Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

DARPA Offers No Food for Thought

Posted by michael on from the oatmeal-cookie-bar-deemed-harmful dept.

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?"

6 of 458 comments (clear)

  1. What a Waste by 36526542DD · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Science offers us so many incredible possibilities to explore, things that can greatly enhance our everyday lives, and yet our tax dollars go to things like this.

    I wish there were a militarily strategic reason to find a cure to cancer, stroke, or diabetes, because they'd all be cured by now just by the amount of money and focus thrown at them.

    I also wish there were a law in the U.S. that for every dollar spent on the military, a dollar had to be spent on education.

  2. As an ex 11B by SLot · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I can say with authority that we were already asked to do things that were beyond normal human demands.

    And I wouldn't exactly call MRE's 'food' anyways, although some of them weren't bad as long as you had hot sauce. :)

  3. Re:Bad news by Winkhorst · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The Germans pioneered in this research during World War II. They called it "benzedrine."

    --
    "Is this Winkhorst a nova criminal?" "No just a technical sergeant wanted for interrogation."
  4. Re:Think of the uses! by NtwoO · · Score: 5, Interesting
    During the '80s the South African government was fighting a war in Angola. The special opps teams were supplied with very strong tablets of speed to keep on going for DAYS. They were said to keep on marching with no desire for food.

    I wonder if they also had a walkman with some heavy trance running...

    --
    ! /* */
  5. Up and Down by erick99 · · Score: 4, Interesting
    When I was working on my Masters degree I was helping out at my mentor's lab at N.I.H. He was working on a pair of medications that would allow the armed forces to first have soldiers sleep deeply during long flights over seas to battle areas and then give them a second medication (close to an analog to cocaine actually) that would keep them fully battle ready and at their peak for 72 hours. It was quite an experience and I have no idea what came of it. When I left we were doing lethality studies with mice with both agents.

    Happy Trails!

    Erick

    --
    http://www.busyweather.com/
  6. And one of them bombed Canadian soldiers by Rascasse · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Apparently the American pilot was on some sort of amphetamine when he bombed Canadian soldiers participating in training exercises in Afghanistan. He ended up killing 4 of them. But he could have sworn they were shooting at him, despite the fact he was told there would be Canadian soldiers in the area doing training exercises. Makes me think about how many friendly-fire or civilian-casualty incidents are caused by soldiers that have been forced to take these drugs.