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DARPA Offers No Food for Thought
frank249 writes "Wired News has an article outlining the US Defense Advanced Research Projects agency's (DARPA) research into ways to keep soldiers fighting for up to 5 days without food. The DARPA project, called 'Metabolic Dominance' or 'peak soldier performance' is part of a wider, future-facing Pentagon research push to develop grunts who are pretty much immune to normal human demands. Perhaps they should call this the Universal Soldier project?"
AFAIK the germans developed something like this in the last century, they called it the drug of heroes, or HEROIN. It didn't turn out to be awefully useful but still is a commercial success.
2003 FY Defense Budget $355 Billion
1999-2000 School Year expenditures $383 Billion (K-12)
How about you read what you just quoted?
"By far, the greatest part of education revenues came from nonfederal sources (state, intermediate, and local governments), which together provided about $346 billion, or 92.7 percent of all revenues. The federal government contribution to education revenues made up the remaining $27 billion."
You can -- and many have -- complete thru-hikes of long-distance hiking trails (AT, CDT, PCT) with ultralight gear, and in greater comfort than if you'd tried to lug traditional weight gear. The standard introduction to the concept is "Beyond Backpacking" by Ray Jardine, but there's a *ton* of information on the net about it. The "BackpackingLight" group on yahoogroups is a good source of information, or just Google for "ultralight backpacking."
The scary thing is that this is absolutely true. Here is a the DARPA goal summary.
New Science for National Security: Defense Sciences Office Overview
Page 6 -
Brain Machine Interfaces - Beyond acting on thoughts to having thoughts act.
Enhanced Human Performance - Beyond frailties of life to super physiological performance.
Go zerg
I knew what wars he was talking about...
But to blame the US for them? Give me a break. Those wars STARTED in Europe. The British claim that we showed up late and took credit - now the original poster is insinuating that we started them. The US just can't do anything to please Europe, can it?
--RJ
They were the first Canadian soldiers to die in combat since Korea, and it had to be through friendly fire. Makes me wonder if hopping soldiers up on these things won't increase the likelyhood of more friendly fire incidents. I guess we'll find out when the U.S. pilot goes on trial for this next month.
"History doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme." Mark Twain
There's lots more on "Foodless Fighters" at Defense Tech.
Coca Leaves
[...]The amphetamines are a large group of synthetic drugs with marked cocaine-like effects but are longer-acting than cocaine. Examples are dextroamphetamine (Dexedrine), methamphetamine (Methedrine, Desoxyn), and amphetamine itself (Benzedrine). The amphetamines are widely used to stave off sleepiness among those who work (or play) long hours, and are popular as "diet drugs" and as antidepressants. [...]
While I'm against fundamentally altering the human biological structure to create some sort of super soldier, it's not that difficult to go without food for a few days. While I've never fasted for longer than three consecutive days, there's plenty of people who do.
Do any of you remember spirulina? In I think the mid 80s it was marketed as a food replacement, said to contain all the nutrients the body needed to survive in just a few tablets a day. I only heard about from the ultralight backpacking perspective, but for a while there were some backpackers who would go out into the woods for a week at a time with nothing more to eat than about eight spirulina pills per day. They claimed to have all sorts of energy on these expidition. This worked well untill the same backpackers just tried going out and fasting during their backpacking trips, and what do you know, they reported again having all sorts of energy.
The moral is that humans are capable of functioning at fairly normal levels for a few days without food already.
Mod my comments down. It'll be fun.
You can't beat the laws of physics; I doubt they'll develop any digestable food more energy dense than a stick of butter.
What they ARE looking for, though, are ways for the body to cope better with hunger. So you or the soldiers will still burn your own fat stores for sustenance, but without the usual negative side effects of that, like hunger and loss of higher brain functions. As long as you can beat the side effects, it doesn't matter too much if you burn more than you take in for a few days.
During world war one British, French, Australian and Canadian troops all used cocaine during (and not during) battle. Although it wasn't really sanctioned by the armies and they attempted to stamp it out, at least the British army did anyway, I'm not sure about the others.
Although not cocaine, methamphetamine in the form of Pervitin was administered by Germany and its allies to their soldiers during world war two. Interestingly it's reported that Hitler was given methamphetamine by his personal physician in the mornings and then sedatives to counter the effects at night, resulting in a hard to wake Hitler in the morning. Apparently Germany's reponse on D-Day was delayed because Hitler couldn't be woken, I don't know how much truth there is in that story though.
The US Air Force issues amphetamines to its pilots as what they call "go pills". To quote the article:
So it would seem there is a use for these drugs after all, to create more efficient soldiers.
You cut education spending that much, and there would be a huge outcry.
9
In 1998, estimated education spending at ALL levels was about $618 billion dollars. That value has increased each year since.
Defense spending is about $350 billion.
Source:
gov/us/fed/congress/record/2000/nov/03/2000CRE207
[Congressional Record: November 3, 2000 (Extensions)]
[Page E2079]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]
[DOCID:cr03no00-23]
You can tell a great deal about the character of a man by observing those who hate him.
happens pretty quickly after a couple of days... the human body absolutely needs sleep.
The human body really requires sleep to function adequately, and you can only accumulate a sleep deficit for a relatively short period of time before serious performace degredation occurs... The military has found that you can operate on 3-4 hours of sleep in a 24 hour period... but only for a few days in a row (4-5 max), and no amount of training will cancel out the performance deficit that results. Believe me... the military has tried all kinds of things to get around this.
When you are running a serious sleep deficit, you get slow, stupid, confused easily, you can't remember things, you suck at complex tasks... some people even hallucinate.
If you want a good example, you should check out somebody who's crashing after being on a methamphetamine run for a couple of days... part of it is simple physical exhaustion and neurotransmitter depletion from the drug... but a big part of it is simple sleep deprivation; they take days to recover.
The same thing happens to troops in the field, or troops in training (ask anyone who's ever been through Ranger camp how much sleep they got, and how numbed and stupid your mind gets after a couple of days).
Most modern special operators are pretty bright folks, who's jobs require a working brain... just being tough isn't enough. They need multitasking ability, and that's one of the first things you lose when you're really tired.
Even if a man chops off your hand with a sword, you still have two nice, sharp bones to stick in his eyes.
I'm not sure the military would be greatly interested in the drugs mentioned in the above linked article. Killing on a large scale is a bit different now than in Shaka's day.
Up until a few hundred years ago, war was mostly large groups of men pushing, shoving, chopping and trying to shish-kebab eachother. if you were rich you could also run their arses over with your horse. There are two major groups of reasons why these drugs could be seriously helpful.
Killing someone with hand tools has got to be a lot of hard work. An armored knight of any era was an awesome thing, yet he still had to kill one at a time, maybe two or three at time with luck. A modern tanker could reasonably expect to off four or five people at a time, more depending on a target, with no more effort than shooting one person. An archer is pretty much the same. One arrow might equal one dead person if they are up close and about ready to kill you. Otherwise it is just getting lucky (or unlucky if you get shot). A modern artillery guy has to be working pretty hard to hump all those shells around, I don't think it is the same thing. My point is that a drug that could give short bursts of strength would be good for an old school warrior, and not as good and maybe not worth the downside to a modern guy.
In war done by hand, might made right. In single combat or when things have opened up, and most other things being equal, the most vicious, fearless guy is gonna win. Look at the beserkers. Getting nekked and charging a bunch of guys with sharp sticks isn't my idea of a good time! Yet those guys were a threat. I think that they may have been liquored & drugged up, and that the nudity may have had some religious signifigance. Just the way we use the word "beserk" today is a testament to what one guy that is amped up and thinks he is invincible can do. I'm mostly guessing here, but a tanker or an machine gunner that strips and thinks he is gonna kill them all is just going to die faster. I'm not a vet, and history is kinda thin here, so help me out!
Basically, in old school war, getting hopped up and thinking your are invincible matter, modern war, maybe not so much.
In anybody's book, having the guy next to you puss out and run is bad, right? It opens up a hole that the enemy can go thru and then tear stuff up. That has not changed. The difference is in the old way the guy next to you was right next to you. In some cases you would have been touching and maybe your shield was covering the right half of his body. The effectiveness of your unit largely depended on how tight were and how much they moved as one body.
Look at King Leonidas & Friends vs. The Persians at Thermopylae, for an example. Three hundred were able to hold up tens of thousands because they got in a tight line and didn't puss out.
Ok, so the Spartans were barely literate killers that had done nothing but train for war and had to steal to get their food as kids. It's also important to notice how they were equipped.
A hoplite typically had shin guards, a big round shield & a helmet, sometimes some smaller pieces of armor here and there. The main weapons were a spear and a short sword.
Notice how all the armor is up front? To get an easy kill one one of these guys you are gonna have to stick him in they eye holes of his helmet, knock him over and then stab him, or sneak under a bunch of spears and start hacking away. Doing these things to a supurb athlete that doesn't want you to isn't going to be easy.
In contrast, a hoplite was almost completely bare in the back. Even a group of witless peasants could win if a group of hoplites turned or if they were flanked. When fighting as a group, facing forward and not stepping out of line were maybe the most important things. Almost any drug that gave a person the nerve to do this would be worth giving up a little dexterity & judgement.
I haven't heard a lot of evidence to indicate that the Greeks were big on hallucinogens and pain killers while i
Why do I have this? I don't smoke.
In the early days after the accident, it was suspected that the cause of the pilot error was the use of "go pills", i.e. amphetamines, which are apparently are in common (and approved) use by pilots.
I have no idea whether the pilots were actually on such pills; the news started getting vague as courts martial started. I also have no comment on whether go pills might lead to greater safety (than if pilots were sleepy). My point in posting here is not to forward any theories, or to darken any reputations, or to disrespect anyone involved. My purpose is just to point out the incident, and the discussion of a connection to drugs, in case readers of /. haven't heard about this incident.
As anyone who has been in the U.S. Navy can attest to, practically speaking, sailors are already using anything they can get away with to maintain alertness. For some reason the Navy way is to have lots and lots of redundancy to account for fatigue induced errors, rather than reducing fatigue. As a result sailors can be required to stand 8 hours of watch, in which their job is completely redundant, on top of a 10 hour physically exhausting work day, every day for months on end. I personally found myself hallucinating that I was eating a hamburger in a crowd while standing watch one particular night. As a result most sailors drink coffee non-stop, have a stash of No-Doze packed away somewhere, are chain smokers, or use smokeless tobacco in order to stay awake. If there weren't nearly constant drug tests, I'm sure they'd use harder stuff.
Curiously the one exception to this seems to be pilots, who are required to get 8 hours of sleep in the 24-hours before they fly. I guess in the situation were redundancy isn't really possible, the Navy will concede that humans do need to sleep occasionally.
If it weren't for the fact that whatever DARPA comes up with never get away with being used unless it's wartime, I'd have more of a problem with it.