maybe they could even have solar cells to make them last more than 2 months in the field.
main(O){10<putchar((O--,102-((O&4)*16| (31&60>>5*(O&3)))))&&main(2+ O);}
LN2 is cool!
This strikes me more as being like mesh networking instead. The way they establish their own network by routing amongst themselves is a key characteristic of mesh technology. What I have to wonder is this: how far along will this concept go? Could it be that these are the predecessors of a landmine problem of the information age?
For your security, this post has been encrypted with ROT-13, twice.
bluetooth ...
as the code-name for their clustering technology?
I bet that asswipe Berman who tried to introduce anti-P2P and vigilante laws targetting P2P along with his financial bedmate, the RIAA and MPAA feel stupid now.
I'm officially opposed to new weapons technology. But it sounds like fairly basic but cool tech.
That's gotta fit into your schema somewhere
Hey, if we combine this with Geocaching (www.geocaching.com), then you're getting somewhere! A network of covert communications nodes that volunteers go and babysit periodically. Put a few McDonald's toys, travel-bugs and a collection of state quarters inside, and the nodes could be self-sustaining forever.... :-)
The U.S. military actually used a lower tech version of the sensor net along the Ho Chi Minh Trail in 1966. The program was called "Igloo White" and involved a number of audio and seismic sensors. Check out this link and look at page 11 for details. Very interesting read.
Some bits:
"Prepare for the worst - hope for the best."
It's not like they can say, "We don't have a counter for this yet, so lets not develop it or think about it, and hope the rest of the world is too dumb to figure out how to jam cell phones, or triangulate our position from out radio broadcasts."
Anyway, this stuff is nothign new, it's just a new way to deploy things we could already do. Jam cell phones? Easy. Mine gets jammed 1000000 times a day (SouthernLink==SuckyLink). And triangulation is easy enough as well.
Think if I get some good friends over at the Pentagon, and a GPS handheld, that they'd let me call in tactical strikes on annoying cellphone users? Talk about a peace dividend!
Just My Opinion
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
in a master stroke of insperation the department of defense has created a special op unit, code named 'tin ear'. during battle field conditions telemarketers with start pitching sales to any and all enemy combatants. it is believed that having to answer the phone during a pitch battle will cause the enemy to be mementarly confussed about optimal choices. a telemarketer who did not want to be identified said, "once i'v got'em on the line, i'll never let him go!"; strong wrods, but the man was sincere in his conviction.
in a similar new story, president bush has commented on taking certain political foes off the federal no-call-list.
One good woodpecker nuke (emr directed pulse nuclear device) in the right location! Bingo no more communication period.
OH THE SHAME I fell off the wagon and use sigs again!
I am a CSci student at the U of M.... this sounds suspiciously like something the CSci department and specifically Dr. Maria Gini have been developing with the help of Honeywell.
I looked into building a cell phone jammer for kicks not too long ago, and I found out that the FCC will slap you with a fine to the tune of $70K per day. I might be wrong about the dollar amount, but whatever it is, it isn't pleasant.
A witty saying proves you are wittier than the next guy.
As far as I know most cellular phone systems use a weak form of Direct Sequence Spread Spectrum (DSSS). To jam stronger DSSS (also called Spread Spectrum Mulitple Access - SSMA), longer codes / higher power, you would have to transmit a *lot* of wideband power. The military has been using SSMA to provide very jam resistant communications for over the last 20 years - the modem I teach is older than I am.
It sounds like this, but has a big RIAA logo on the side...
Oh well, up on EBay it goes!
And just how does the US military make sure its own signals aren't jammed?
"So, when DARPA, the Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency, asked Aurora, a company based in Manassas, Virginia, to design an unmanned aerial vehicle that was quiet, small, could fly for several hours on autopilot, and could deliver two cylinders the size of Coke cans to a distant location, Aurora happily obliged."
The DOD Small Business Innovation Research Resource Center appears to show the awarded contract for Aurora Flight Sciences Corp:
"The best solution to deliver small, covert communications/ sensor packages is an autonomous airborne vehicle that operates outside the enemy's threat envelope: the Clandestine Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (CUAV)."
Now we know what all the pieces are for!
Helevius