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Electronic Warfare Insects Coming Soon
Mike writes "British defence giant BAE Systems is creating a series of tiny electronic spiders, insects and snakes that could become the eyes and ears of soldiers on the battlefield, helping to save thousands of lives, and they claim that prototypes could be on the front line by the end of the year. A fascinating development to be sure, but who thinks this won't be misused domestically for spying and evidence gathering?"
Included in the story is a link to a creepy little (scripted, rendered) demo video of these robots in action.
Saving lives and money with more efficient killing.
... without giving yourself away.
I can only imagine the possibilities of someoen dumping some bugs in an area and have a permanent observation of the majority of the population you want to keep your eyes on.
The Locusts of Borg will pwn you.
Big Brother knows who buys them.
That video that's mentioned is here. This technology still relies on wireless transmission, so who ever uses it must be in relative close proximity. So when deployed, if you notice them some how, you'll know someone is near by.
That which does not kill me only postpones the inevitable.
I, for one, welcome our robotic, war-waging insectoid ov... aw, forget it.
I prefer my spiders to be 20ft tall and wielding giant laser canons of death.... Who needs a covert force when you can have one that kicks ass and takes names?
Yeah, right!
Plans for a robot that can crawl like a spider are 'well developed'
That's military-contractor-ese for "we drew you a picture..."
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
Whats the damage?
"History is the realm of the true lie." A.Szerb
This would make a lot of boys happy :) Just wonder the different uses the insects can have...
So does the military sue people who step on these things the way we step on eveyr other insect?
That all sounds real dandy, but battery life is the achilles heel: these bugs and critters are only going to last a few minutes. Real insects last longer because they have much more energy-efficient locomotion and control, they have efficient fuel cells, and they replenish their energy supplies constantly by feeding.
Once you start despising the jerks, you become one.
16 comments and every single one a troll. Overlords, shmoverlords... I still think it's cool from the technological stand point.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
..with a powerful EM blast!!!
to save thousands of lives
How about not having wars at all? Or - get the idiots starting them put to jail - Guantanamo Bay, perhaps?
Before you flame or troll me - think about it: How many wars have been started by a faked incicent. Who is the driving force behind propaganda leading to a war? What are the underlying reasons for a - "leaders pushing for it" and b - "followers going for it"?
You can be sure that's not written about in news media - guess why?
It may just be that it is physically impossible to have privacy in the future. If that's the case, then we should accept it and start putting into place the mechanisms to make sure that "transparency" is a two-way street, which is the best case scenario in that case.
Link to the Wikipedia article on his ideas:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Transparent_Society
expandfairuse.org
"I thought soldiers were on a battlefield precisely to take as many lives as they could..."
No. If a nuclear armed nation wanted to take as many lives as possible, none of their soldiers would be on the battle-field.
Creative Demolition
After seeing Iron Man this morning (in before "slashvertisement) I couldn't help but picture a bald version of The Dude reading this summary to the press.
"You know why you do not see me styling wit my homies? Because I have no homies!!" -Mojo Jojo
http://www.brohauns.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=3
They could drop a bunch of repeaters in the area as well with the bugs, disguised as who knows what, a pile of dog crap, pine cones, whatever. The humans don't have to be right close by with wireless. They fly those predator attack drones from across the planet.
SPIDERS and
INSECTS and
SNAKES...
Oh My!
The amount of money United States puts in its military is just incredible:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_budget
May I ask -- what is the threat you are preparing against to? For an outsider it just looks that the military tech companies have found a get-rich-quicly scheme that keeps on working.
Most of the stuff they are demoing is just vapor
I, for one, welcome our giant insect overlords.
If you can read this, I forgot to post anonymously.
> I thought soldiers were on a battlefield precisely to take as many lives as
> they could...
They are usually there to take and hold territory by any means necessary. If the enemy resists somebody gets killed but if they run away or surrender that works too.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Makes an excellent repellent against electronic insects. Millions of dollars against a 30$ part from the microwave you buy at wall mart.
Reason #532 to build a Faraday Cage in my house along with a small home-brew EMP emitter.
Well then time to build myself an EMP, teflon coat my house(bugs can not climb teflon), rig up a positive pressure airlock system, and put really bright lights on my house(to pwn their tiny cameras).
Why start so big. I'll believe that you can stop people from doing bad things to each other when you head up a way to make it work even on a small scale. How about just one city. You figure out a way to get, say, New York to have no human on human violence without any police force at all, and then we can talk.
"BAE Systems is creating a series of tiny electronic spiders, insects and snakes that could become the eyes and ears of soldiers on the battlefield, helping to save thousands of lives"
In other news, sociologists, psychologists, kindergarden teachers, and some other nuts are developing a theory which points the fact that governments could save even more lives by not making war.
If this technology ever does prove to save lives on the battlefield, it would only be the lives of the "good guys". The lives of the opposing side would be destroyed with ever-increasing efficiency. Of course, if you believe that the foes that Britain will face in the foreseeable future are intrinsically evil and deserve to be destroyed with ever-increasing efficiency, then this is fine. If you believe that destroying lives full-stop with ever-increasing efficiency is ok, that this is fine. Another way to help save thousands of lives on the battlefield would be not illegally invade sovereign countries with thinly-veiled justifications designed to cover up one's own economic and emperial ambitions.
Funny, as just after I read your comment, I went to the bathroom and on the way just two meters away from my PC I encountered a fly. Didn't step on it due to being barefoot but squished it with a great white handkerchief. They are here already. Help meeee
They can try to bug me.I have several rather low tech counter-measures.
1. I have cats that eat bugs or will roll them under the refrigerator.
2. I have Raid ant traps.
3. I have natural spiders that will capture the cyber bugs.
4. I have toddlers who have nothing better to do but patrol for weird things like that.
5. I have wireless internet; loose wires in PCs, cable TV, lighting; toys; baby monitors; my house was built by the Wal-mart of home builders and cordless phone on the fritz. I have to go outside 10 feet from my house to talk on a cell phone. I am lucky to get clear FM radio.
The bugs may work in less developed areas, but they will not be able to stand up to the food web, shoddy craftsmanship, and a toddlers instinct to put everything in its mouth.
Furthermore, a soldier's role on the battlefield is to achieve an objective. In general, this object involves removing the enemy. The general way to do so is to either kill them, or make them surrender/give up. Sometimes the situation is such that by killing a few selective people, you can make the group give up. Other times, you just have to kill everything coming at you, cause it's the only way. In all cases, better intel means less risk for the grunts. Sure, its not exactly fair. But that's not really the point of war is it?
I am a lot less concerned about foreign/military uses for this tech and a lot more concerned with domestic/police use. Does any of us doubt that this will eventually trickle down to the corrupt stupid thug/bullies known as the police? A scary thought. Although I don't think the first generation of mobile surveillance "bugs" are going to be a threat indoors, I do think it will happen eventually.
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
so, lemme get this straight - on a battlefield where, ostensibly, some kind o f a battle is going on, where people are murdering each other in cold blood, these little magical toys are going to prevent thousands of people from dying, in a battle, where people are murdering each other in cold blood . Riiiiiight. Let's unpack the happy ass bullshit and get to the core: these will be implemented in order to protect and project the interests of the EMPIRE (American, Chinese, Russian, whatever) that has the money to build these things. Saving LIVES by PREVENTING DEATHS is not part of the equation. That's the province of clever diplomacy.
And the best part? I'm sure some locals who are finding these expensive little toys invading their resource rich homeland will develop a cheap bug zapper that costs $8 to build and can take out thousands of them at a go.
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
This should definitely revive his career.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
They'll be easy to step on!
"...but who thinks this won't be misused domestically for spying and evidence gathering?"
In other developments... the military has started using paper to keep records. Yes... paper. While paper was orginally designed for military use, some privacy advocates are alarmed that federal authorities might start using paper to write reports about the crimes they investigate. Film at 11.
Do you suppose a decent spark-gap transmitter would would fry these little bugs like mosquitos on a bug-zapper?
I can think of a few evil ways to hose up these little nuisances. Many ways to jam their transmissions, being so low-power, and even more to EMP them.
Nothing that wouldn't run for an hour or so on some D-cells, and a few days on an old worn-out car battery.
I, for one, welcome our insectoid-surveillance wannbe overlords. Bring it on, six-legs!
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
They have to work all the bugs in first.
Thankyouenjoytheveal!
They don't choose the miserable wars they participate in. Don't confuse the political decision to go to war with the military decisions about how to carry it out.
This technology looks really cool(in a fairly creepy sort of way). The versions that they are currently proposing look more or less biomorphic spins on the "RC car with a camera" concept; but should still be useful. Even more interesting, though, will be the possibilities with smaller, more insectlike, mechanisms(which may well end up being cyborgs, not robots. Bugs are already good at what they do, much better than robots are, and DARPA is already playing with cybugs in the lab). Think of the mosquito, for instance. Those little guys essentially spend their lives following subtle chemical gradients to find their food sources and then swarm around them. Modify the chemical gradients they care about, dump a whole lot of them out of a plane, and you have a distributed sensor swarm that'll look for just about anything that has a scent.
The prospect that makes me nervous is what we'll do when we want to go beyond recon/search/surveillance type roles. Conventional weapons aren't going to scale down all that well. Chemical and biological weapons will. This will present an unseemly temptation. Being able to tailor lethally armed cybugs to hunt chemical traces and kill whatever turns up would be very useful. Trying to find that IED factory? Druggies blending into the crowd? Russian ambassador wearing a ghastly brand of aftershave? Actually doing any of this, though, is going really, really far into unpleasant territory. Very Unit 731.
But spreading limits the bandwidth of a signal and would make high def video a challenge.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Ve vill crush our enemies! They vill not resist us und ve shall have their oil! No one shall dare resist our racial superiority! Hail victory!
...become the eyes and ears of soldiers on the battlefield, helping to save thousands of our lives and end many of theirs, and they claim that prototypes could be on the front line by the end of the year.
What's funny is the CAPTCHA is "subjects"
As in we're all just subjects of the empire.
As Mussolini, the creator of fascism said, "fascism is the merger of state and corporate power." I pledge allegiance to the United States of Haliburton... and Jesus.
"save thousands of lives"...
Oh yes, because soldiers are SO useful when it comes to saving lives. Just ask an Iraqi!
I'll bet there's far more military espionage use being planned. Make a version that uses solar power and has small enough satellite comm chips inside. Even better, design it to allow recharging from electric outlets (which it can connect to at night). Let them lose on a country's borders, millions of them. If they cost a $1000 each, a million bots will constitute a 1 bil $ project. Chump change. They converge on the cities with preprogrammed maps, then start communicating only after they infiltrate major government buildings, intelligence facitilies, military research, terrorist caves...etc.
This (and the butterfly mentioned in TFA) is ultimate espionage. The idea is so cool that I am forced to momentarily disregard big brother threats from the Orwellian-minded.
To fight and conquer in all your battles is not supreme excellence; supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy's resistance without fighting.
-- Sun Tzu
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
This reminds me of that movie Runaway. The hypodermic robot spiders dripping with acid used to give me awful dreams as a kid.
I want my! I want my! I want my Eee PC!
...couldn't these be used in rescue situations too?
For example when a building collapses in an earthquake. Send in an small army of the creepy crawlies to listen for and pinpoint survivors. Make rescue efforts much faster and efficient. Also depending on how they are set up, they could let rescue workers know which areas aren't safe / stable to be digging around in.
You can learn a lot about a person if you just take the time to inject them with sodium pentathol
Put a few super magnets under the doors and around the windows, and let's see how these buggers would come in..
The gigantic garden spider that lives under my deck would be SO pissed off at these things.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
Sounds more like a combination of The Terminator and various other sci-fi sci-fan where the machines take over, don't you think? Who are the idiots who keep promoting these ideas? Whoever they are they sure as hell ought to be kept out of responsible positions and away from resources. Hmmm, that would render the military and the makers unemployed i guess. Hey, weird idea, maybe they could declare war on Climate Change and Global Dimming and Pollution - classic fully armed raids on polluters; missiles that send clean air and refreshed ozone into the sky.
If they are anything like the:
Tubes, trash collection, Terminal 5 debacle, trains,
elections, bouncing BEAGLE Mars lander, etc
AllCIAduh is LOL!
http://www.gumtree.com/london/89/23478889.html
RR
Oh, the delicious irony and pain.
How could a device which is made for war safe lifes? Only a device made for ending or preventing wars would be able to save lifes, but I don't think that such a device is ever invented. And it doesn't produce money, doesn't it? ;-)
nomike
>> Researchers hope they will eventually create machines that can fly like a butterfly
Or you just buy a wowwee dragonfly in a store for $49,99
Sure, works well... :)
Just to let you know, I am developing a video that shows robots predicting the outcome of the stock market. Its gonna be cool... Where do I go to get VC?
Due to a terrible miscalculation of scale the entire battle fleet was swallowed by a small dog.
In seriousness, I have a great and very cheap countermeasure against electronic insects, snakes, mice, etc.: cats. DARPA may spend billions developing these tiny surveillance critters, but nature has spent billions of years evolving an efficient hunter to eat them.
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
We have the ability to remote control flies and rats and we can power devices from blood, bacteria,
and sugar. So are we that far from making a remote-controlled biologically-powered recording device embedded in an insect or small animal? Seems like all the pieces are there.
because if you know there's nothing going on, you don't attack (Unless you want deliberate provocation.)
And besides, just because SIDE A sends the little critters in, doesn't mean that SIDES B, C and D aren't sending in buggies of their own.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
...that whenever new military technologies are discussed, that old line 'save thousands of lives' comes up? Seems a bit incongruous. Perhaps it would be better to say that the tech will 'enable them to kill less innocent civilians?'