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DARPA Wants Distributed Network of Deep Sea Storage Units
Zothecula writes "DARPA has seen the future of naval warfare and it's falling upward. As part of an effort to reduce the logistics of sending equipment into trouble areas, the agency's Upward Falling Payloads project is aimed at developing storage capsules capable of remaining on the deep seabed for years. These would contain non-lethal military assets that could be deployed on the spot years in advance and rise to the surface as needed."
Possible side benefit: they need to research communications systems reliable enough to command the deep sea capsules when needed.
Concrete becomes stronger under compression. There was some experimentation among the smaller nations of the world a few years ago to build inexpensive submarines using concrete hulls since concrete has such good compressive strength. There is no reason why concrete wouldn't make an excellent storage container.
DARPA wants to invent robots that are designed to "rise up"? Sounds like a pretty dangerous precedent to me.
That Ricky and Bubba will be bidding on the storage units if the government doesn't pay the rent?
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
if you need karma go back to when this ran 4 days ago and grab some high rated comments.
tagging a story dup in the 'mysterious future' should flag it for review so this doesn't happen.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
When the current cryotograghic algorithms which secure these cracker-jack prizes become easily crackable by script-kiddies, and with future long-range private drones weilding live HD cams, I see a new form of geocaching game on the horizon.
I'll look forward to watching the reruns on Youtube.
Thanks US Military!
Sent from my ENIAC
I recommend they look into Slashdot's Upward Falling Stories, which tend to drop off the front page and then float back up again as a repost.
From TFA:
Because of the difficulty of retrieving the capsules, DARPA is concentrating on non-lethal assets, so there’s no conflict with treaties involving munitions and their disposal.
I think DARPA is concerned about the politics of potentially leaving dangerous weapons just lying around. They obviously could be used for anything that can be stored for long period of time, if they manage to get them working.
"None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
Because some people might think it a bad idea to leave storage units full of the latest and greatest instruments of death lying around unguarded on the ocean floor. Those people might not have a problem with a bunch of helmets and first-aid kits being treated that way though.
Ocean explorers recover a remarkably well-preserved, ancient artifact from the deep mud of the ocean floor.
"What the hell is it??"
"I don't really know. It must be newer than the geological data indicate. We have no record of any prior advanced civilizations."
Sent from my ENIAC
you should write underwater RAID
because an underwater raid of a different sort is also an issue with this concept
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
At least theoretically, if they put a giant red cross on a submarine full of band-aids, other nations wouldn't depth charge it?
Although "obviously" if the US were about to invade a country they'd be out there trying to blow up the storage boxes, wasting time and ammo?
Non-lethal = when a fishing trawler hauls it off the seabed they can't claim insurance costs etc for their ship blowing up? Also if "everyone knows" subsea storage is all non-lethal (yeah like thats gonna happen long term) then the US is somewhat less liable for EOD costs. Hauling up a net of fish, lobsters... and a mine... is kinda scary to the crew.
So the CIA will trade arms to the afgahani's for heroin, who will sell it to the italians for cash to pay for black ops or wtf the CIA does with all its money. So, "obviously" if you accidentally capture a container and its full of AK47s, we "never" put lethal arms in one, so it was all a plant to make the USA look bad, or all a fake. In other words practically all of them are going to be full of non-domestic arms with the serial numbers filed off or whatever, but we'll pretend none are.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
"deployed years later" .. isn't there a risk that the equipment would be obsolete? Field equipment is changing rather rapidly in this day and age, especially electronics.
Clearly not been in .mil. Some high tech stuff, lots thats not...
Sterile bags of saline solution, IV stuff, band aids, field dressings, pioneer tools, food...
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
Just how long can a Marine Division wait on the ocean floor and still be effective?
well, instead of storing all your data in the cloud, you can now store it in the drink too.
Depends. It could be stuff like supplies (fuel/oil/grease, food, ammo) which while having a shelf life, can be stored for a bit and unlikely to be obsoleted quickly. This is the most likely case as having pre-positioned supplies at the ready gives you a strong advantage out of the gate by being able to resupply without having a nearby resupply vessel.
Less likely are general equipment - since it often depends on the mission and can be obsolete.
Supplies generally are the most desirable to preposition - after all, cutitng off supply lines is a very common military tactic, and battles have been lost (or won, depending on which side) when a cut off group runs out of supplies.
Dear America, Please don't mine the entire ocean with giant non-robotic sea mines, just because you can, signed, the rest of the world. Also, didn't we have this conversation last week?
Like buying presents for children, there's really no way of knowing whether the DoD will in the future be able to make use of whatever they stash away, or whether it will still be edible, nonobsolete, or even free of rust and bilgewater.
So along with the Great Northern beans and networking nodes with 10,000-day vulnerabilities, let's add some historical memorabilia. Copies of current Navy regulations and 12 year old scotch for example.
Another possibility is that DARPA could plant stuff designed to be found by the enemy. Trick black soap. Bogus ciphers that will cause the enemy to spend years or decades fruitlessly attempting to decode. Bogus mine-defusing instructions that will make them go boom.
Since this Slashdot the title should really be storage containers as the obvious assumption is a storage unit stores data!
RAID: Reconnaissance Assets Invisibly Drowned?
This is old news, the story was posted on slashdot last week. Same story, same request, same misinterpretation of what is actually sought.
The request is for pre-positioned military assets (non lethal) for surveillance and intelligence which remain inert on the sea floor until needed, and then become buoyant, rise to the surface and release aerial surveillance equipment, (short life drones or balloons), or merely float and gather signal intelligence.
These could be used for search and rescue as well as intelligence gathering in trouble spots.
This avoids having to find some way to fly a plane or a manned drone to some remote location in a hurry. Since its not a munition, its not considered an aggressive act to seed the ocean floor (4000 feet down, in international waters) with something that you can later instruct to become active.
It is thought that being down 4000 feet would be enough protection to make them unlikely to be messed with. (Wishful thinking if you ask me, once you abandon anything on the ocean bottom without support of international treaty, its pretty much fair game for salvage or state sponsored retrieval via ROVs.).
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.