Slashdot Mirror
New Tools Available for Network-Centric Warfare
Reservoir Hill writes "MIT Technology Review reports that a new map-based application is the latest tool in the military's long-term plan to introduce what is sometimes called "network-centric warfare." The Tactical Ground Reporting System, or TIGR allows patrol leaders in Iraq to learn about city landmarks and past events and more than 1,500 junior officers in Iraq — about a fifth of patrol leaders — are using the map-centric application before going on patrol and adding new data to TIGR upon returning. By clicking on icons and lists, they can see the locations of key buildings, like mosques, schools, and hospitals, and retrieve information such as location data on past attacks, geotagged photos of houses and other buildings (taken with cameras equipped with Global Positioning System technology), and photos of suspected insurgents and neighborhood leaders. They can even listen to civilian interviews and watch videos of past maneuvers. "The ability ... to draw the route ... of your patrol that day and then to access the collective reports, media, analysis of the entire organization, is pretty powerful," says Major Patrick Michaelis. "It is a bit revolutionary from a military perspective when you think about it, using peer-based information to drive the next move. ... Normally we are used to our higher headquarters telling the patrol leader what he needs to think.""
... the print friendly version so you don't get attacked by the annoying ads.....
I'd like to have that app just to describe the area where I live. I wish I'd been able to work on it... the other geeks always get all the fun :-)
Beer is proof that God loves us, and wants us to be happy.
Flickr... Tumblr... TIGR? Has the army gone all Web 2.0 on us?
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
that they should give up some tech, and increase the risk to their lives? or give some tech to an enemy? i don't understand what motivates your thinking
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
This sounds a bit like planning a holiday (vacation) using the internet. I was planning a trip to Portugal last night. I looked up lots of guest houses and hotels, saw their locations on a map, read reviews from other travellers, etc. I could even find the locations of tourist sites, see photos of them from other tourists, and get satellite photos of them from Google. I'm glad the military are catching up.
got to love glossy icons and semi-transparent toolbars...
comment first, facts later. http://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScience/RelativityofWrong.htm
From the article: ... Normally we are used to our higher headquarters telling the patrol leader what he needs to think."
"It is a bit revolutionary from a military perspective when you think about it, using peer-based information to drive the next move.
Peer based information eh? Fundamentally an armed mob and the military are relatively similar: both are large groups of people using force (read: weapons; read: guns) to achieve an objective requiring greater force than any individual member is capable of bringing to bear. I thought (and correct me if I'm wrong) that what differentiated the military from a lawless mob was exactly the fact that the military has a well defined command and control structure, rather than each man being influenced by his neighbor's decisions. This seems to me to be moving down the slippery slope. Now let me say that I understand that this system is not meant to replace or diminish current command and control in any way, and that peers withing the ranks assiting each other is not a bad thing. However, what happens when the information given through peer-based channels is different from and outright contradicts the information (and the orders based on that information) coming from command? While this technology has the potential to be excellent for soldiers in the field, it seems to me that cautious adoption should be the order of the day.
where does the I in TIGR come from?
C7 C4 25 8A 11 BB 0D 40 8F 4E 4E 47 CA F0 BE 5B
Wasn't this called The Google Earth Community in an other life? Or is this one of those great innovative new inventions with compliments of the other Gates?
It really does look like the military finally went and looked at what is happening in the MMO world. This sounds a lot like what the eq2maps project does, by allowing POIs (Points Of Interest) to be not only updated by users, but added by users.
The sad part is it has taken this long for the military to remember that it's the guys on the ground that are actually seeing what is happening, and can provide a lot of useful information if they are just listened to. Giving them the ability to update databases with what they see should help save lives down the road.
if this got infiltrated the opponent could do all sorts of nasty things
...the patrol leaders name who was one of the seeds of this project? Damn it! Demote him back to Sergeant now!
if used by 911 dispatchers, with feedback from police, fire an EMTs, this sort of a system could lead to police who knew where ambush was possible, firemen who knew when a building was condemned or had toxic or explosive contents, alleyways too narrow for an ambulance and so forth...before they scramble.
SLASHDOT: news for people who can't concentrate on work or have no life at all and got tired of yelling back at the TV.
you have a very cocooned and typical point of view of a lot western children (children in mind, if not actual chronological age), who have seen no real menace in their lives, and therefore see no reason to fight menace. this coddled pampered view becomes so stilted as to actually see menace in that which exists to protect them from menace. this is a flawed perspective on the reality of the world we live in, that is only possible to develop if you live in a hermetically sealed climate controlled world, disconnected form the reality that the majority of humans currently lived and have lived in history, in so far as life experience with no threats to your life and beliefs are concerned
go live in a slum in manila or calcutta for a month. then revisit us with how that has changed your persective on whether or not you are really vulnerable or not to things you currently perceive as nonentities unrelated to your existence
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Only from the top (Majors and above) does it appear that HQ is telling the patrol leader "what to think." On the ground, the NCOs and junior officers are quite capable of evaluating situations and responding to them as appropriate.
In an ideal military (which as a vet, I realize ours isn't--but closer than you might think) the chain of command sets an objective and then the lowers carry it out as they see fit. Micromanagement (something most line soldiers were apprehensive about with the Land Warrior system, or whatever they're calling it this week) is never a good thing in a fight. You don't want a general, most of whom are at least 50% political animals with their eye always on the "how will this look on my evaluation" factor, telling a private which window to throw a grenade in when clearing a house. The general says "take the city" the colonel says "Company A attack from the north, Company B attack from the west" and the captains tell the NCOs "go get 'em" and leave the minor details up to platoon/squad leaders.
On a similar note, more information (contrary to the commonly-held slashdot idea) isn't always better. Aside from information overload (another Land Warrior worry) there's the fact that details can get lost in an outpouring of video and maps. It's equally effective to talk to the last patrol's leader and get him to tell you "don't go down Saddam Street" or "We've had problems when we go past the former Baath Party HQ." Better in some ways, since an actual person can communicate nuances and answer questions. Also, I think there can be a tendency to put some portion of your attention on mapping the actual space to what you've seen in the dog-and-pony show, which lowers your situational awareness.
I'm not completely discounting TIGR, just saying that whether this TIGR deal is the bee's knees or not... remains to be seen
Interested in a Flash-based MAME front end? Visit mame.danzbb.com
Forgot to mention: if the boots on the ground like this (after sufficient trials) that's a good sign that it's a keeper. I wouldn't trust a major to make that evaluation.
Interested in a Flash-based MAME front end? Visit mame.danzbb.com
What you are asking for is "inter-agency data-sharing". It is, indeed, very powerful, but "Big Brother" concerns — largely but not entirely imaginary — stand in the way...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
This is a bit more than catching up. The officers don't have to go to 6 different sites to get this information. It seems like its all presented to them in one application. This ease of access information is probably the most useful part of this program.
If you're interested in the topic, I highly recommend John Robb's Global Guerrillas blog. He's got a good book out too, but the blog is more up-to-the-minute analysis. It won't come as a surprise to folks on slashdot that the insurgency is heavily reliant on an open-source model (and more specifically, exploiting our inability to change tactics on-the-fly). Good reading.
Defining the "peer" in a military scenario is important. The peer and the information they bring to the table are linked together but confidence levels for each piece of data need to be mentioned. How to justify an assigned confidence level ...good luck with that guys.
I would imagine it could work if you make allocations for the different types of peers and place different confidence levels based on Military Rank.
Someone without a rank evidently is flagged with lower confidence level. The actual data could be scored with a peerPerceivedConfidence, peerPerceivedScenarioEventImportance, peerPerceivedPotentialScenarioEvent.
A pseudo data structure:
@tidbit[] = { "location", "useful information about a location", "who gave it", "assigned confidence level in person who gave it", "perceived confidence/accuracy of this tidbit", [arrayhere]{"perceived potential event importance score", "important for which potential events"} }
One more thing: I have faith in the military powers that be, they have good heads on their shoulders. I am certain we have people that have thought up all of this generations ago before computers came out and that the NATO governments in particular have been using this kind of software long before you guys mentioned it here on slashdot. I am also certain I'm not the only one that believes the higher ranks be given higher confidence levels.
Cheers :)
Add a system where you can upload an image to the gps tagged network by pushing one button on your cellphone like tinypictures.com and you have yourself a security system.
Once all other nations adopt this super duper network centric warfare, Pakistan's ISP will quietly change the routing tables of the internet and completely flummox these developed warriors. Only the soldiers on donkeys, which Pakistan has abundantly, will be able to fight. That is the secret plan of Pakistan to become the military super power.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
They bought the troops a subscription to google earth plus it seems. Pretty well the same capability I have with my laptop and a GPS unit. I use mine for prospecting in the BC bush. Useful but not a lot of icons to click on out there. In closer however it's a bedlam of hot spots, merchants and if you want 3D buildings.
The military is obviously doing some very interesting development with this type of application. I'm curious if they've gone the next step and actually run 1st person shooter style virtual combat missions in these data spaces. Seems like you could get a really good idea of where the key strategic points were just by playing a few rounds of counter-strike on a map with this much data...
... but they expired, someone mod this up!
the people who stir up the nest are not responsible
;-)
better analogy: guy holds someone hostage. he says if the police try to rescue the hostage, he'll shoot the hostage. the police try to rescue the hostage, and screw it up. so the guy shoots the hostage
who is responsible for the dead hostage?
the guy who shot the hostage, 100%
if you believe the police in any way are responsible for the dead hostage, then you believe that governmental authority and rights are more important than individual responsibility and rights
imagine that
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it