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The Pentagon's Ultimate Home Theater

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the lovely-lovely-fort-sill dept.

Steve Silberman writes "I was the first reporter to see the inside of a new battle-simulation system designed by the Institute for Creative Technologies, a 'military-entertainment' think tank sponsored by the Defense Department. Starting in September, Marines, infantrymen, and Air Force pilots will train for war in Matrix-like rooms in Oklahoma simulating urban and desert environments, with surround sound and photorealistic rendering of bombing runs and other scenarios. It may or may not be the future of military training, but it's certainly the future of home gaming. My article, 'The War Room,' will appear in the September issue of Wired."

48 of 242 comments (clear)

  1. "Battle Simulation" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    That's military code for "Doom 3."

  2. Wait by Luigi30 · · Score: 5, Funny

    If they lose a life in the simulation, do they die in real life too?

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    1. Re:Wait by Ieshan · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Heh. No.

      But it's a good point.

      Simulations can be designed to train soldiers to take unneccessary or life-threatening risks so long as they involve a high amount of simulated payout and little or no punishment for simulated failure.

      I seriously wouldn't be surprised if this is the way simulators are used to train soldiers.

      I'm not trying to say that the Military has no regard for human life, but it's no secret that military operations are often valued in terms of numbers of soldiers killed per objective gained. Convincing young kids that they're supposed to risk their life for any intermediate goal is difficult, but not impossible (note that it's now "the country" young men risk their lives for, not "securing the powerplant" or "capturing person X". No one wants to be told that they're giving their life for a small piece of the puzzle.).

      Making it easier to convince these soldiers by pre-simulating rewarding scenarios based on risk-taking may make soldiers more compliant.

    2. Re:Wait by Daniel+Dvorkin · · Score: 5, Informative

      FWIW, pretty much everybody on the battlefield understands that he's fighting for a specific objective, and more importantly, for his buddies. "The country" is what makes idealistic kids enlist, but in a war zone, it's very far away; the guy to your left, the guy to your right, and the hill you're supposed to take are right there.

      --
      The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
    3. Re:Wait by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting
      "FWIW, pretty much everybody on the battlefield understands that he's fighting for a specific objective, and more importantly, for his buddies."

      And, all too often, against his buddies. About half the persian gulf war casualties were friendly fire, not even counting murders and self-inflicted casualties. And sometimes they buddies you're fighting against are high on speed

      Back on topic -- training soldiers in a video game will just make them that much more careless in this regard. You lose something when you bomb the canadians in the simulation, and then go out drinking with the same guys that evening.

  3. First Person Shooter by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

    This is the real FPS game.

  4. Re: Home Theatre by MichaelSmith · · Score: 5, Funny

    Gentlemen this is the war room, you can't fight in here

    --
    http://michaelsmith.id.au
  5. Well now ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    I'm glad to see them put my taxes to good use ...

  6. Realistic by LordHatrus · · Score: 5, Funny

    So realistic, you'll leave with sand in places you've never thought possible!

  7. Yeah, that's nice and all... by MrDomino · · Score: 3, Funny

    But the REAL question is, "where can I get one?"

  8. Future solders by GoofyBoy · · Score: 4, Funny


    Bunny hopping their way to victory!

    --
    The surprise isn't how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us.
    1. Re:Future solders by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      The moderator who modded parent post "Overrated" obviously haven't played and/or watched multiplayer Quake I/II/III/QuakeWorld matches.

      Bunny Hopping is a movement technique that appeared when players found out that they could use a design flaw in the Quake/QuakeWorld physics engine to increase their movement speed, by continiously jumping and strafing from side to side, while adjusting the view accordingly.

      Players continued bunny hopping in Quake II and III, even though the physics engines were modified to discourage bunny hopping, the players found new techniques to keep on hopping.

      In a typical Quake III match players almost always moves by bunny hopping unless stealth is required.

  9. How long by Lanzaa · · Score: 3, Interesting

    How long will this take to get to home gaming though?

    Or will these leave millitary use and get sold to private companies to have people pay to play in them?

    --
    Never Smoke A Banana.
  10. At least he was honest by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    How many times have we seen people pass off "stories" when they're just trying to get some attention. This guy was completely upfront and honest about a story he wrote that is of interest to many here.

  11. Replacing training with intution.... by freedom_india · · Score: 5, Interesting
    The goal of the punishing routines and endless drills was to replace thinking with instinct so that at the sound of gunshots, a soldier would automatically return fire.

    Intution is of no use when there are snipers hidden in a street to kill you and you panic. That is the army tries to replace intution with training.
    As a man under fire, my friend used to say how many times training and automatic reflex saved his life instead of intution. if pentagon thinks they can replace training with intution they are building a bad army.

    --
    "Doing what i can, with what i have." ~ Burt Gummer
    1. Re:Replacing training with intution.... by ashkar · · Score: 5, Insightful

      By instinct, the author probably meant the instant reflex of which you speak. The situation given was only one out of many that the military would train in. Most likely, they would attempt to get soldiers to the point where they could instantly analyze the situation, decide upon the best course of action, and act upon it. So, no, I don't think that this kind of training is a bad idea at all.

    2. Re:Replacing training with intution.... by thermopylae300 · · Score: 2, Interesting
      There are already many video-game type training methods being employed to train infanty riflemen (and police). These include reaction-time scenarios (with friendlies mixed in) and some decision making scenarios.

      I remember one particular scenario that showed a group of shadowy figures running toward the user's position through the forest. Gunshots are heard from the forest and many riflemen will open fire before they properly identify the target... which is a group of women and children running from their unseen attackers. That was memorable training for anyone that opened fire.

      I've read a few posts from slashdot's armchair generals informing the masses that it is a bad idea to do training in a video-game type environment. At ease, Rambo, the military isn't scrapping tough training for Counterstrike. You can not accurately simulate combat during training. The military must do their best by simulating as many aspects of combat as possible. Food, water, and sleep deprivation along with fatigue simulates some of the stess of war. Combined arms live fire exercises teach the sounds (and some fear) of battle. Blanks, paintballs, simunitions , and MILES gear allow you to fight force-on-force instead of pop-up targets. And simulations like this war-room give soldiers and Marines a chance to repeatedly practice scenarios in an easily-manipulated environment that would be extremely expensive to replicate outside of a video game.

      --
      Before the invention of eruptions, lava had to be carried down the mountain by hand and thrown on sleeping villagers.
  12. I've seen it once or twice by Bruha · · Score: 3, Interesting

    It's called Snow Hall I believe and it's at Ft Sill in Lawton, OK. I have friends up there that work at the place but they've never mentioned any signifigant upgrades. But being the military it does not mean that it didnt happen and they were probably not allowed to tell anyone at the time. I'll have to visit sometime to check it out hopefully.

    1. Re:I've seen it once or twice by digaman23 · · Score: 2, Informative

      Bruha, it's "I See O" Hall, and I tell the tale of how the building got that weird name in the article.

  13. Training for what?! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative
    "That's a high-payoff target, brother," says Tyrrell. He gets approval to deliver a "limited lethality" fragmentation bomb to the hospital roof.

    Jesus christ, this is the sort of training they get?!
    Limited Lethality my arse. Nothing dropped from a fighter-bomber can be considered "limited lethality" - Kinetic energy alone does a good job of eroding that particular definition
    1. Re:Training for what?! by digaman23 · · Score: 2, Informative

      At the point in the article when I say that the Prado character tells the major that the hospital is off-limits for targeting, a colonel who was also watching the simulation interjected, "If you drop a bomb on a maternity ward, CNN's gonna wanna hear about it."

    2. Re:Training for what?! by Jeremi · · Score: 2, Funny
      Nothing dropped from a fighter-bomber can be considered "limited lethality"


      Actually, everything dropped from a fighter-bomber is "limited lethality", otherwise the first bombing run would have destroyed the universe.


      Or to put it another way, limited != small.

      --


      I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
  14. Where's that dang Peace Simulation? by xactuary · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Anybody know of a peace simulation?

    --
    Say hello to my little sig.
    1. Re:Where's that dang Peace Simulation? by 88NoSoup4U88 · · Score: 2, Funny

      So when will we be outsourcing war to India ?

    2. Re:Where's that dang Peace Simulation? by the+gnat · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I'm sure every sociology (and economics, political science, or psychology) department in the country would love to come up with this, but unfortunately normal human interactions are infinitely harder to simulate than modern battle tactics and military technology. Although our current administration makes it seem even more difficult than necessary.

      But seriously, the point of all this high-tech military wankery is to figure out how to inflict very brief and intense moments of horrific violence with the objective of ending wars as quickly as possible. Which is much better for innocent civilians in the long run. To take a recent example, the Iraq war hasn't exactly been kind to the Iraqis themselves (aside from the obvious benefit of no more Saddam), but imagine how much worse it could have been if we hadn't pounded the hell out of their army immediately and instead had to slowly chip away at their lines. (And I suspect that this would have been much worse for their army, too.)

  15. 4 Years too early!! by Big+Yak · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I joined the Air Force as an officer 6 years ago, and just left a few months ago. When I originally went to Carnegie Mellon University, I took multiple classes in Virtual Reality. Unfortunately, the AF would not allow me to take the time off to pursue a Masters in Virtual Reality there... as they needed my computer skills immediately.

    I guess I was just 4 years early... those skills are in very high demand, now.

    --
    -Hell hath no fury like that of a woman scorned for /.
  16. Conventional War by orthogonal · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Hmm. Can they use all that nifty technology and virtual reality to make sure Military Police and Military Intelligence units understand the Geneva Conventions?

    Seriously. The leadership failures that allowed (or even encouraged) the US military atrocities at Abu Ghraib have cost us far more than any VR simulation, and will continue to cost us as a nation for decades, in both world respect and in the recruitment of America-hating terrorists.

    Perhaps the miltary should shelve some of this gee-whiz "VR-tainment" favor of simple classrooms with wooden benches and a blackboard and high-ranking instructors who state unequivocally that torture is un-American, repugnant to our values, and will not be tolerated at all in the US military.

    Paraphrasing the Christian Bible, Mark 8:36,for what shall it profit an army, if it shall defeat the whole world, and lose its own soul?

    --
    Opinions on the Twiddler2 hand-held keyboard?
    1. Re:Conventional War by Daniel+Dvorkin · · Score: 2, Insightful

      [sigh] People like you just don't get it, do you? Shit like what happened at Abu Ghraib hurts us, it does not help us. It makes us less likely to win, not more. Stories and pictures of American soldiers torturing prisoners are the best recruiting tool al-Qaeda has. The same twisted "logic" that says Abu Ghraib was useful to American forces would indicate that 9/11 would have made Americans say, "Gee, this Osama bin Laden guy is pretty tough, we'd better do what he says."

      --
      The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
    2. Re:Conventional War by orthogonal · · Score: 5, Insightful

      "History And Moral Philosophy" class from Heinlein's "Starship Troopers"

      Better Col. Dubois than Chickenhawk Cheney or Wolfowitz.

      I just recenty re-read Starship Troopers (for the, what, 10th time? I'm a big Heinlein fan); for those unfamiliar with the novel it is perhaps Heinlein's most controversial novel (it's often maligned as "fascist") because the society Heinlein approvingly depicted in the novel limits the franchise (that is, the right to vote) to persons who have voluntarily completed a term of "Federal Service", which (essentially) means military service.

      Heinlein was not necessarily advocating this form of goverment (any more than the constitutional monarchy in Double Star, the world government in Stranger in a Strange Land, or the Howard Family gerontocracy on Secundus in Time Enough for Love), nor did he claim that such a government would be wiser than another form (indeed, he has that government specifically teach that that form is not necessarily wiser).

      But Heinlein was making the argument that those who voluntarily place themselves at risk to defend their country are demonstrating that they consider their country's survival more important than their own, and that thus they can be better trusted to put the national interest ahead of their particular interests when voting or otherwise exercising power (but also see Heinlein's possible rebuttal to himself in his much later The Cat Who Walked Through Walls).

      Heinlein's argument seems particularly timely when a President who managed to avoid Vietnam by getting a heavily sought after post in the Air Guard defending Alabama from the Viet Cong and a Vice President who "had other priorities" during Vietnam (enough other priortities to get five draft deferments!) have sent 970 American men and women to die in what increasingly appears to be an unecessary and ultimately pointless war -- and are questioning the patriotism of an opponent who actually volunteered for dangerous duty in Vietnam, got shot at, saved the lives of his men, and won numerous decorations for that.

      For Paul Wolfowitz, the Iraq war is pieces on a game board (and in testimony to Congress he even forgot about 200 dead American soldiers), for Dick Cheney, numbers on a Haliburton balance sheet, for George W. Bush, the chance to pose for re-election ads in a flight suit on the deck of an aircraft carrier. But for 970 American soldiers, Iraq has been a place to die; and for countless others a place to leave arms and legs and youth -- or at Abu Ghraib, honor -- behind.

      Maybe Heinlein had a good idea. We can do better by our soldiers and by our country than the Boy President.

      --
      Opinions on the Twiddler2 hand-held keyboard?
    3. Re:Conventional War by Flower · · Score: 2, Insightful
      Go back and read the article and note when the officer talks about making sure they present the right stories in the simulations.

      The ethics debate about interrogation is very high level and complex. When I was on vacation last week I think there was an article in US News and World Report which discussed the differences in interrogation methodologies used by the FBI and CIA. They are about as 180 degress from each other as you can get. The FBI goes for a hearts and minds stategy and the article made note that in one case they put together a deal with someone where for information they worked it out that his son would get a heart transplant. The CIA is total intimidation. CIA got one suspect and as he was boarding a plane the CIA interrogator threatened to find and rape the suspect's mother.

      But what I got most out of the article was that there is no "unequivocal" definition of torture that can be brought down to the common soldier. They really do make individual cases out of every interrogation. This guy is known to have needed and reliable info which is time sensitive and he's not talking. Are we allowed to simulate drowning him (example from article) or do we turn him over to another arabic country which can take measures we won't. Believe it or not, this stuff goes by legal staff to determine whether we are crossing the line or not.

      Personally I buy into the FBI's methodology. From the studies I've seen torture is not an effective interrogation tool. But obviously there are those up high who don't subscribe to that philosophy. Unfortunately that shit rolls downhill.

      --
      I don't want knowledge. I want certainty. - Law, David Bowie
    4. Re:Conventional War by stefanlasiewski · · Score: 3, Insightful

      You cannot promote democracy and torture prisoners at the same time.

      --
      "Can of worms? The can is open... the worms are everywhere."
    5. Re:Conventional War by Melantha_Bacchae · · Score: 2, Informative

      Sadr is no terrorist! When the poor, the recently unemployed (thanks to the US and their occupational government), the dispossessed Shiites wanted to fight, Sadr made the al-Mahdi Army out of them, and channeled their anger into peaceful protest. The US provoked them to anger beyond Sadr's control twice (by such freedom loving activities as closing down their newspaper). Then yes, they did fight, as a resistance force. If you haven't checked the Geneva Convention lately, it gives them every right to fight an occupation of their country. Everytime things get to the fighting stage, Sadr tries to negotiate a peaceful solution. He's no saint, but he isn't a terrorist either.

      For those ignorant of such matters (I'm not because I looked it up), al-Mahdi is a relative of Mohammed who is supposed to return to fight injustice and tyranny, and to establish an era of peace. Everytime there is injustice or an occupation, the resistance (peaceful or not) invokes the name of al-Mahdi.

      BTW, Sadr has a right to be in that shrine. He is distantly related to the guy the shrine honors. He is also the son of the Sadr that lead a rebellion against Saddam, the Sadr that was killed in that very shrine!

      Bin Laden doesn't give a d*mn about your precious "freedom" (which apparently includes shutting down newspapers and ordering reporters out of Najaf on threat of being shot!). Bin Laden wants the infidel US bases away from Mecca (done). He wants the secular governments of Arab countries overthrown (partly done in Iraq and Afghanistan courtesy of the US). He also hates Israel and US support for its occupation of Palestinian lands and attacks on Palestinian people.

      Sadr wants the US, its Coalition, and its puppet governments out of Iraq so they can have some nice elections, freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of the press, etc.

      Iran, well that is a long story. Back in the 1950s, Iran had a nice democratically elected government, which the US hated. So in our first experiment in meddling (except for the creation of Israel), we sent the CIA in there to destabilize the government and put the Shah of Iran back in power. While this helped the US in the Cold War, the people of Iran, on the verge of a bright future of freedom, found themselves cursed instead with grinding poverty, police terror, and torture. Thousands died, because of the US. From this old sin of ours, springs forth Iran's current hatred and distrust of the US, and a dark and fearsome child: Terrorism!

      In modern day Iran, the nuclear crisis has reached a new level: Israel and the US have threatened to bomb Iran's alleged nuclear facilities. Iran, for their part, has warned that the US has no monopoly on preemption: Iran will bomb Israel's nuclear weapon's facilities and attack the US in Iraq if they have reason to believe the US and Israel are going to carry out their threats. If the US and Israel don't quit making stupid threats and do some backpedaling, the US and Iran could be in a hot war by the end of the year!

      As for cleaning our house, the Geneva Conventions are the house rules we wrote. The Nazis of old would love to see us breaking them, torturing innocents, becoming just like them! Abu Graibe probably gave Bin Laden a warm fuzzy too. Egypt is certainly grateful for the new torture techniques that they are now eagerly applying to their own people.

      The more we torture, the more husbands we drag away in the middle of the night, the more countries we ruin, the more kids we shoot to bits in their parent's arms, the more anger we breed. The more anger, the more terror. You can't win this dirty. You can't hope to save freedom by destroying it. A complete withdrawal, not only from Iraq, but from the whole of the Middle East, especially of military support for Israel, might break the cycle and at least stop the creation of new terrorists. Otherwise, we continue to make terrorists faster than we can kill them: a war we can never win.

      And then you can give this fancy training technology to fire fighters. At

    6. Re:Conventional War by Pomme+de+Terre! · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Hmm. Can they use all that nifty technology and virtual reality to make sure Military Police and Military Intelligence units understand the Geneva Conventions?

      I am a military policeman for the Air Force. (For the record, in the USAF, we're called Security Forces.)

      Troops are briefed on the Geneva conventions every time we mobilize to deploy. We're briefed everytime we get to a foreign nation. We're briefed every time we simulate deployment. Practically any time someone mentiones mobilization... the briefing comes. Further, every year we are required to take tests verifying our understanding of the conventions. In simulated exercises, we have to abide by the rules. In every briefing, we're told what we can and cannot do and we're told what the consequences are for breaking the rules.

      Those soldiers at Abu Ghraid knew the rules. This wasn't a case of ignorance of the law. Further, they knew quite well that only lawful orders are to be followed. So the "My commander made me do it!" excuse is laughable.

      More training isn't needed. And as we're seeing from the many investigations and courts martial, Geneva Convention rule violations are not tolerated.

      The prison abuses aren't an institutional problem, they're a humanity problem. They're a byproduct of war, and nothing will change that reality. As members of the armed forces, we strive to be better than that; in the overwhelming majority of cases, we are. But, unfortunately, we'll see the darkness of man again when the next conflict breaks out.

      War is ugly, and it brings out the worst in humanity.

      Pomme de Terre!

    7. Re:Conventional War by Daniel+Dvorkin · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Thanks -- you answered that pretty much as I would have.

      I'd like to add one thing: as a medic, I took the Geneva Conventions pretty damn seriously. Most of the wounded I treated in Desert Storm were Iraqis who, in some cases, had been trying to kill me a little while before, and I gave them the exact same level of care I gave wounded Americans. Part of the reason for upholding this standard is entirely pragmatic: enemy soldiers are much more likely to surrender, rather than fight to the death, if they know they'll be treated well. (E.g., Germans toward the end of WW2 were much more likely to surrender to US and UK forces than they were to the Soviets.) The other part of it is moral: it simply does not matter if those we fight are evil, whether in their treatment of prisoners or in any other aspect; we have to be better than that, or we risk losing everything we have sworn to defend.

      --
      The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
  17. they need that much hardware to by joeflies · · Score: 2, Interesting

    play military spec Battlezone?

  18. Re:Why do they still need pilots in the planes? by Fearless+Freep · · Score: 2

    Why are the machines of war still designed to carry meat-sacks around inside them?!

    You ever seen "Darkstar"?

  19. Warning! by doc+modulo · · Score: 4, Informative

    Spoiler alert!

    The last paragraph of the article gives the main surprise away of one of the best science-fiction books on Earth: "Ender's Game"

    I recommend Ender's Game, easy to read and great, and recommend against reading the last paragraph of the article if you haven't already.

    --
    - -- Truth addict for life.
  20. Re:Why do they still need pilots in the planes? by YrWrstNtmr · · Score: 3, Insightful

    So that you can recall them
    So that the pilot, upon seeing the target is not quite as imagined, can abort the mission
    So that you can have an accurate, in person, assessment of the actual scene. There are quite a few videos floating around from Iraq that show last minute targeting changes only possible by an onscene human.

    program the plane with a target, press the big red "Go Bomb" button

    We have those now. They're called cruise missiles. Or in the ultimate sense, ICBM's.

    But they're working on mutiple types of UCAV's. I expect we'll see a scenario whereby a few of these are slaved to a piloted control A/C (F-22 or AC-130 maybe). Give the UCAV's a simple AI for the flight to the target area ("Stay next to Mother"), and then the human aircrew can designate one or more targets to each. ("#1, these coordinates, #2, that truck, #3 circle until further notice)

    Finally, it is MUCH harder to hack or jam the control system of a human piloted vehicle. You really don't want your unmanned vehicle to be captured in flight and turned against you.

  21. Re:Oh great... by Aardpig · · Score: 2, Insightful

    he dumbfucks whose ways to kill saved your ass in WWII, if memory serves correct.

    A few years late, IIRC. Britain entered the war from the start, because they had promised to help protect Poland. The USA only entered the war because Pearl Harbour forced them to; until then, they couldn't care less that the Nazis were taking over the world.

    Oh, and if any country could claim credit for winning WWII, it would have to be the Soviet Union.

    --
    Tubal-Cain smokes the white owl.
  22. That good huh? by AndroidCat · · Score: 5, Funny
    After Flatworld, the sight of Oklahoma senator James Inhofe buckling on a virtual reality helmet at ICT headquarters seems positively old school. A technician shouts "Load the flying bats!" and the senator is transported to a damp tunnel near a farmhouse that may be an enemy hideout. Insects whir and water trickles in surround sound while digitized bats swoop and dive overhead. Inhofe is impressed. "It's the closest thing to reality that I've ever experienced," he says. "My feet felt wet."
    "Janitor team report to the simulation room."
    --
    One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
  23. Are you high? by Flower · · Score: 5, Insightful
    If you look at the costs involved in training a soldier it's self-evident that the military has a high regard for human life. A soldier represents a serious investment of time and money into a limited resource - far more limited than any missle/warplane/submarine/etc. Once a soldier is gone all that experience, ability to adapt and make decisions is gone and simply cannot be readily replaced.

    I also think that, especially in today's environments, that the military has a healthy respect for human life outside of its own. How one achieves an objective is rapidly becoming just as important as accomplishing it. US policy is being judged on how well a soldier responds to a shoot/don't shoot scenerio or how much collateral damage is inflicted in an operation. Especially now that media organizations around the world can publicise every incident in near real-time.

    Yes, as a profession of war, the military must accept a doctrine of kill or be killed when in combat but it is simplistic in the extreme to imply that means the military has no regard for human life.

    --
    I don't want knowledge. I want certainty. - Law, David Bowie
  24. Re:Why do they still need pilots in the planes? by stienman · · Score: 4, Insightful


    There are lots of reasons, but two which you should be intimately familiar with as a computer professional are:
    Latency and DoS attacks.

    Even if the soldier is within 10 miles of the UAV, even if they use hardware instead of software, even if they reduce latency to the absolute minimum possible with today's technology, the soldier is still milliseconds behind in the actual action on site, and the equipment is milliseconds behind the soldier's reaction time.

    Secondly, even with super secure communications, spread spectrum, frequency hopping, multiple parallel channels, etc there still exists a significant possibility that someone else could adversely affect the operation of the UAV with a fairly simple and cheap electronic circuit. Even if it only increased the latency by a few mS as the systems try to cope, employed at the right time in a battle, it could easily give the opposing force the window they need to disable the UAV. It wouldn't be easy to track down and bomb like the GPS jammers Iraq used in the beginning of the war since it would only need to be on for a few seconds at a time and could be carried.

    -Adam

  25. Toys for Boys by Ars-Fartsica · · Score: 5, Insightful
    Meanwhile in the rest of the Western world, a startling tactic for maintaining homeland security has been in use for decades - do not screw over people in foreign lands for fun and profit and you will tend not to make enemies.

    I am tired of the miliporn covered on /., its getting to be like Popular Science. Not one of these billion dollar toys could prevent twenty halfwits armed with boxcutters pulling the US economy down to its knees and dragging the entire nation into a paranoid delusion that is likely to last decades.

    1. Re:Toys for Boys by Tolwyn_993442 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Heh, the US military (nor any other military) isn't a solely anti-terrorist force. They have parts that do CT work and parts that don't. I imagine this training sim might help the latter.

  26. Wow. by Azureflare · · Score: 2, Insightful
    If this setup eventually becomes popular and widespread, and we as a nation are playing these videos games...which soldiers play to get trained for fighting in battle...

    How does that make you feel? Knowing that you are playing the same games that are used for training for soldier's in the army?

    Am I the only one that is scared by that thought?

    Is our nation a nation of war and destruction? Are our future young children going to grow up being trained to kill?

    I know it's a bit of a stretch to say that playing one of these games makes you suitable to the army. But it's still kind of frightening. Aren't we as civilians supposed to be spending our time actually building our country? Does anyone else think that we should be thinking about this?

    I value the future of our country; and I do not want us mentally to be become hardened killers... I honestly hope I am not alone in this.

    By the way, did anyone else think of Bradbury's short story "The Veldt" when this article came up?

    P.S. Strange that this short story is available on the web... Hmm, google is great, what can I say... Buy one of Bradbury's books if you haven't, he's a great read.

  27. Re:Oh great... by centipetalforce · · Score: 2, Interesting
    The USA only entered the war because Pearl Harbour forced them to; until then, they couldn't care less that the Nazis were taking over the world.

    That's only a half truth, really. Yes, the majority of the public was against the war, mainly because of the previous war, which was needless, but FDR knew war in Europe was necessary.
    Oh, and if any country could claim credit for winning WWII, it would have to be the Soviet Union.
    And yes, the soviets did most of the killing, but the US' lend lease arguably prevented Moscow from falling in the first year, and provided millions of tons of materiale to drive them westward into berlin.
    So really, lets not go into the gray shades of history. I do probably agree with you that we definitely should be isolationists now that the world is stereotyping us as dumbfucks.
  28. NYT Article... by codefreez · · Score: 2, Informative

    Coincidently, New York Times Magazine is also publishing a story about ICT in this weekend's edition:

    http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/22/magazine/22GAMES .html

    1. Re:NYT Article... by digaman23 · · Score: 2, Informative
      It was, by the way, really a coincidence. I was invited down to ICT last year after writing a story about The Matrix, in part because Paul Debevec, who I mention in this story, developed the technology used to create the "bullet time" sequences in the original film.

      I didn't know that the Times was also working on a story until about three days ago -- the kind of "coincidence" that gives journalists heart attacks. In his fine piece for the Times, however, Clive Thompson focused on the console videogame aspect of ICT, while I focused on the "mixed reality" battle environments at Fort Sill. So there's hardly any overlap in our stories, thank goodness.