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DreamHammer Wants To Corner the Drone OS Market
nonprofiteer writes "The Pentagon is increasingly transforming the military into an unmanned force, taking soldiers out of harm's way and replacing them with drones and robots. In 2011, it spent $6 billion on unmanned systems. The problem is that the unmanned systems don't work well together thanks to contractors building proprietary control systems (to lock government into exclusive relationships and to make extra money). A company called DreamHammer plans to have a solution to this — a universal remote control that could integrate all robots and drones into one control system. It would save money and allow anyone to build apps for drones. 'DreamHammer CTO Chris Diebner compares it with a smartphone OS — on which drones and features for those drones can be run like apps. Of course, Ballista is doing something on a much larger scale. It means that it takes fewer people to fly more drones and that new features can be rolled out without the need to develop and build a new version of a Predator, for example.'"
It would be like some some of net, in the sky.
That's un-possible!
Two of my imaginary friends reproduced once
... they'll be able to hack all the rest.
See! That is the kind of convenience that smart businesses know how to provide to their customers!
The wars of the future will not be fought on the battlefield or at sea.
They will be fought in space, or possibly on top of a very tall
mountain. In either case, most of the actual fighting will be done by
small robots. And as you go forth today remember always your duty is
clear: To build and maintain those robots. Thank you.
-- Military school Commandant's graduation address, "The Secret War of
Lisa Simpson"
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Oh sure, but what about my wants. Who's to say that my wants aren't going to corner the drone OS market instead?
Let's solve the problem of government being locked into exclusive relationships with other vendors by - locking them into an exclusive relationship with us! But our dog and pony show is more elaborate than theirs.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Dreamhammer's what wants to corner the drone OS market? Don't leave me hanging here...
Program Intellivision!
Look, there is a reason that some Army guy has a different method of access to his unmanned recon tracked vehicle than an Air Force guy has to a Predator with Hellfire missiles, who has different methods of access than a weather drone pilot in the Navy. That separation creates very large walls that make it difficult to make mistakes.
Should the Pentagon have requirements for how a User Interface should look and feel? Hell yes they should. There should not ever be a simplified method of access across platforms. It's extremely dangerous.
On the other hand, I'm sure someone in the Pentagon has a friend or relative that needed cash so put out a bid on something like this despite the extremely obvious dangers.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
it will end up being like ROS: lots of features, but not robust.
but nonetheless--it's an ideal that makes sense in the coming years...
Hack one system, own all the drones.
I seem to recall the Maginot Line becoming the Siegfried Line.
With luck there aren't any young Matthew Brodericks out there with modems...
A beowulf cluster of those!
:-D
Sorry... just making the mandatory beowulf-comment.
rm -rf --no-preserve-root /
I give my wife the "dream hammer" every night.
"...new features can be rolled out without the need to develop and build a new version of a Predator, for example.'"
The reasons for new Predator design have nothing to do with software or OS. It's all hardware driven.
That the US military doesn't own the rights to the technology they are paying to have developed. If they did they could implement their own control systems, or take future development to another contractor.
AccountKiller
The govt can just insist on a common standard. They have the power here.
Yeah. Not going to happen. There are already protocols and standards (STANAG 4586, etc) that take care of this. Not to mention the billions already spent by the government on developing these standards. So this sounds like a solution to a nonexistent problem.
I would not be surprise if they just took MavLink and created a military compliant framework.
And of course sell it for a million bucks cause it, itself is proprietary (licensed).
A common control system provides a single entry point for attackers. You could lose your entire army.
Dumbest thing ever.
Militaries should outright own the tools with which they fight. Renting stuff, like, say, hiring mercenaries to do your dirty work always comes back to bite you in the ass and we're smart enough to avoid mistakes like that.
Oh, wait...
I thought Cyberdyne Systems was the leader in this area.
Skynet?
1 2 3
One ring to rule them all ...
6 BILLION DOLLARS??????? That kind of money couldn't have been put into a better use???
The world is fucked up. I pity the following generations. You are all doomed.
Tomorrow, SkyNet!
Should the government decide to turn on it's own citizens they won't have to worry about soldiers rebelling. It's easier to kill people when you don't have to look them in the eye.
Thought we already had this...it's callled SkyNet
Didn't Tony Stark warn us about the use of HammerTech in military applications?
we'll have plugins required for drones that will allow you more features. And drone app walled gardens that work very well and look nice, but don't allow you to use that drone for anything outside its intended purpose. And drones that search real well but want to serve you ads for maintaining the hardness of your drone's armor during missions.
One system to rule them, one hack to control them all!
I killed da wabbit -Elmer Fudd
Remember that game or StarCraft II? Westwood or Blizzard and those game players will probably do a better job then Pentagon!
You mean they don't all use MATLAB like this guy?
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
I Love Lucy?
Dukes of Hazard?
If I sell a bolt to the Military it has to conform to standards and pass certain tests.
If I sell software to the Military I can dictate the terms?
The Military should define their specification then have systems conform to that, anything else is plain lazy and deserving of the problems derived.
Welcome our new DreamHammer overlords with a private army of drones that were bought and paid for by the US Taxpayer.
21st Century Renaissance Man
Doesn't Nelson Paez look kinda evil in his picture? Not that that matters or anything but it certainly wouldn't make me feel his company should be trusted with this project.
fiction:
Baltar was weak and look what his system did.
just random thoughts while coding the day away...
When different OSs power these drones it provides a form of security. If an enemy found a way corrupt or control a universal drone OS it could provide an enormous tactical advantage. It could either cause your drone forces to be non functional or at the very worst perhaps turn those forces against you.
And while our control links to our UAV (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles) are encrypted, the video feeds are NOT. And we *know* that the bad guys are tapping into the video feeds when we have UAVs overhead. Which just goes to show that contractors can do some silly things.
Not sure I like the idea of having ALL of our UAVs and various robots using a single OS. Because unless it's VERY secure, I can forsee a time when the bad guys hack the OS and our drones/UAVs/robots/etc are used by them against us...
That worked SO WELL the first time.....
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
So the Pentagon is intentionally considering a technical monoculture for the operating systems of military drones?
Who is going to make the anti-virus software – Haliburton?
"Seven years of college down the drain. Might as well join the f-ing Peace Corps." - John 'Bluto' Blutarsky
That's two separate whooshes, you dunderhead.
Or was you trolling?
I think this has all of the makings of a waste of taxpayers dollars. They "might" be able to integrate all of the controls into one single point of failure. However, most of the sensors are proprietary government COTS solutions that are just slapped inside an airborne platform. The chances of this company being able to write code to work on all of the commercial closed source intelligence sensors are slim to none.
Of course a Zero Day exploit in the universal OS could end a war very quickly.
Too bad the name is already taken by a company making a drone control system that runs on iPhones and iPads!
Only one target OS. Is it fair to say that the US android arsenal is "fragmented"?
But first...
Something unacceptably bad has to go wrong
As a previous defense industry employee, I can say (legally too!) that the big firms like Raytheon, Boeing, and General Dynamics have been working on this for years. The various military branches have also created an open framework for UxV (that's all unmanned vehicles) so that simpler, integrated control systems can be created. Although, the idea of doing something like this on a mobile phone is novel idea.
"DreamHammer, crushing your hopes and fantasies since 2003."
A botnet of these things is not a pleasent thought at all. There are good reasons a lot of critical military hardware runs on sysems specced out with redundant hardware running different CPUs and OSes.
Check out the DreamHammer site. It's all buzzwords and clip art. "DreamHammer is comprised of the most brilliant minds in the world." Yeah, right. There's absolutely no detail on what this is, or how it works, or what it interfaces to. Does it talk to ROS,or JAUS, or any of the other autonomous vehicle packages. They don't say.
The addresses don't check out, either. The one in Santa Monica (nice location, three blocks from the beach) appears to be a law firm. The address in Virginia is something called "International Research and Development Solutions, LLC". The location in Hawaii (nice location, three blocks from the cruise ship docks) is in an office building mostly full of lawyers.
Don't want someone taking control of your death machines? Stop making them.
Robots don't complain, require psychiatric counselling or go running to the press when you order them to kill whole wedding parties children and all, funerals, villages, or anything that moves really...
It looks like the face of modern warfare is going from Counterstrike to Starcraft.
Let me get this right:
Because they had lots of outside contractors working on the control systems they have lots of disparate control systems, and they are going to solve this by getting an outside contractor to write a new control system?
Does anyone else see the inherent flaw in this plan?
Sounds like a good idea right?
All it would take is a decent game programming company (the unreal engine guys) to be bought out, define some sort of standardized xml format as a layer of abstraction that all machines can use in common. This is all mostly basic shit anyways... you define a set of valid inputs, a set of valid outputs, then make a network to share all that stuff dynamically and send/receive well defined commands. Each machine handles it's own way of doing things, but just adheres to one standard just like all web browsers (for the most part lol) can render html pages, not knowing anything about the servers. They don't need to. Add a dash of security and auditing capabilities and you're done... It's not rocket science... not even half as hard as figuring out how to put together a tank... it's pretty sad they don't even have a HAL like every operating system has had for decades...
Then... Programming -> ? -> Profit! -> skynet :(
Apparently DreamHammer isn't the only one with this concept in mind. The military wants it. They have been working on solving this problem since 2009.
http://www.militaryaerospace.com/articles/2011/07/cots-and-open-standards.html
Funny how this information hasn't been made public so far. The global hawk block 30 was cancelled by the air force because the control system upgrade was gonna cost $400 million! To just upgrade one type of system? There are thousands of systems out there. Do they all cost hat much. If so its cheaper to have manned systems. Maybe commercial products is the way to go. Ironically windows runs most of the military systems. Any 10 year old hacker can get break windows security. I think the general public would be blown away with government lack of competence and waste of money.