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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. "
Well, let's see - it's a 6' by 4' metal cylinder, that has to be dropped from an airplane or launched and deployed from a missile into a possibly hostile environment (hot/cold/dusty/wet), yet still reliably remain intact enough to right itself on a surface that is most likely not flat, deploy its antenna and function for two months off a single battery charge.
$10,000 sounds like a bargain.
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...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.
Not if you can make them cheap enough that you can have considerable overlap in coverage.
if your maximum p2p range is 500 feet, and you have dropped these sensors every 100 feet, it would take a sharpshooter a LOT of ammo to make a big enough hole in this thing to sneak through... and by then, someone has already noticed that sensors have started malfunctioning in a strange way...
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.