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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. "
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!
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!
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.
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
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
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.