CIA Drones May Have Used Illegal, Inaccurate Code

skids writes "Coders hate having to rush code out the door before it's ready. They also hate it when the customer starts making unreasonable demands. What they hate even more is when the customer reverse engineers the product and starts selling their own inferior product. But what really ticks them off is when that buggy, knockoff product might be used by targeting systems in military unmanned drone attacks, and the bugs introduce location errors of up to 13 meters. That's what purportedly happened to software developer IISi, based on an ongoing boardroom/courtroom drama that will leave any hard-pressed coder appreciating just how much worse his job could get. The saddest part? The CIA assumed the bug was a feature. The tinfoil-hat-inducing part? The alleged perpetrators just got bought by IBM."

Comments

I think i understand

[ifiwereasculptor]

"The CIA assumed the bug was a feature." Are CIA agents being issued iPhones, by any chance?

Re:I think i understand

[RyuuzakiTetsuya]

Geolocation off that bad? I'd assume they're being handed Samsung Galaxy Ses...

Re:I think i understand

[DriedClexler]

This is an advanced ... um, steganographic tool. It *appears* to be a colorful child's toy with pointless games, but can actually be used to transmit brief audio messages!

Re:I think i understand

[shentino]

Normally I'd gripe in that case, but I'd just chalk it up to routine government incompetence.

Why is the CIA attacking anything?

[Anonymous Coward]

The CIA is involved in the collection and analysis of foreign data.

Building an attack drone is, let's say, missing the mark.

Re:Why is the CIA attacking anything?

[Beelzebud]

Haven't read up much about the CIA have you?

Re:Why is the CIA attacking anything?

[Spazntwich]

Maybe they need to analyze the effect of high-speed projectiles on foreigners.

Re:Why is the CIA attacking anything?

[amicusNYCL]

The CIA is involved in the collection and analysis of foreign data.

Building an attack drone is, let's say, missing the mark.

You don't understand. Sometimes the foreign data they need to collect and analyze (mostly just analyze) is in a hardened bunker, or warehouse, or mud compound. They can't just land the drone and drive it into the mud compound very well, can they? The easiest way to expose the data they need to analyze is to remove the roof of the building. This allows the drone to take pictures of whatever used to be in the building, without landing, so that they can analyze it.

Re:Why is the CIA attacking anything?

[Wiarumas]

Quick, somebody make this guy a tin foil hat. The brain control waves must have gotten to him...

Re:Why is the CIA attacking anything?

[Wyatt Earp]

Truman did it. CIA was founded on September 18, 1947.

Now CIA doing stuff like this, that's legal as of 2004 when National Clandestine Service was started, which is a descendant of Directorate of Plans and Directorate of Operations.

CIA Special Operations Group and Special Activities Division are supposedly as good as Delta and SEAL Team Six

Re:Why is the CIA attacking anything?

[jpapon]

CIA Special Operations Group and Special Activities Division are supposedly as good as Delta and SEAL Team Six

I think that's probably because they're mostly ex-special forces to begin with. You know, spec-ops guys who finished their time, spent a few months in the real world, and decided they couldn't stand it. So they joined the CIA to make some serious money while still getting in on the action.

Re:Why is the CIA attacking anything?

[hitmark]

Hellfire missile into a armored car says otherwise.

Re:Why is the CIA attacking anything?

[zill]

CIA uses attack drones, but they do not build them. So AC is correct in that regard.

Re:Why is the CIA attacking anything?

[MoonBuggy]

This informative news article might shed some light on that one.

Re:Why is the CIA attacking anything?

[aliquis]

CIA Special Operations Group and Special Activities Division are supposedly as good as Delta and SEAL Team Six

Ok, so still no match for SAS and SBS? ;)

Re:Why is the CIA attacking anything?

[Wyatt Earp]

I didn't go through all the special forces out there, but yea, I'd expect Alpha, SAS, Delta, Sayeret Matkal, Egoz Reconnaissance Unit, SBS, FBI HRT, DAOS, a host of other units from "first tier" militaries and even units like the Mexican Fuerzas Especiales to be similarly awesome and scary.

Re:Why is the CIA attacking anything?

[Szechuan Vanilla]

>Why is the CIA attacking anything?

Because George the First, as CIA head, decided to save money by cutting out pretty much all HUMINT in favor of cheaper ELINT, so we lost almost ANYbody on the ground in the Middle East. So now we don't know who is who or who is where, so we blow up who and what we can when we get hints. Only we miss a lot, given time lag, questionable intel data, and (apparently) bad targeting software.

Joke now popular in Pakistan: "Why did the Pakistani girl break up with her American boyfriend? Because he always launches his missiles from 10,000 feet."

Nice going, George: BOTH of you.

cf "Company Man," Mother Jones, October, 1988

Re:Why is the CIA attacking anything?

[o2sd]

Actually I have, and the general conclusion around the world (outside the US) is that CIA stands for CAN'T IDENTIFY ANYTHING.

Re:Why is the CIA attacking anything?

[Nyder]

The CIA is involved in the collection and analysis of foreign data.

Building an attack drone is, let's say, missing the mark.

I loved the pun. thank you.

Re:Why is the CIA attacking anything?

[Nyder]

The CIA is involved in the collection and analysis of foreign data.

Building an attack drone is, let's say, missing the mark.

You don't understand. Sometimes the foreign data they need to collect and analyze (mostly just analyze) is in a hardened bunker, or warehouse, or mud compound. They can't just land the drone and drive it into the mud compound very well, can they? The easiest way to expose the data they need to analyze is to remove the roof of the building. This allows the drone to take pictures of whatever used to be in the building, without landing, so that they can analyze it.

much like the drone aimed at you, you missed.

Re:Why is the CIA attacking anything?

[sjames]

According to TFA, the drone itself will miss the mark as well.

Re:Why is the CIA attacking anything?

[Alsee]

Oh, that's easy. High-speed projectiles on foreigners produce an 82% larger increase in funding than high speed projectiles on domestic citizens.

-

Because it must be linked:

[Beelzebud]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hW9cCWm53H4

Re:Because it must be linked:

[OzPeter]

Midnight Oil - US Forces

Midnight Oil - Short Memory

Wow.

[rcb1974]

Out of all the hardware that is controlled by software, I would have thought drone software would be the most scrutinized. Unbelievable. Even more reason why we should not arm robots (even remote human operated ones) with weapons such as Hellfire missiles.

Re:Wow.

[Firemouth]

Out of all the hardware that is controlled by software, I would have thought drone software would be the most scrutinized. Unbelievable. Even more reason why we should not arm robots (even remote human operated ones) with weapons such as Hellfire missiles.

On the contrary, this is the reason why we should arm robots with BIGGER weapons! One's that it won't make a difference if you're off by 13 meters...

Re:Wow.

[Abstrackt]

Even more reason why we should not arm robots (even remote human operated ones) with weapons such as Hellfire missiles.

On the other hand, arming the drones with nukes would guarantee they hit their target despite their lack of accuracy.

Re:Wow.

[Sonny Yatsen]

It's amazing that drone hardware is fairly well designed, but its software design and implementation is so slapdash. Just last year, it was revealed that the Drones broadcasted its video feed in unencrypted form and was being used by militants to spy on us.

http://www.networkworld.com/news/2009/121709-drone-intercept-encryption.html

Re:Wow.

[grub]

One's that it won't make a difference if you're off by 13 meters...

Nuke the site from orbit, it's the only way to be sure.

Re:Wow.

[Ukab the Great]

The bad news: If you use nukes, then coders will get even more lazy and feel they don't have to use asserts and end up being so off that the drones nuke New Jersey instead of Afghanistan.

The good news: Such as catastrophe just be enough to take Jersey Shore off the air.

Re:Wow.

[Anonymous Coward]

Why should government software be any different than any other software?

Testing is for Agile wusses. Real men write it right the first time.

Re:Wow.

[blair1q]

The rules for scrutinizing code for aircraft are based on the danger involved in not scrutinizing it enough. And the military doesn't have the same edict to follow them as commercial aviation does.

Since drones are unmanned, their code would get less scrutiny than manned aircraft, if it gets any scrutiny at all.

Normally, it will be scrutinized, inspected, tested, qualified, etc. But if anything goes wrong, the military can waive the requirement and take what it gets in order to meet a deadline.

Re:Wow.

[Lunix Nutcase]

The good news: Such as catastrophe just be enough to take Jersey Shore off the air.

But then all the guidos and guido-wannabes will off themselves. Hmm... Okay. Proceed.

Re:Wow.

[gmuslera]

With big enough nukes they will get the target no matter how far they hit, along with everything else.

Re:Wow.

[srussia]

Out of all the hardware that is controlled by software, I would have thought drone software would be the most scrutinized. Unbelievable. Even more reason why we should not arm robots (even remote human operated ones) with weapons such as Hellfire missiles.

On the contrary, this is the reason why we should arm robots with BIGGER weapons! One's that it won't make a difference if you're off by 13 meters...

Leave the weapon out altogether, just include a divide-by-zero error in the code!

Re:Wow.

[Sulphur]

The good news: Such as catastrophe just be enough to take Jersey Shore off the air.

Rumor has it that Jersey Shore is offensive to Afghans.

Re:Wow.

[blair1q]

You're fired.

Re:Wow.

[LWATCDR]

I wonder if there is any real problem.
And before anyone gets all bent hear me out and I mean from a tactical point of view.
Does it matter if the the drone ends up 13 meters away from a check point?
When using a Hellfire the operator will manually point the camera/laser at the target and fire the missile.
It really doesn't matter because there is a man in the using a laser designator.

If the Drone is dropping JDams then there may be a problem.
I believe there are two modes. One where the drone/pane uses it's video/laser systerm to pick the target.
This is the most accurate because it is a differential system. The plane tells the bomb to hit the target x meters away in y direction from where the GPS says we are now.

The other mode is a blind drop where the JDam goes to a preset area.

So no Hellfire missiles will work just fine. JDAMS may be an issue but I are they using them in the pre-programmed mode much? I can not see a good reason why when using a drone.

Oh and as to not arming robots? Too late really. We have been doing it for ever 100 years now.
The Torpedo is a Robot. The first ones where really steampunk killing robots. Suicidal ones to be sure but still robots.

Re:Wow.

[drolli]

No, the most scrutinized things with software are probably cars. Thats good in that way because they are used for driving hundreds of millions of kilometers each day. An deadly error occurring once every 1000000 kilometers for a single device will kill 100s of people per day.

Re:Wow.

[amicusNYCL]

Rumor has it that Jersey Shore is offensive to Americans.

Re:Wow.

[lowrydr310]

Even when such software is scrutinized, it doesn't always work properly.

Re:Wow.

[Sonny Yatsen]

Spying isn't limited to looking at the enemy's base. The patrol patterns of the drones, for instance, tells insurgents where US army forces are looking at. This allows them to move to new locations or hide if they notice the drones moving towards familiar territory.

Re:Wow.

[BitZtream]

drones nuke New Jersey instead of Afghanistan.

I'm pretty sure everyone that didn't get vaporized in New Jersey would consider this a good thing, Americans and Afghanies alike.

Re:Wow.

[e4g4]

The good news: Such as catastrophe just be enough to take Jersey Shore off the air.

No, they'll just change the title to Pennsylvania Shore.

Re:Wow.

[snspdaarf]

Rumor has it that Jersey Shore is offensive to Americans.

Mod that rumor up Insightful!

Re:Wow.

[sakasune]

The bad news: If you use nukes, then coders will get even more lazy and feel they don't have to use asserts and end up being so off that the drones nuke New Jersey instead of Afghanistan.

I'm from New Jersey, you insensitive clod!

The good news: Such as catastrophe just be enough to take Jersey Shore off the air.

Well, what are we waiting for?!?

Re:Wow.

[KingPin27]

I guess thats why i can plug into my car with my acer laptop and a few bits and pieces bought from Radio Shack and get a connection to change things such as braking, lights, and air bag deployment? Secure it is my friend...secure it is.

Re:Wow.

[blair1q]

Yes, people who actually know how to use asserts are quite rare. 99% of people use them incorrectly, causing more problems than they solve. If you put an assert in a piece of code you've instrumented temporarily to do some debugging, I won't mind. But if that crap ends up in the release db, I'm going to walk you to the door. For three reasons:

1. You shouldn't trust that all code will be compiled with -NDEBUG for release. Mistakes happen in makefiles, especially on large projects with iffy design documentation.

2. Most people don't do anything resembling safe and graceful when using an assert, because why should they?

3. If there's a part of the code you think needs an assert, then I ask why do you think that? Why can't you take action to recover from it? Or put in some sort of exception handling that can do something safe and graceful, that the user can recover from intelligently, and that may also retain some information we can use to characterize the problem?

And remember, this is an embedded system. The BSOD is not an option, nor usually is any sort of text output, which is all assert can give you.

Asserts have one valid use: to wrap something you know you haven't completed and that you know (or are hoping) will break. And if you're releasing stuff you know will break I don't want to pay you.

Re:Wow.

[TheEyes]

That assumes you hit the right country.

"Iran... Iran... Iran... IRAQ!" *BANG*

Re:Wow.

[Infernal Device]

The bad news: If you use nukes, then coders will get even more lazy and feel they don't have to use asserts and end up being so off that the drones nuke New Jersey instead of Afghanistan.

Are we still talking about a bug or a feature here?

Re:Wow.

[xianthax]

i don't think you understood the article or didn't read it.

The software wasn't the guidance system for the drone, control it in anyway, or even run on the drone itself. Its running in some data center some where tracking where people are when they use a cell phone or an ATM, etc.

Its just a mapping package for laying out data thats correlated to geography, its just "google earth - government edition".

I doubt the 13m really mattered, your not getting 13m accuracy anyway when tracking a cell phone via tower transitions.

The CIA was using it to find potential targets so they could send a drone toward them, they'd have to get more specific information as to the exact target location elsewhere.

Re:Wow.

[Anonymous Coward]

I started to refute what you wrote, line by line, as every single point you made is wrong. The assumptions you make aren't even valid (hint: asserts are for preventing programming errors, not checking code -- that's what a compiler and unit tests are for). I'm not going to write anything more, as if you are interested at all in programming, you will visit a real forum (like Stackoverflow) to reeducate yourself, where this topic has been covered a thousand times.

Re:Wow.

[JustOK]

So, send the drones to everywhere you don't want the insurgents to be.

Re:Wow.

[BetterSense]

"It's amazing that drone hardware is fairly well designed, but its software design and implementation is so slapdash"

No it's not. I work in a very high-tech industry and exactly the same situation holds. Since none of the engineers understand software, or know what source code is, we end up with very high performance robots and tools with questionable software that is unsupportable due to lack of documentation and source code availability, costing the industry millions of dollars, all because the old-guard engineers think that computers are magic things to be programmed by "others". The irony is that this is the semiconductor industry.

Re:Wow.

[Anonymous Coward]

So the whole concept of code contracts just go right over your head, don't they?

Re:Wow.

[TangoMargarine]

They're in an Islam-majority country. What part of American culture *isn't* offensive to them?

Re:Wow.

[TubeSteak]

I wonder if there is any real problem.
And before anyone gets all bent hear me out and I mean from a tactical point of view.
Does it matter if the the drone ends up 13 meters away from a check point?

The CIA does collateral damage assessments whenever they want to make a targeted strike.
The problem is that the software they're using to make this assessment isn't precise.
The end result is that they're going to be launching strikes they shouldn't and not launching strikes that they should.

We don't hear about it much in the US news, but the Pakistanis certainly know when the USA's strikes cause significant collateral damage.

Re:Wow.

[blair1q]

asserts are for preventing programming errors

Correct. They are a development tool. There is no reason to have one remaining in embedded code that is declared to be releasable (and you're lazy if you do it in desktop code, too).

If you can grep "assert" in your code, you have work left to do.

Re:Wow.

[BigFootApe]

I'm guessing this is adaptable to alternative sensor platforms, not just cell towers. If they want that kind of accuracy from the SIGINT/DF hardware, they can probably get it. The problem is that they might not have a handle on the systematic errors being introduced into their targeting.

For example, say they slave the on station Predator optics to data from this software so they can pick up a guy in a town and follow him to wherever he's going. Everything is peachy, because they know there was nobody within 10m (but there were people 12m away) and the system's supposed to be accurate to 5m (or whatever). They have a good fix. CIA decides to make him an ex-person and maybe kills the wrong guy.

I hope this doesn't happen. I hope there are redundant checks within such a program to keep these things from happening. Maybe he has to make two phone calls. Who knows? The original contractor didn't know specifically how their software would be used. They wanted to ensure that the new hardware would match the old based on their regression testing so that as much as humanly possible, there would be no surprises.

Re:Wow.

[element-o.p.]

I thought that was our exit strategy for the Iraq war?

I kid, I kid!

Re:Wow.

[deapbluesea]

all because the old-guard engineers think that computers are magic things to be programmed by "others".

Actually, the problem is that most engineers (especially controls and electrical engineers) think that programming is such a simple task that anyone can do it, thus most embedded code I see was written by an electrical engineer or is simply Matlab running an m file. I shudder every time a design team tells me they need a 1 GHz CPU so they can run Matlab on a production robot.

Re:Wow.

[blair1q]

I'm not sure why you'd say that. The fact that exceptional conditions exist and are documented does not justify using assert.

As I said, 99% of people (and by people I mean software coders) don't know how to use assert properly. So in the coding standards I write it says don't use them at all; if you think you need an assert, what you really need is something that alleviates the problem you perceive will occur if you don't trap that unexpected return value or validate your inputs or break that non-converging loop. This is an embedded system, probably a high-reliability, safety-critical embedded system, and telling the user you're crapping out unexpectedly and they should call customer service is, I repeat, not an option.

Re:Wow.

[dbIII]

Even worse that was a known problem from the same thing happening in Bosnia well over a decade ago.

Re:Wow.

[PPH]

The bad news: The radioactive fallout could leave us with a 40 foot tall Snookie.

Re:Wow.

[Szechuan Vanilla]

The other problem is that so many think that documentation is unnecessary. And if it is done at all, 80% of the time it's slapdash at the last minute and often after the developers are gone.

How do I know? I started as a software engineer and have been writing tech docs for over 20 years. I can't tell you how many times all I had was a design spec (un-updated since the start of the project), the final product, and nowhere near enough time to document a huge product.

Don't blame me if your tech docs suck. I keep getting laid off or harassed out when I try to do it right (it costs money and time, and they don't like that).

PS If you want to find out the TRUTH about your HW and SW products, read all the appendices at the rear of the doc. That's where we wily old pros stick the data you need but that marketing, development, etc don't want you to know.

Re:Wow.

[russotto]

Asserts have one valid use: to wrap something you know you haven't completed and that you know (or are hoping) will break. And if you're releasing stuff you know will break I don't want to pay you.

An assertion failure means something went wrong that, in the normal operation of the system, could not go wrong. The most likely reason for this is of course a programming error, but there are others: some memory got corrupted, your CPU is malfunctioning, some peripheral is malfunctioning, or some other similar sort of thing. This makes handling assertion failures tricky because you can't assume the state of the system is sane. When I did embedded stuff, assert failures would act similarly to watchdog failures -- the system would disable all interrupts, try to write the assertion code to non-volatile RAM, then reboot. For our application it made sense to do this. For other applications something different might need to be done. But the point is that an assert failure is different than an ordinary error. You can't simply handle the error condition; the whole system state could be bad. You might want to shut the system down completely (e.g. if there's a backup which will take over). You might want to attempt to completely reset your state. Or you might just want to report the condition (somehow) and continue as if nothing happened until someone intervenes. But in any case, assertions have their place.

Re:Wow.

[X0563511]

True, but the error is additive, and any other errors in the pipeline stack up.

Pretend for a minute that the munition has a 6 meter kill zone. Say you have a tracking tech that's accurate to 10 meters. Likely anyone in that +/- 10m area is going to be very sorry even if they don't get dead right away.

Now, introduce another 10 meter inaccuracy. This means that you can be anywhere from bullseye to 20 meters away. The odds have suddenly gone from "most likely dead" to "more likely unharmed" - not a desired result! This is a recipe for failed strikes and collateral damage.

Re:Wow.

[Griffon26]

Oh, I guess you just write your code once and nobody will ever modify it?

Asserts should stay in there just in case you or anyone else decides to break any of the invariants in the future.

Re:Wow.

[Griffon26]

There's a limit to how much error handling code makes sense.

If you want to handle every eventuality gracefully, your code will be much more complex because of all of the error handling paths. This will in turn increase the chance of introducing bugs caused by limited understanding of the code (most likely by others or by you a long time from now).

In my opinion there's a balance to be struck and I usually stop at the file or component boundary. If it comes from the outside, deal with it. Internally (e.g. static functions), use asserts to check if you messed up.

Re:Wow.

[Yvanhoe]

Out of all the hardware that is controlled by software, I would have thought drone software would be the most scrutinized.

As someone who worked a bit in the field, let me be the first to say : HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA !

Re:Wow.

[Nyder]

The bad news: If you use nukes, then coders will get even more lazy and feel they don't have to use asserts and end up being so off that the drones nuke New Jersey instead of Afghanistan.

The good news: Such as catastrophe just be enough to take Jersey Shore off the air.

No, they'd start filming it in California.

Re:Wow.

[blair1q]

If they modify it and reduce its reliability, then that's their problem, not mine.

If they examine it and find I've left it vulnerable, then that's my problem, not theirs.

Re:Wow.

[blair1q]

Treat error cases as normal input in your use-case design.

Design your code to handle the spectrum of error cases.

Then nobody will be confused.

Your mere estimation of the "balance" will relegate your customers to having to do work around your failure to include their use-case in your estimation. You guarantee that simply by making the estimation and orphaning certain cases. At some point, your code will be sold to someone who wants to use that case. It's likely nobody selling it will have a clue that there are caveats buried in the details, because if you didn't want to code something to handle it in a graceful and informative way, you probably didn't want to write a long list of caveats in the documentation (which turns out to be harder anyway because you have to deal with all the use-cases where people don't understand what you wrote even if it's crystal clear, because not everyone understands everyone; at least you know how the computer will behave if you write and test the code).

And if you can't do it on-time and under budget, you shouldn't have bid that low. And if you don't want to let someone else write the bad code, you're just saying you're willing to chisel the market to make a buck.

Re: Confounded

[Beelzebud]

Oh please... Indoor plumbing was too complex for the people that wrote the new testament..

Re: Confounded

[ewhenn]

Yeah, we wouldn't want people to think too hard, that might be "dangerous".

/rollseyes

Salesmen promising too much

[OzPeter]

And sub contractor steadfastly saying that they can't deliver production ready software in the given time fame.

Where have I heard that before? .. ah yes .. the current death march project that I am in the middle of!

Re:Salesmen promising too much

[OzPeter]

stop posting on slashdot you lazy sob. And go back to your march.

The reason I *am* posting is that we have hit an issue with a third party system and I am waiting for their tech support to get back to me with a solution to the problem that their system causes. I thought I was going to be done with this project last Monday.

Re:Salesmen promising too much

[OzPeter]

Hey I am cooled down .. you didn't see any "all-caps", not a single exclamation mark and nary a swearword! And I got the humor.

Re:Salesmen promising too much

[confused one]

funny that. I'm in the same place, having just been responsible for debugging the project and in spite of everyone else's bungles, making sure it's going to be delivered to the customers only a month late.

Re:Salesmen promising too much

[OzPeter]

I meant cool down from the march... relax, enjoy your break

please accept my apologies, i am worst than usual with words and people today

No worries .. I am wired after a month of 14-18 hour days, 7 days a week, a couple of all nighters and now I am hanging on hearing back from tech support on a Friday afternoon when they seem to have t no clue that they product is causing a problem.

Not *that* big of a deal.

[phantomcircuit]

If the bug is actually limited to reducing accuracy by 13, that's not a huge deal given the kill zone of hellfire missiles.

Re:Not *that* big of a deal.

[Tsunayoshi]

Unless you're in the house 13 meters down the street from the real target :)

Re:Not *that* big of a deal.

[gandhi_2]

Hellfires don't use GPS for targeting.

Re:Not *that* big of a deal.

[YrWrstNtmr]

Actually, the Hellfire has a relatively small warhead. 18-20lbs depending on model. Hitting the house 50 feet from your intended target away may well make a big difference, especially if there is a wall or two between.

Re:Not *that* big of a deal.

[Alanbly]

Hellfire missiles are anti-tank weapons, they used a High-explosive shaped charge to destroy armor. Their blast radius isn't extremely large. More at issue is that 13 meters is enough to easily miss an entire bunker. The effective radius of the armor piercing effect is something like 2 meters per http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_explosive_anti-tank_warhead.

Off by 13 meters?

[mandark1967]

No one will ever need more than 13 meters accuracy.

Re:Off by 13 meters?

[geminidomino]

Fuck You!

-Signed,
Princess Leia

AMEN Brother!
-Signed,
The Womp Rats

Re:Off by 13 meters?

[Jim Hall]

I used to bullseye womprats from my T-16 back home. They're only about 2 meters.

So why the big deal?

:-)

Re:Off by 13 meters?

[throckmorten]

If the warhead is sufficiently large enough to compensate, does it really matter how far off you are?

Re:Off by 13 meters?

[Flea of Pain]

That's what she said?

Re:Off by 13 meters?

[sabre17]

Easy to say unless you just happen to be 12 meters from the "bad guy" and you aren't socializing with the baddies.... Also the Hellfire II has several warhead variants; it was originally designed for anti-tank use but Al Qaeda doesn't operate too many tanks so I suspect the fragmentation warhead is commonly used.

Predicted future news:

[Even on Slashdot FOE]

CIA Predator drone misses assassination target, hits US diplomat in area for deniability purposes. IISi blamed despite the fact that the drone is still using buggy, inferior code.

I think they buried the lead....

[jpapon]

to direct secret assassination drones in central Asia.

The CIA has the authority to direct secret assassination drones? Inside of Pakistan and possibly other countries?

Did we learn NOTHING from the Bay of Pigs, Nicaragua, the equipping of the Mujaheddin with weapons, etc... ? The CIA should not be fighting wars. We're supposed to be the city upon the hill. We shouldn't be fighting our wars in secrecy.

Re:I think they buried the lead....

[h4rr4r]

Of course we did not, or we would not be creating more Irans by propping up dictators.

Re:I think they buried the lead....

[frank_adrian314159]

To quote many prominent Republicans, "9-11 changed everything."

To be fair, it did. It gave cover for authoritarian assholes to do whatever they wanted to do. Fighting wars in secrecy is just the tip of the iceberg. Welcome to the large gulag, comrade.

Re:I think they buried the lead....

[blair1q]

Dude. That's been common knowledge for years.

Re:I think they buried the lead....

[couchslug]

Equipping the Muj with weapons was worth it, even counting the blowback (which was more consequence of ABANDONING A-stan than equipping the Muj).

Lest we forget, the Cold War was a VASTLY more important and larger struggle than the current police actions. A few thousand or few tens of thousands dead in late consequence of that existential conflict is a trifle. We are too easily impressed by small wars nowadays.

Re:I think they buried the lead....

[IndustrialComplex]

A few thousand or few tens of thousands dead in late consequence of that existential conflict is a trifle. We are too easily impressed by small wars nowadays.

What do you mean we kemosabe?

Wouldn't it be nice if the people who felt it was acceptable to kill a few thousand people for their political goals were included in the total?

Re:I think they buried the lead....

[jpapon]

I'm fine with fighting wars to bring harm to those who seek to harm us. I'm even ok with fighting wars to remove tyrants who bring conflict and genocide to our planet.

I'm just not ok with fighting these wars in secrecy, or the fact that my country condones assassination (i.e. murder) in any form. If we have a just cause, there is no need to use a veil of secrecy.

Not to mention the fact that we live in a (representative) democracy, so keeping the voters uninformed is no better than rigging an election.

Also, how can we condemn others for murder and assassination of leaders, when we are, in fact, the largest perpetrator of assassinations in the world (along with Mossad)?

Re:I think they buried the lead....

[stdarg]

When your enemy relies on secrecy, you might need secrecy too. We can stand in one spot all day long and say "we own this bit" but that doesn't really help the situation.

Re:I think they buried the lead....

[hitmark]

And it was just what they needed in a post cold war world. The terrorist is the children scaring bogeyman on a national scale (or perhaps even global scale). Now be a good consumer and do as mama government and papa corporation tells you to, or the scary bearded terrorist will come and get you.

Re:I think they buried the lead....

[hierophanta]

... keeping the voters uninformed is no better than rigging an election.

welcome to the dumbing down of america http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dumbing_down

Re:I think they buried the lead....

[Lehk228]

yea anything that directly attacks the supremacy of our corporate overlords must be stopped at any cost, though preferably that cost should be paid in proletariat blood and recycled as motivation for the next war of lies.

Re:I think they buried the lead....

[couchslug]

"Wouldn't it be nice if the people who felt it was acceptable to kill a few thousand people for their political goals were included in the total?"

They frequently risk that, and fear doesn't stop those who think the game is worth the candle. Killing thousands of enemies has often been the price of progress.

Killing thousands of Brits, Tories and Hessians freed the US from England. Killing thousands of Confederates freed the slaves. Killing millions of Nazis and Italian Fascists saved Europe. Killing millions of Japanese rescued much of Asia from Imperial Japan. Killing millions of Commies and their proxies contained them to buy time for China and Russia to outgrow Communism.

Killing often works very,very well, and it works even if you don't like that it works. Sufficient force trumps everything else.

Re:I think they buried the lead....

[dbIII]

The blowback was huge and is still being felt since it was an international force. A lot of those guys went on to cause a lot of trouble in Algeria for instance and helped turn it into the complete basket case it is today.

Re:I think they buried the lead....

[couchslug]

"A lot of those guys went on to cause a lot of trouble in Algeria for instance and helped turn it into the complete basket case it is today."

Algeria was doomed when De Gaulle gave up on it even though the war was at stalemate and he could have chosen to wear down the enemy as was done by Morocco (using similar methods to the Algerian Morice Line) with far smaller resources.

Re:I think they buried the lead....

[Nyder]

To quote many prominent Republicans, "9-11 changed everything."

To be fair, it did. It gave cover for authoritarian assholes to do whatever they wanted to do. Fighting wars in secrecy is just the tip of the iceberg. Welcome to the large gulag, comrade.

that only goes to make me think 9-11 was an inside job.

Re:I think they buried the lead....

[ImprovOmega]

Did we learn NOTHING from the Bay of Pigs, Nicaragua, the equipping of the Mujaheddin with weapons, etc... ?

I don't know. While it was pretty hardcore (and *seriously* questionable ethically, morally, and by Geneva Conventions) Operation Phoenix in Vietnam was pretty effective. Brutal, but effective.

ROFL

[sir lox elroy]

What did the CIA also think the Toyota "Bug" was a feature. Great car, drives it self. :-)

Re:ROFL

[h4rr4r]

Actually that turned out to be driver error.

Re:ROFL

[srw]

Yup. And Therac-25 turned out to be operator error.

Until later, when it became clear it was very badly designed software.

Re:ROFL

[toddestan]

C'mon! They're Toyota jokes. You just can't stop...

IP theft by drone overlords!

[skynexus]

Military drones, armed and dangerous, operating software resulting from IP theft?

Heh... I'd love to see the Business Software Alliance go after these guys... :-)

Re:IP theft by drone overlords!

[e4g4]

I'd love to see the Business Software Alliance go after these guys

It would be a bloodbath - the BSA guys can only muster the support of the US Marshals. Somehow I don't think they'd come equipped with armed attack drones.

Re:IP theft by drone overlords!

[Heretic2]

The CIA/US Gov't has a history of pirating software.

Illegally?

[RightSaidFred99]

It's doubtful it was illegal. It may or may not have run foul of some licensing contracts, but isn't reverse engineering generally legal?

Re:Illegally?

[RightSaidFred99]

Sure it is, in most cases.

Re:Illegally?

[Lehk228]

unless there is a patent, a clean room implementation is fine

however it is rarely done, because having two isolated teams, one tearing something apart and documenting behavior, the other building a functional clone is far more costly than just developing a product, unless you need exact behavior matching to interface with a common system or something.

13 meters?

[gandhi_2]

so what?

hellfires are laser guided, not GPS. a predator reporting its position as being 13 meters wrong is basically nothing....and a non-issue with regards to missile targeting.

if the predator was dropping JDAMS, i could see the issue. but even then, 13 meters is well within the CPE allowed for the JDAM.

Re:13 meters?

[mosb1000]

If my understanding is correct, this software was used to determine the locations of people making phone calls. So if it's off by 13 meters, the operator may chose the wrong target. The missile being laser guided doesn't help you if you're laser guiding it to the wrong place.

Re:13 meters?

[amicusNYCL]

So a 13 meter error is acceptable, even though that's the result of a bug caused by copying software that was accurate?

You must be in the military, Mr. Ghandi, if that is your real name...

Re:13 meters?

[ojintoad]

Could you (or someone else with satisfactory knowledge) decrypt that for those unfamiliar with your acronyms and understanding of military technology?

Re:13 meters?

[gandhi_2]

You misunderstand how the hellfire / predator platform works.

Several systems can fly the predator to the target area. Once in the target area, remote operators designate the target on the video feed, which is to say (in this phone call scenario) the operators designate the person making the phone call on the TV screen. The target designator is a laser device on the predator which sends encoded information in the beam to actually hit the target. Where the laser target beam hits the target, it shines. Electro-optics and servos keep the designator on the designated target. The hellfire is fired and goes to where it sees the correctly-coded shining.

A hellfire, tow, dragon, or javelin doesn't care where it is, where it was, or where the target is. they just go where they are steered. No GPS, no grid.

In any case, 13 meters is nothing. Civilians have been watching too many movies to think war is fought on that scale. A 10-digit MGRS grid is 2 digits too many for calling in anything.

Re:13 meters?

[gandhi_2]

How the software came into being is important. If it was ripped off from someone else, they should fix that. If there's errors, they should fix those.

But 13 meters? You must have NEVER served in any armed force, Friend of NYCL, if that is your real name...

Re:13 meters?

[jpapon]

In any case, 13 meters is nothing. Civilians have been watching too many movies to think war is fought on that scale.

13 meters is a hell of a lot if there's a hospital or school ten meters from the target. This isn't warfare, it's assassinations. A 13 m discrepancy when you're trying to assassinate someone is pretty damn unacceptable.

Also, the system was used to locate targets. So it might say the target is in one hut, when in fact, they are in a hut 13 meters away. The drone's pilot would then designate the wrong hut with the laser. The system is for target selection, not missile or drone guidance.

Re:13 meters?

[jpapon]

FFS, I served, and while 13 meters isn't all that much, bad intelligence is still bad intelligence.

And while yes, being 13 meters away from a hellfire hit is still going to turn your brain to mush, a blase attitude towards the need to be as accurate and efficient as possible in target selection is what leads to blue on blue and death of civies. Once you start accepting 13 meter inaccuracies as "good enough" you're on a slippery slope. You want to be as accurate as your weapon system allows you to be, and you always want to strive to improve upon it.

Re:13 meters?

[jpapon]

Target location was the only thing 13 meters off. The Predator drone doesn't have 13 meter position error.

Re:13 meters?

[gandhi_2]

Here's what I accept:

A good predator NOW beats a perfect predator later.

13 meter PE for a predator has nothing to do with where the hellfire lands.

13 meters CPE is good enough for any arty, cas, or casevac I call for.

For assassinating houses, 13 meters will most likely still give the remote operator the same house.

13 meters is pretty dang good considering you are shooting from Nevada!

We should work for 12, then 11, and strive for 0. Meanwhile, we go to war with the fucked up software we have, not the fucked up software some slashdotter thinks they could have given us if only they had gotten an interview.

Re:13 meters?

[mosb1000]

Once in the target area, remote operators designate the target on the video feed, which is to say (in this phone call scenario) the operators designate the person making the phone call on the TV screen.

This is where I'm saying the problem is. The operator may select the wrong target due to the system's inaccuracy. They may be looking in the wrong place, or choose the wrong person if there are two people making phone calls. They may select the wrong house if the call is being made inside a building.

Re:13 meters?

[AJWM]

For assassinating houses, 13 meters will most likely still give the remote operator the same house.

In sparsely-built American suburbs, perhaps. Most places that's the house next door, or the car across the street or a couple of car lengths ahead or behind.

Re:13 meters?

[NovaHorizon]

let me get this straight.. We have decided to shoot people making phone calls with a MISSILE?? Doesn't anyone think that's a bit of overkill for taking out a single person?

Re:13 meters?

[mosb1000]

Yes. Especially those of us standing near the people getting shot with missiles.

Re:13 meters?

[sharkey]

Well, CPE == Customer Premise Equipment. Every time there's a problem with an AT&T service, they invariably find that the CPE is the problem.

Re:13 meters?

[gandhi_2]

To get grid TRULY accurate to the meter, you'd have to get out surveying-grade gear and stand next to the target for a few minutes.

No one targets "the guy at grid 13S TB 12345 67890" unless there isn't anyone else there to get. You would say "the only guy riding a bicycle in vicinity of 13S TB 1234 6789".

Re:13 meters?

[PPH]

Yes. The State Patrol is serious about this hands-free law.

Re:13 meters?

[Szechuan Vanilla]

Circular Error Probability (CEP, also circular error probable, circle of equal probability)

"It is defined as a circle, centered about the mean, whose boundary is expected to include 50% of the population within it."

Basically, the size of the circle around the target inside which your shots land. The smaller, the better.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circular_error_probable

Re:13 meters?

[St.Creed]

Where I live, the houses are 5 meters across and stacked side by side. These are single family houses in a good neighbourhood. Where I used to live (appartments) the appartments were 2 on top of eachother and 4 meters across.

But in the normal case, a 13 meter error in the middle of a block would destroy for sure 3 houses that were not meant to be destroyed, including inhabitants. That's 12 civilian casualties, and depending on the size of the warhead, a bungled assassination.

But don't worry: if you had killed my family but not me, you now have an additional terrorist to worry about, so in hindsight you're justified dropping that bomb.

Re:13 meters?

[mosb1000]

Ok, here's what I'm saying: this software is used by the operator to determine who is making a phone call.

It is inaccurate by up to 13 meters. So if there are two houses next to each other, they can't know if a call is coming from one house or the other. I know that they target houses for missile attacks, because I've read about it in the news. That makes this is a plausible scenario.

Also, suppose they trace a phone call from a militant who is observing US forces and planning an ambush. The use this software to determine the location of the caller, and they see a person making a phone call. But the person actually making the call is 13 meters away, hidden from sight. So instead of targeting the person making the phone call, they target an innocent bystander who happened to be making a call at the same time. This is also a plausible scenario.

9-11 was just a drop in the ocean

[Steeltoe]

To be fair, fighting wars in secrecy has been going on for a long long time, way before 9-11, making it the proverbial drop in the ocean:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Covert_United_States_foreign_regime_change_actions

Now, what should upset the American public is that 9-11 was probably engineers or supported by "allied" forces, in order to escalate conflict levels and justify wars.

Re: Confounded

[Anonymous Coward]

You asked for it. Plumbing in Jerusalem

Re: Confounded

[Yold]

The Romans had plumbing and they were occupying Jerusalem at the time the New Testament was written... but please don't allow facts to stand in the way of your religion-bashing.

Better idea...

[countSudoku()]

Capture these badly programmed drones, reinstall them with some sweet, sweet Linux goodness, use them for fun aerial combat play, and taking snaps of bikini-clad neighbors. Problem solved. Patent not pending. Come as you are. There you go.

Re:Better idea...

[TangoMargarine]

taking snaps of bikini-clad neighbors. Problem solved. Patent not pending. Come as you are.

And please put on some clean pants afterwards.

Re: Confounded

[ooshna]

Fine fine understanding that the stars are giant balls of burning gas just like the sun and like the sun could have planets and like the planet earth some of them could have light was too complex for the people that wrote the new testament.

Re: Confounded

[ooshna]

That's just thinning the herd.

Re:In CIA

[oldspewey]

That's pretty much it. There are no laws, only guidelines.

Open letter to terrorists

[or-switch]

Dear Terrorists, Due to a minor software glitch we request that you stay within 13 meters of your cell phone at all times. No reason, we just appreciate your help. Thanks, The US Government P.S. Don't look up P.P.S. ....no...what whistling noise do you hear?

Anonymous Coward

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone who works in/for the U.S. military industrial complex should quit if they have any shred of morality in their being. It's way beyond defense.

Re: Confounded

[baKanale]

So the Romans wrote the New Testament?

Lest we forget

[Kupfernigk]

The Cold War arose because of the Russian fear of the nuclear-armed US (they had after all nearly been destroyed by Germany, a smaller country) and their desire to create buffer zones in the West of the Soviet Union. That, and what that notorious left-winger Eisenhower called the "military-industrial complex".

However, as I suspect that you're writing that from your parents' basement, I doubt that you actually know any history, or were even around for the Cold War."We are too easily impressed by small wars nowadays"- if you knew any history, you would know that the Western invasion of Germany was a limited war because high casualties would not be accepted by the American and British public. Read up on Eisenhower. You need to learn about the greatest American general.

Re:Lest we forget

[jpapon]

you would know that the Western invasion of Germany was a limited war because high casualties would not be accepted by the American and British public

Can you imagine if Patton had been in charge of everything? Yeah, we would have suffered triple the casualties, but we definitely would have beat the Soviets to Berlin.

Hell, he would have beat them to Warsaw.

Re:Lest we forget

[bsDaemon]

The greatest American general? Would that be Patton? Or Lee? Or the only man ever to get higher marks at West Point than Lee, Douglas MacArthur? Pershing was no slouch either. Eisenhower had actually been subordinate to both Pershing and MacArthur earlier in his career, and only a lucky break getting assigned to the General Staff in D.C. that allowed him some paper-pusher promotions got him to the head of the queue. He barely even had any combat experience.

The war in Germany was limited because the Americans and British, while not pro-Nazi (except the people where were), weren't really anti-German. There are too many Germans in the US and Britain for that to happen, and the current set of British Royals are German. My grandfather on my mother's side fought in Europe during WWII, but before he shipped out they trained him for bayonet on dolls with Japanese features.

The American people at that time probably would have accepted extremely high losses fighting the Japanese and wouldn't take anything less than unconditional surrender. If they hadn't given up after the two nukes, no one here would probably ever have heard the phrase "made in Japan."

But what the OP was referring two was more along the lines of the fact that between the US, UK and Canada, we suffered over 10,000 casualties, with well over 2000 of those being actual battlefield deaths, just on D-DAY. Just D-DAY, not even the whole Normandy campaign. We have had a bit of 4,000 dead in all 7 years of the Iraq war, while we lost over 418,000 in WWII, or about 0.32% of our population at the start of the war.

I'm not trying to diminish the feeling of loss I'm sure the families of the 4,000+ US soldiers who have died in Iraq must feel. However, the fact that in 7 years we've lost about twice the number of soldiers we lost trying to get ashore in France on 6 June, 1944, speaks volumes about what "limited" war might actually be.

tl;dr you're wrong.

Re:Lest we forget

[AJWM]

The Cold War arose because of the Russian fear of the nuclear-armed US [...] and their desire to create buffer zones in the West of the Soviet Union.

You mean to the West of the Soviet Union. Places like Poland, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, and anywhere else they could roll in tanks and grab.

Re:Lest we forget

[BigFootApe]

The Cold War arose because of the Russian fear of the nuclear-armed US (they had after all nearly been destroyed by Germany, a smaller country) and their desire to create buffer zones in the West of the Soviet Union. That, and what that notorious left-winger Eisenhower called the "military-industrial complex".

Eisenhower wasn't upset about having a strong, high technology military. He was concerned that crackpot projects were excessively milking the country for money and that military spending should be looked upon always with a certain amount of clear eyed judgement to prevent unwarranted waste.

Nuclear powered bombers? Remember that one? Safeguard? Heck, even now NMD is being built for pork purposes under the smokescreen of a fictional "rogue nation" threat.

Even the Sovs had their own version military industrial complex. They called it the "metal eaters alliance".

However, as I suspect that you're writing that from your parents' basement, I doubt that you actually know any history, or were even around for the Cold War."We are too easily impressed by small wars nowadays"- if you knew any history, you would know that the Western invasion of Germany was a limited war because high casualties would not be accepted by the American and British public. Read up on Eisenhower. You need to learn about the greatest American general.

I'd say it was pretty much total war. There was a certain amount of trust within the western allied governments that the generals would not be wasteful with soldiers lives and I think Eisenhower and his colleagues were cognisant of that.

Re:Lest we forget

[couchslug]

That's the Soviet version of events, but they had been aggressively expansionist long before that, were seeking to foment revolution worldwide (which they didn't disguise, plenty of Soviet proxies fought in the Spanish Civil War), and Stalinism showed its true face in the partition of Poland between the Soviets and Nazi Germany.

"if you knew any history, you would know that the Western invasion of Germany was a limited war because high casualties would not be accepted by the American and British public."

That has nothing to do with my post, but it wasn't a "limited war" in terms of destruction inflicted on Germany and German forces. The strategic decision to let the Soviets bleed out in the East was quite intelligent from the POV of conserving US forces, which were expected to be used in Japan. Letting enemies kill each other makes obvious sense. That the Soviets got East Germany was the problem of the Nazis who lived there.

Re:Lest we forget

[Szechuan Vanilla]

>The Cold War arose because of the Russian fear of the nuclear-armed US

Um, OK, but let's not forget that it also arose because the USSR wanted to keep all the land it could after Germany fell over, and was pretty nasty about how they kept it. Go look into how they never pulled back to the agreed-upon demarcation lines (Elbe River) in 1945 and how they grabbed Czechoslovakia in 1948 (can you say "defenestration"?) and a few other countries along the way.

I'm pretty far to the left, but let's not be naive here...

Re:Lest we forget

[Szechuan Vanilla]

Actually, Marshall jumped Eisenhower to the top because Eisenhower impressed the hell out of Marshall during 1941 war games in Louisiana when a lot of the show was a mess from career Regular Army clowns screwing up. Eisenhower got a lot of stuff done right despite the chaos and systemic cluster-fucks.

Marshall ruthlessly cleaned house after the mess and Eisenhower got jumped over a lot of RA types. People were pissed, but it kind of worked out OK, didn't it.

Re:Lest we forget

[Nyder]

The greatest American general?

George Washington, imo.

All the others have sucked balls in comparison.

Re:Lest we forget

[sjames]

To put things in perspective, in WWII we protected ourselves and the rest of the world from Hitler and all of the atrocities being committed by him and in his name. Had we failed, he would have eventually gotten around to invading the U.S.. We lost 418,000 people doing it

What do we get for the dead in Iraq? They were no longer a credible threat to anyone and were never poised to invade the U.S.

Let me see if I have this straight

[gestalt_n_pepper]

1) US creates military drones used in Pakistan.

2) Drones are controlled using software.

3) Software company that writes drone software is bought by IBM.

4) Software can now, potentially, be outsourced to IBM development personnel in um, Pakistan.

Is it just me, or is something wrong with this picture?

Re:Let me see if I have this straight

[Ukab the Great]

Back when I was a lowly QA tester for a company that took DARPA contracts involving things specific to North Korea, it never ceased to amaze me that the entire programmer staff were H1B's from China, who just happens to be North Korea's main ally, who were hired solely for their utter cheapness.

This is why I just can't take tin-foil hat people seriously.

Re:Let me see if I have this straight

[jpapon]

1) US creates military drones used in Pakistan.

2) Drones are controlled using software.

3) Software company that writes drone software is bought by IBM.

4) Software can now, potentially, be outsourced to IBM development personnel in um, Pakistan.

5) PROFIT!!!

Re:Let me see if I have this straight

[jpapon]

On a more serious note, if its governed by ITAR it can't be outsourced to Pakistan.

But it might not be, since the technology is not primarily used by the military, it's mainly used by businesses.

Re:Let me see if I have this straight

[gestalt_n_pepper]

Sadly, I can top that story. I used to work for a government contractor that took blueprints and had them redrawn in AutoCAD in St. Petersburg, Russia.

Our main client was Los Alamos National Labs. We sent them the blueprints for almost every building there.

Re:Let me see if I have this straight

[waferhead]

1) US creates military drones used in Pakistan.

2) Drones are controlled using software.

3) Software company that writes drone software is bought by IBM.

4) Software can now, potentially, be outsourced to IBM development personnel in um, Pakistan.

Is it just me, or is something wrong with this picture?

Don't ask me, before I followed the links, I was trying to figure out how IBM bought the CIA ;-)

Re:Let me see if I have this straight

[wrook]

Well, also Pakistan allows the US to blow up its citizens in exchange for weapons. There is a decent possibility that some of those weapons will eventually show up in terrorist hands necessitating (at least from US government perspective) the need to blow up people in Pakistan. And the cycle continues.

A lot of the bad foreign policy that existed under the Bush administration still exists under the Obama administration. It would be nice to see some changes.

Re:Let me see if I have this straight

[T.E.D.]

My highest security job ever was a COMSEC job (think encryption key generators). All the documents were labeled SECRET - NOFORN (no non-US citizens). However, a full 1/3rd of my co-workers, while all US citizens were born in communist countries.

You could take the position that they'd be less likely to betray the US than people who've never lived under a Communist system like the rest of us. You might even be right. But I couldn't help but find it odd considering how anal they were about us not ever visiting Communist countries or talking to citizens of same.

Re: Confounded

[Beelzebud]

Yeah forgive me for bashing a doomsayer. Funny, I didn't realize the Romans wrote the bible...

Forget about, it, and ...

[handy_vandal]

Of course we learned something: "Think Happy Thoughts."

But they do not actually mind

[Anonymous Coward]

the risk of being included in the total, which is why they tend to win if they are also smart and can get enough resources.

Revolutions actually run on people who are much less risk-averse, including the ultimate risk of death. Pretending that everyone shares the same aversion to the risk of violent death that is characteristic of educated urbanites is naive. In many cultures of the world Western style conflict avoidance will get you exploited, enslaved, or even killed.

Re: Confounded

[Pseudonym Authority]

The Roman Catholic Church did.

Re: Confounded

[eqreed]

I don't think we knew the stars/sun was a ball of burning gas until spectrometry developed around the end of the 19th century.

So that part might have been too complex for the people who wrote the Constitution...

Re: Confounded

[PRMan]

No, they were just guest stars, but they owned the place and had indoor plumbing.

Re: Confounded

[Mister Whirly]

No, but they did kill the protagonist.

Re:Better idea...Better Meme

[bcong]

2012 will be the year of Linux on the drone

Illegal Software

[Alcoholist]

The CIA? This is a bunch who allegedly run clandestine torture camps. Use illegal software - oh no, they'd never do that...

hmmm....

[Bobzibub]

Sorta like complaining that a murderer stole someone's shoes isn't it?

Re: Confounded

[geckipede]

Anybody who has been to a sea coast can notice one, and there are few enough options available that you can easily guess the other.

Re: Confounded

[DriedClexler]

Okay, right, I get that, fair point. What I mean to say is, OTHER than plumbing, what have the Romans ever done for us?

Re:Drones

[richardkelleher]

This won't be a problem with the military until, instead of unsuspecting civilians being blown to hell, it turns out to be a squad of US military on patrol who actually called in the drone strike and just happen to be 13 meters away from the target.

Problem with that

[KingAlanI]

Snooki, The Situation, Pauly D et al often seem to be out on appearance tours; the dispersed distribution could also serve disaster-recovery purposes for them.

Re:Drones

[richardkelleher]

Even then, they will tell the families that it was and IED instead of telling the truth.

Re: Confounded

[jpapon]

Hahahaha! No.

What? I'm pretty sure the new testament was assembled (and revised many times) by the church that Peter built.

Re: Confounded

[TheEyes]

They showed us the dangers of exposing the ruling class to lead for generations.

In Soviet America, Zeroes Divide You!

[copponex]

Oh and as to not arming robots? Too late really. We have been doing it for ever 100 years now.
The Torpedo is a Robot. The first ones where really steampunk killing robots. Suicidal ones to be sure but still robots.

This is not the root issue of using a robot. The root issue is that technologically advanced societies have been pushing the button from further and further away. The further away they are, the less incentive they have to make sure that their target is valid.

First, you've got hand to hand combat. You're not going to engage unless you absolutely have to, and can deal with listening to someone gurgle and plead while they bleed out. Then you can move on to ranged weapons. In the early days, you had to get pretty close to hit someone with a musket, but you still at least had to watch people die. Then we got cannon. Rifles. Machine guns. Artillery. Airplanes. Satellite guided bombs. With each advance in military technology, you are taking less risk to your own life when you take the lives of others. That's why there are 6,000 dead "coalition" troops and several hundred thousand dead Afghans and Iraqis. It's not a war, it's a shooting gallery with political implications. If it were a war, like it was with the Japanese and the Nazis, there would be a front somewhere. The chances of Iraqis or Afghans crossing continents and oceans are not virtually zero, they are exactly zero.

Now we're at the point where some militaries have the majority of their apparatus safely tucked away in a megabase or in the air or even back in their home country. Ninety nine percent of the military are good guys who sign up thinking they will be fighting for their country. For the military to work, when the guy with the most penises on their shoulder says "Kill" the command must be passed down until a trigger is pulled somewhere. But for that guy at the very end, it's still a human decision that can be overridden by natural desires to protect human life. He can make up something about the target being obscured. He can stop it if he really thinks it's not achieving an objective. He knows intuitively that he will pay a high price for taking this life, because he has to take that memory home with him.

When the top brass are over your shoulder, you'd better click the button and blow up the house.

And soon the top brass won't even need to issue a command. They will order the command, and the quasi-sentient robots (not some half assed definition that fits your argument) will kill, and the grunts will simply arrive to ID the body parts.

The real problem with this technology is that there is no pushback for human life. If a politician wants it, and he can find someone in the military who will perform it, you can bet your ass that millions of innocent people will die as a result. The more humans you remove from the end of the equation, the less humane the result will be.

Re:In Soviet America, Zeroes Divide You!

[gknoy]

But for that guy at the very end, it's still a human decision that can be overridden by natural desires to protect human life. He can make up something about the target being obscured. He can stop it if he really thinks it's not achieving an objective. He knows intuitively that he will pay a high price for taking this life, because he has to take that memory home with him.

I read an interesting article in a mainstream magazine about Air Force drone pilots. Basically, they sit in Nevada and control drones in Afghanistan. I was expecting to read about how jaded and eager they were to press buttons at the drop of the hat, but what I found was the opposite.

The drones are capable of staying in the air for days at a time, monitoring a target (person). They have cameras running, and multiple shifts of human crews watching the video feeds and analyzing what's going on. In the process, they are able to ascertain with frightening accuracy that yes, this particular man is a terrorist: Here's the video feed of him buying some weapons, and here's the part X hours later where we just watched him create a roadside IED. Being able to keep someone under direct video surveillance (including thermal, if I recall correctly, so being indoors didn't help a lot) meant that for at least some targets, they were very sure that that person was a bad guy.

We have people halfway around the globe pushing buttons to kill people about whom we have reams of (video) evidence showing hostile behavior. I think that's better informed killing than having combat teams need to go in and do the same killing on foot, with potentially faulty intelligence, and without (at times) being able to mount multi-day uninterrupted surveillance.

Re:In Soviet America, Zeroes Divide You!

[uniquename72]

I was expecting to read about how jaded and eager they were to press buttons at the drop of the hat, but what I found was the opposite ... We have people halfway around the globe pushing buttons to kill people about whom we have reams of (video) evidence showing hostile behavior.

You mean like this? Yeah, some of those guys take the job seriously, and some have even been treated for PTSD. But some are just plain douchebags, blowing shit up like it's HALO.

Of course, no one says a word until there's a leak.

Re:In Soviet America, Zeroes Divide You!

[couchslug]

"This is not the root issue of using a robot. The root issue is that technologically advanced societies have been pushing the button from further and further away. The further away they are, the less incentive they have to make sure that their target is valid."

Bullshit.

Unguided artillery has been lavishly used in recent history on targets beyond visual range, and there was much LESS incentive to ensure a valid target because error was expected even with good targeting. Bombs were so inaccurate that it took massive air raids to (sometimes) wreck a factory we'd shwack with one or two bombs today.

The only incentive to care about not splattering civilians with arty (or bombs) has been diplomatic blowback in the post-Nuremburg era.

Re:In Soviet America, Zeroes Divide You!

[Thing 1]

Yeah, except for the fact that the bad guys tend to be the invaders. So we just keep blowing up people who are trying to defend their own "Homeland". Not very "hearts and minds", but that's just talk...

Re:In Soviet America, Zeroes Divide You!

[illtud]

I read an interesting article in a mainstream magazine about Air Force drone pilots. Basically, they sit in Nevada and control drones in Afghanistan. I was expecting to read about how jaded and eager they were to press buttons at the drop of the hat, but what I found was the opposite

In an Air Force PR arranged piece in a mainstream magazine? Color me amazed.

In the process, they are able to ascertain with frightening accuracy that yes, this particular man is a terrorist: Here's the video feed of him buying some weapons, and here's the part X hours later where we just watched him create a roadside IED. Being able to keep someone under direct video surveillance (including thermal, if I recall correctly, so being indoors didn't help a lot) meant that for at least some targets, they were very sure that that person was a bad guy.

Which is why they never blow up wedding parties (where if they had 10% of the capability you outline would be dead obvious) mistaking them for insurgent get-togethers! Oh wait...

I HATE that

[Chakra5]

But what really ticks them off is when that buggy, knockoff product might be used by targeting systems in military unmanned drone attacks...

....I HATE when that happens.

Re: Confounded

[Chakra5]

Reg: All right, but apart from the sanitation, medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, the fresh water system and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?

Re: Confounded

[the_womble]

Well actually Ptolemy's Almagest, written not long after the New Testemant, mentions that the distance to the fixed stars is so great that the earth can be regarded as a "geometrical point".

So presumably they must have deduced that they were pretty big (to be visible at very large distances), although they probably did not deduce that they were the same type of thing as the sun, as they did not have the observations to support it.

Re: Confounded

[element-o.p.]

Many of the books that did not make it into the officially accepted cannon are easily available today, if you look for them: for example, the Apocrypha (which I think might be accepted by the Catholic Church -- but not being Catholic, I'm not certain of that) or the Book of Phillip.

Re: Confounded

[element-o.p.]

Ummm...Paul was a Roman citizen and is frequently credited with writing most of the New Testament. Got any other prejudices you'd like to have disproved?

How could they not know their job?

[dontmakemethink]

The entire point of American warfare is to expend as much ammunition as possible so to stick the American public with the biggest bill possible. A 13 meter margin of error means you can justify using three guided missiles instead of one. How does a military contractor not see the benefit of that? How are they supposed to create business for you if you're tying them up in court!

These clowns can't possibly think they're actually looking for WMD's and Osama Bin Laden could they? They're looking for an intractable enemy to spend billions trying to irradicate, and they've found them in the Taliban, just like Isreal found the Palestinians. Spooky sneaky "bad guys" are literally booming business.

Re:How could they not know their job?

[waferhead]

The entire point of American warfare is to expend as much ammunition as possible so to stick the American public with the biggest bill possible. A 13 meter margin of error means you can justify using three guided missiles instead of one. How does a military contractor not see the benefit of that? How are they supposed to create business for you if you're tying them up in court!

These clowns can't possibly think they're actually looking for WMD's and Osama Bin Laden could they? They're looking for an intractable enemy to spend billions trying to irradicate, and they've found them in the Taliban, just like Isreal found the Palestinians. Spooky sneaky "bad guys" are literally booming business.

The enemy is only intractable due to the fact that we still have some morals and desperately try to keel collateral damage to a minimum.
This is also what drives the expensive drive for new toys.
If we could just nuke or FAE then bulldoze the whole place it would be cheaper.

The Taleban do not have any regard for human life, so they don't have that issue...quite the opposite.
Drug dealers are like that.

Re:How could they not know their job?

[Szechuan Vanilla]

We've always been at war with Eastasia...

Re:How could they not know their job?

[Keith Henson]

The original purpose of warfare was to kill people.

Humans are top level predators. The only thing that kills top level predators is other of their own kind. Lions for example.

When the population builds up to the point it stresses the ability of the ecosystem to feed it, it's time for a war. This went on long enough for it to be an evolved feature. See Evolutionary Psychology, Memes and the Origin of War.

You offer an ancient and erroneous theory ...

[perpenso]

Fine fine understanding that the stars are giant balls of burning gas just like the sun and like the sun could have planets and like the planet earth some of them could have light was too complex for the people that wrote the new testament.

Are you sure that you want to be "casting stones" regarding ancient and erroneous theory? ;-)

The Sun is not a ball of burning gas, its a ball of fusing gas. Burning is an exothermic chemical reaction, aka combustion. Fusion is a nuclear reaction, not chemical.

Re:You offer an ancient and erroneous theory ...

[ooshna]

I know its a nuclear reaction but back then if they just thought the were giant flaming balls of something would have been a huge step forward instead of thinking the earth and sun are the center of the universe. Those things came after people realized they were giant hot balls. Not to be confused with salty chocolate balls.

DMCA?

[ilo.v]

Somewhere out there Mullah Omar is reading Slashdot and thinking "Cool! Now I can send a DMCA take down notice and make these drones go away . Then I won't have to wear a burqa every time I set foot outside this cave."

Re:Drones

[Lehk228]

considering that 600 meters is considered danger-close, anyone calling in a strike on a target 13 meters away from themselves is asking--nay--begging for it.

Murphy's Law says ...

[perpenso]

Out of all the hardware that is controlled by software, I would have thought drone software would be the most scrutinized.

Murphy's Laws of Combat Operations, #12:

12. Never forget that your weapon was made by the lowest bidder.

Re: Confounded

[waferhead]

They showed us the dangers of exposing the ruling class to lead for generations.

They also highlighted the effect of close inbreeding in the ruling class for generations...

(the southern republicans should take note ) //troll ;-)

Re: Confounded

[Baron_Yam]

I'm pretty sure that stars AREN'T balls of burning gas. That would imply some element was bonding with oxygen and releasing energy in the process.

I think they're giant balls of gas undergoing nuclear fusion, which is a different order of activity.

Re:Illegally? YES IT IS ILLEGAL!!!

[Required Snark]

It is illegal. It is not "run foul of some license" or simple reverse engineering. Here is the relevant article: http://www.thestreet.com/story/10810646/1/cia-may-have-bought-faulty-drone-software.html

"Intelligent Integration Systems developed the technology behind Spatial, which initially ran on an earlier Netezza's data-warehousing platform, the Netezza Performance Server. "

Then Netezza sold the product on their new server TwinFin. "Intelligent Integration Systems officials say they didn't know about plans for TwinFin when they signed the contract with Netezza, and that the company never agreed to develop software for future platforms. "

Netezza signed a contract without bothering to check with IISi about porting the code.

The case file includes emails among Netezza officials, in which they discuss how to handle the situation, in light of the fact that Intelligent Integration Systems wouldn't give up its source code while the customer is in a hurry. The emails imply that Netezza promised a product to the CIA before anyone had developed it. They also reference "floating point" difficulty, a mathematical computing issue that can lead to accuracy problems. (A Nov. 12 email from a Netezza account manager refers to "errors in the spatial toolkit hack." "Hacking" usually means gaining unauthorized access to a computer, a key point in Intelligent Integration Systems' countersuit.)

"Someone should have told me this product was not ready," Netezza Federal Account Manager Joe Wiltshire wrote in an email to Shepherd, which is included among the court documents. "We are negatively exposed to one of our most important customers now. In his eyes, we concealed info to close the deal, or we are not 'in the know.' Either one is not good. Please get this product ready immediately so we can get out of this predicament."

So Netezza sold the hacked version to the CIA, which accepted it.

An email exchange from Oct. 23, also in the court record, indicates that the customer signed off on the deal, after all. "They are satisfied," Wiltshire wrote in an email to Netezza executives, adding that the customer "believes that the minor discrepancy in metrics between the 10100 and the TwinFin 12 is due to the TF doing a better job."

Nettezza sued IISi for breach of contract for not porting the code, which they just lost. http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/09/24/cia_netezza/ "That case was dismissed last month, with the judge finding that contrary to Netezza's repeated claims, IISi was under no obligation to carry out the work."

Now ISSi is suing Nettezza.

Discovery also revealed that Shepherd had called on staff to develop "our own version of the spatial toolkit", which was introduced in January this year as "Netezza Spatial", which is available on the open market.

Now IISi claims both the hack and Netezza's own software are illegally based on reverse engineering and misappropriation of its trade secrets, and is pursuing an injunction that if granted would block their use by anyone. It's unclear which, if either, is currently in use at the CIA. A hearing on the injunction application is scheduled next week.

So it looks like they stole both the original code and marketed it, and they stole the trade secrets in the code and sold them as well. It looks like a slam dunk that they will loose. So what part of illegal don't you understand?

The real world is not written by Tom Clancy

[dbIII]

I thought the problem is that such professionals brought in from the military were vastly outnumbered and outranked by kids fresh out of school that think they are James Bond and advancement is by nepotism and political links instead of competance. The CIA is not a professional military operation and it shows. They can be as supposedly good in their own mind but that didn't catch Bin Laden or all the other operations where the military were pulled out so that the CIA could take the credit for completing the operation - and then messed it up!
What the CIA do in the real world is not written by Tom Clancy, or it seems by anybody that has a clue what the organisation should be doing. Yet another example of Horse Judges out of their depth and unable to do anything useful even if they were given the best possible people to work for them.

You would need one nuke per mountain valley

[dbIII]

That's an expensive way to kill goats and scare the crap out of the guys that left the place two days ago and pisses off the neutrals downwind enough for them to take up arms.
The idea fails on every single level even if you have zero morals.

Re:You would need one nuke per mountain valley

[waferhead]

That's an expensive way to kill goats and scare the crap out of the guys that left the place two days ago and pisses off the neutrals downwind enough for them to take up arms.
The idea fails on every single level even if you have zero morals.

The FAEs don't have fallout... and can have almost the same effect as a tactical nuke, particluarly so if you are hiding in a cave in the blast zone.

Some people cannot appreciate a decent ludicrous example when they see one. ;-)

Re:You would need one nuke per mountain valley

[waferhead]

Besides, don't we have to scrap a bunch of them for the new START treaty?

They have a "use by date". Cmon... ;-)

Yeah. We learned something

[PPH]

Fuck with the CIA and you win a free limo ride through Dealey Plaza.

Did we learn NOTHING....

[Anonymous Coward]

To answer your question, the continuing lesson we've learned is that war channels national wealth to a relatively small coterie of companies and their owners/shareholders, etc. As long as there is money to be made by killing people, we will continue to ignore the larger lessons that might actually help us make a better world.

Re:Drones

[KDR_11k]

Hell, I wouldn't be surprised if most of those explosives could kill you from 13 meters away, especially with line of sight (shrapnel).

Re: Confounded

[pablo_max]

yeah, but they also used lead pipes. I saw that on Doctor Who so I know it's true.

Re: Confounded

[ooshna]

We are talking about a time when people thought sicknesses were caused by evil spirits or your own sin. So I doubt they would understand the subtleties of nuclear fusion. Burning balls of gas would have been a big improvement.

Re: Confounded

[ooshna]

I always thought there were 12 apostles.

Software Management

[oldCoder]

Managers control the part they understand. They farm out the parts they don't. The Pentagon managers (Air Force generals, I suppose) don't understand software. They do understand aviation and bomb targeting. And they probably understand combat and intra-service rivalry.

Why reverse engineered?

[evanh]

I think it's telling that the customer feels the need to go through the effort of reverse engineering when they have already paid for the whole project themselves.

Sounds like someone got too greedy to me.

BEING A PROG.

[hesaigo999ca]

Being a programmer ....all I can say to this is, Ouch!...gotta hate when this sh*t happens!