Slashdot Mirror
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. "
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!
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 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
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.
WAN-mines?
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!
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
Commander: "That's it, everybody, shut down Kazaa, the RIAA has found our base!"
Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
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.
The term Wolfpack will forever be associated with the Nazi German Kriegsmarine.
Gentlemen! You can't fight in here, this is the War Room!
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.
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.
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
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
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
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.
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.
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
They could even claim it was 'field testing'.
Best wishes,
Mike.
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.
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.
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."