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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. "
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.
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?
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
Of science fiction!
Vernor vinge wrote about these things in his story "Fast Times at Fairmont High"
In his story they were super small and sprinkled around to create a robust network. the only problem was cleanup when they went bad.
-John Fenley
Working in the norwegian armed forces myself - who has been trying to tell our politicans that a) running a defence costs money, b) doing a lot of operations overseas costs more, and c) we could really need more and newer fighters, preferable by 1997, and some new tanks, rifles, chemical protection suits and naval ships wouldn't be out of the way - I would say this has a simple reason.
Buying 'more of the same' just ain't sexy enought.
Nor does it look impressive. Telling your mistress that you signed a deal for a score of flying gasstation is not as cool as telling her you just signed a goverment contract to develop an airportable selfdeploying P2P network with cellular jamming capability.
That, and we most not forget that the arnament industry in the western world is technologydriven. The defenceindustry comes up with something new and sexy, and off course the top brass goes along with it (see above for why). In the old eastern block, things worked (well, barly worked, but thats another matter) differently. The military went to the industry and said 'this is what we need, you have two years to come up with a solution'. Worked much better, at least as far as maintaining capabilities goes. A bit less so if your focus is on developing new capabilities thought...
Everything in the world is controlled by a small, evil group to which, unfortunately, no one you know belongs.
There's not much secret about radio. Most HAMs could probably rig up a big dumb 800Mhz or 1900Mhz transmitter that'll kill cellular service for a big area. Then again we get shitty signal anyway, most people wouldn't think anything was wrong. They'd just drive another mile down the road until it worked.