What Modern Militaries Can Learn From Battlestar Galactica

An anonymous reader writes "Modern warfare these days is all about a 'networked environment.' But what happens when such things that make a modern military work breakdown? How would America's armed forces fight if their computers crashed, could not communicate, or were hit with massive viruses? What then? 'There's wisdom in science fiction. The conceit behind the reboot of the sci-fi epic Battlestar Galactica was that networking military forces exposes them to disaster unless commanders and weapons designers think ahead to the repercussions should an enemy exploit or break the network. The mechanical Cylons, arch foes of humanity, are able to crush the humans' battle fleet and bombard their home worlds with nukes by insinuating viruses into networked computers. They sever contact between capital ships and their fighter forces, and they shut down the fleet's and planets' defenses. Having lost the habit of fighting without networked systems, human crews make easy pickings for Cylon predators.'"

Comments

what?

[hypergreatthing]

wtf? get the frack out of here. Comparing battlestar galactica to the modern military.... might as well compare NCIS to police work or star trek to nasa. What can fiction tell us about anything? nothing, because it's not based on real life.
What does abraham lincoln vampire hunter tell us about colonial life? Lots apparently.

Re: what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly. If they took down our networks we would... not care and keep working?

People have no idea how little actual military stuff is actually networked.

Re:what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you ever worked with the military? They have redundant systems, but most of those systems can't work with out some form of electronic communications. It's the theory of being completely cut off from your chain of command. Not the cylons invading.

Though the whole thing is stupid because they do war games all the time with one side using comm equipment and the other side using turn on the 20th century comms. You'd never guess who wins.

Re:what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Fail troll is fail

Re:what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Im glad someone has reality in check.
I was thinking I'd view the comments of everyone saying how battlestar galactica invented everything and people were just catching up, or something.
It's so easy to imagine stuff, it's not easy to create it....

Re:what?

[Anonymous Coward]

I learned a lot of things from Sci-Fi before I learned them in real life.

  In Star Trek: TNG, for example, I (through the Klingons) learned that Blacks are violent. I also learned that Ferengi (Jews) are greedy. And that women who study Psychology (Counselor Troi) are all ditzy sluts who like to codify common sense through their cleavage. Then, through Voyager's Janeway, I learned that all women over thirty-five are nagging bitches who enjoy being difficult to their families.

Then, through Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and comic books, I learned that nerd humor is pretty much gay humor - excessively chatty with the only controversy being that all the men wear underwear on the outsides of their clothes.

Yep, Sci-Fi. I tossed it all in the trash or out the window. Then I got a skateboard and started playing football, then got a girlfriend; and have been a real man ever since.

-- Ethanol-fueled

Re:what?

[jeffmeden]

Reminds me of the Onion article about the multiverse of possibilities from the US Election results. "What if your fighting machines break?"

Dont forget to ask "What if your battleships get trapped under a force field?"

And finish up with "What if you need to throw a ring away really bad, like *really* bad, but the ring itself doesn't want to be and can control YOU???"

So many irrelevant questions, so much time to waste...

Re: what?

[Shoten]

Exactly. If they took down our networks we would... not care and keep working?

People have no idea how little actual military stuff is actually networked.

This is less and less true every year. Without networking, forget about using Predator or Reaper drones, for one thing. Forget about chain of command as well, forget about intelligence...moving in either direction. Most importantly, forget about logistics too.

Re: what?

[F34nor]

There was a story in one of the Iraq books I read, Rise of the Vulcans or something like that where an amsemtrical warfare game sponsored by the US military was stopped when the Marine commander running the "bad guy team" used things like mopeds to move data rendering all the cool e-warfare shit we had useless. Basically the blue team guys thought they could disrupt and destroy a low tech enemy but it didn't work. Old age and treachery will over come youth and enthusiasm every time.

Re:what?

[Anonymous Coward]

The lesson to be learned here is not to let your resistance movement to be owned - and eventually canceled - by TV executives.

Re: what?

[ShanghaiBill]

People have no idea how little actual military stuff is actually networked.

I think they also have no idea how non-critical a lot of the technology is. When I was in the service, were were constantly training for "what if" scenarios. If our radios were jammed, we would communicate with flares, smoke grenades, semaphore flags, signal mirrors, etc. Once a month we would have a "vehicle appreciation day" where we would move every piece of gear in our battalion for twenty clicks (km) using only our LPCs (leather personnel carriers (boots)). Heck, we even trained for a lack of breathable air. There are few things more difficult than trying to sleep with a gas mask on. A "network failure" is not going to stop the US military.

Re: what?

[Deltaspectre]

Or taking advantage of the simulation. I don't know the name of the exercise off the top of my head, but I remember the guy exploiting poorly modeled Jeeps(?) to move information.

Re: what?

[pluther]

Same thing happened in Tienanmen Square. The Chinese government cut the phone lines and tried to jam radios, but the students were still coordinating by bicycle and motorcycle messengers.

Re: what?

[pixelpusher220]

The single biggest issue is GPS. How many 'smart' things simply stop working when our satellites are taken out (either by enemy...or just space junk cascading into the Kessler Syndrome/Effect)

Re: what?

[pixelpusher220]

I would agree with you, but sometimes the sum of the pieces is greater than the total. I.e. you can test widget/process A for all manner of failures and B, C, D as well. But testing ALL of them for simultaneous failures simply isn't possible. And while I also agree that it won't 'stop' the military, it will significantly degrade it's effectiveness.

Which, when fighting a superior force is exactly what you want to do...and is exactly what our enemies would be facing and thus want to do.

I'm sure it's been thought out and planned, but sometimes a complete 'failure' isn't needed to actually cause enough problems to overcome your opponent.

Re:what?

[jedidiah]

The side that loses will be the one that breaks first. This is pretty much how it always goes. The vulnerability of your communications isn't nearly as important as how your troops will react when it inevitably fails.

Are your troops like the Ko-Dan armada or are they more like the IDF?

If you need to reserve your best troops to ensure that your average units remain on the line, then you are already at a severe disadvantage.

Re: what?

[Anonymous Coward]

I disagree with the GP but I disagree with you as well. Networking (particularly of military equipment) is a complex web of devices and communications means, running a variety of operating or control systems (many being of those being proprietary costing precious time to exploit). A prolonged outage would likely have to be very targeted to the point of removing a particular capability, a broad attack would be difficult to sustain. Think about how you would deny a civilian neighborhood "networking." You need to cut cable. You need to cut phone lines. You need to knock out cell towers. You need to suppress ad hoc wireless networks. You may even need to patrol to keep people from running cat 5 from house to house. Now multiply those possibilites by hundreds and give all those folks firearms and military training.

Re: what?

[wisnoskij]

More worrying, what about instead of taking out satellites and drone control towers, an enemy takes over them with a virus.

Sure the average foot soldier might not use or encounter very many networked devices. But what if the guidance system in every smart bomb was redirected back at our own troops, ever Predator drone was reprogrammed to search and destroy all humans.

Re:what?

[hackula]

Every system has SOME point of failure. If all forms of electronic communications go down, then yeah, we are pretty much screwed. All that means is that we need to do everything possible to make sure that does not happen.

Re: what?

[ducomputergeek]

This sort of goes back to what the after action reports for the conflicts fought in the past 20 years have said: equipping an infantry with any more than a rifle, compass, map, ammo, rations, and canteen is about all they really need to be effective. Yes squads need radios, but with off the shelf SIGINT & ELINT gear these days the more technology you give soldiers the bigger target you make them.

It's just like the Air Force and their horrendously expensive F-22's and F-35's that don't really address what the reports say the Air Force really needs: more A-10's and B-52's.

Re: what?

[Anonymous Coward]

You're looking for USMC Lt. General Paul Van Riper and his unorthodox response to the 2002 Millennium Challenge wargame.

Re: what?

[icebike]

More worrying, what about instead of taking out satellites and drone control towers, an enemy takes over them with a virus.

Sure the average foot soldier might not use or encounter very many networked devices. But what if the guidance system in every smart bomb was redirected back at our own troops, ever Predator drone was reprogrammed to search and destroy all humans.

What about military people also watching Battle Star Galactica? You spoze they ever did?

NAH, that could never happen!

Re: what?

[Lumpy]

"The single biggest issue is GPS. How many 'smart' things simply stop working when our satellites are taken out "

Smart things? Our Pilots cant fly without GPS, they do not train them to navigate. Honestly it is mind blowing that the powers that be are that incompetent.

Re: what?

[TemporalBeing]

Exactly. If they took down our networks we would... not care and keep working?

People have no idea how little actual military stuff is actually networked.

This is less and less true every year. Without networking, forget about using Predator or Reaper drones, for one thing. Forget about chain of command as well, forget about intelligence...moving in either direction. Most importantly, forget about logistics too.

True, the drones and various functions would be disabled. However, the US Military is by design able to function without access to the chain of command - one thing that has been one of our greatest strengths throughout history.

So losing the network will have some issues, but will not cripple the US Military in any fashion.

Re:what?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know what idiot marked that post as Troll, but he's got a point. TV writers can make any old stuff they damn well please. If a system needs to be hacked for plot reasons, it will be hacked using only the s, d, f, j, k and l keys, regardless of how well secured (and possibly air bridged) a similar system in real life would be. If an enemy needs a silly weakness to compensate and make it possible to end a series in victory, it will be so.
Fiction can be entertaining but be very wary of trying to draw lessons from it. In a story the author is god and the characters are dance on his strings like marionettes. Real life doesn't work that way. People won't act certain ways to fulfil plot requirements; they have their own motives. Furthermore, in the real world the laws of physics apply.
A ‘news’ story like this comes by every few months. Take lesson T because author X showed that if you don't do Y, Z will happen. No it won't and no I won't. There are plenty lessons to be learned, but rarely from literature, let alone TV series.

Re: what?

[TemporalBeing]

I would agree with you, but sometimes the sum of the pieces is greater than the total. I.e. you can test widget/process A for all manner of failures and B, C, D as well. But testing ALL of them for simultaneous failures simply isn't possible. And while I also agree that it won't 'stop' the military, it will significantly degrade it's effectiveness.

Even complete failured it trained of equipment is trained for. The military is taught not to rely on equipment to get the job done. Multiple failures are expected, and can easily happen in any combat situation.

Re: what?

[ArtemaOne]

You don't understand how we communicate. We have a large number of communication systems that are unrelated to the internet. Drones would work just fine. Chain of command communications would be untouched. I will not list what we have for OPSEC reasons, but it is far more vast than you know.

Re: what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Even without all the geewiz toys the military trains to operate in a low tech environment. A classic example of which is the fact that we've had laser range finders for decades, and we still train our snipers to use the mil system and we give them the math necessary to figure out how to place rounds on targets at unknown distances. Pretty much every soldier learns in basic training how to read a map and use a compass, pilots use maps and terrain features to navigate aided by AWACS and air traffic control, even if the RADAR is being jammed, a good pilot will know where they're at by the terrain around them, and fighting over the ocean or a vast desert is the only places where there aren't enough terrain features to navigate by eye. So I say "meh" to the OP's "OMGsorzS the TOYZ are BROKESESSes",

Here's the bottom line, the toys are helpful when they work, and a hindrance when they don't, you use them in addition to your base proficiency skills. We had a unknown range cold bore fire exercise one year where the local authorities were allowed to participate, a couple of them came in with laser range finders and were heavily reliant upon them to do their jobs. The shoot was on a rainy day with stupid high humidity, they couldn't get solid numbers from their range finders due to refraction from the high moisture content and ended up missing all their targets. In their defense they said they train for tops a 200 meter shot with the average urban engagement being well under 50 meters so they never really mess with the scope much outside of zeroing it.

Re: what?

[Anonymous Coward]

That was Lieutenant General Paul K. Van Riper's work:

" Red used a fleet of small boats to determine the position of Blue's fleet by the second day of the exercise. In a preemptive strike, Red launched a massive salvo of cruise missiles that overwhelmed the Blue forces' electronic sensors and destroyed sixteen warships. This included one aircraft carrier, ten cruisers and five of six amphibious ships. An equivalent success in a real conflict would have resulted in the deaths of over 20,000 service personnel. Soon after the cruise missile offensive, another significant portion of Blue's navy was "sunk" by an armada of small Red boats, which carried out both conventional and suicide attacks that capitalized on Blue's inability to detect them as well as expected."

Re: what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Just because many things are WIRELESS does not mean they are NETWORKED. Chain of command, intelligence, logistics, all of that is just people with radios. We're all still trained to use the radios and to pass coordinates without GPS and so-such.

Drones are remotely controlled and dependent on that. They are the ONLY thing.

Re: what?

[Leggman]

I was in the Naval ROTC in college and they made us learn to navigate using a sextant...

Re:what?

[Anonymous Coward]

No, we're not. We have smoke, we have flares, we have people running messages on foot or in humvees. The military trains to make sure it has many points of partial, non-critical failure. You can take out a shit-ton of military equipment and the army will keep right on moving just fine. Yes, it will degrade performance, but that has always been true and will always be true.

Re: what?

[Anonymous Coward]

All 3 have already been forgotten. We've found that "systems of systems" just don't work, and we continue to ignore the shit the R&D guys crap upon us.

Re: what?

[Anonymous Coward]

A "network failure" is not going to stop the US military.

Of course it isn't, but removing the massive force multiplier that is our technological backbone is going to cause us a hell of a lot of pain and casualties.

Re: what?

[error 303]

A similar thing happened in Operation Millenium in 2002. The US commander, General van Riper, in charge of the "red" team (i.e. middle-eastern nation, i.e. Iran) opted to use non tradiational attacks. In effect he launched every available missle on day one at the "blue" fliceet, overwhelming US missle defense systems, and then proceeded to use skifs and speed boats in suicide attacks to avoid any head on engagements. The "blue" team was overwhelemed on the first day and on the second day US command ordered the war game restarted, with much more tight contraints on egagement and tactics. In effect, General van Riper showed that the US was not ready to engage in asymetric warfare in the middle east, and rather than conceding that, they changed and "rigged" the game to show that the US would achieve an easy an descive vicoty. General van Riper resigned in the middle of the game in protest.

Re: what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Simulation, situation, whatever it takes.

It's the thought process that matters.

Re:what?

[Guspaz]

Battlestar Galactica also posited that connecting two computers together with an ethernet cable instantly makes them completely vulnerable to long-distance wireless hacking because "now it's a network and the cylons can hack networks", so I'd take the whole thing with a grain of salt.

Re:what?

[phobos512]

I just can't see a US commander going "We DIE." Emphasis on the DIE. Plus they don't have those cool little (and incredible noisy) eye piece things. Though I guess they will over the next few years so, awesome.

Re:what?

[Anonymous Coward]

wtf? get the frack out of here. Comparing battlestar galactica to the modern military.... might as well compare NCIS to police work or star trek to nasa. What can fiction tell us about anything? nothing, because it's not based on real life. What does abraham lincoln vampire hunter tell us about colonial life? Lots apparently.

What you mean these clips has nothing to do with actual police work? :O http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Y2zo0JN2HE http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hkDD03yeLnU

Re:what?

[flayzernax]

Thats funny because we always thought Ferengi were Muslims ( oppression of women ) or Roman Catholic ( the funny hats ). The mistake your are making is mistaking tropes or "planets of hats" with ideologies that the show producers were trying to comment on. They were not portraying actual groups of people in stereotypical ways.

Re: what?

[ziggers]

Actually, it is highly networked. Tom Clancy with Mark Greaney wrote about this very thing. Sure, there were some fairly far reaching parts in the book (Threat Vector), but the basic premise was how difficult it would be for the military to fight a war without the network it is so massively dependent.

Re: what?

[Anonymous Coward]

We had the ability to drop a nuke on the other side of the planet with a 100m CEP before the first GPS bird went live. You tell me.

Re: what?

[es330td]

I am curious to know what the outcome would have been had the US team, knowing this was happening, started destroying everything that moved regardless of threat level.

Re: what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Or he gamed the game. As an example, he had very heavy automatic weapons (50 BMG or higher I forgot) on said skiffs. Except that in the game, they didn't need to fire, or carry their ammo load. Had they done those two things the skiffs would have been unable to maneuver effectively while fully loaded, and only able to fire while fully loaded because any lighter load would have caused the skiff to tip over from the guns recoil. If your argument is that the US Navy (or US Military in general) has blind spots I agree, but you can't prove it by gaming a simulation. It makes for a great internet general's story though...

Re: what?

[Anonymous Coward]

I believe you are referring to this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_Challenge_2002

Re: what?

[mea_culpa]

GPS is not necessary in modern aviation and is not used as much as you may think. Modern commercial and military aircraft typically use INS/IRS during flight and use GPS only during the initial flight programming while on the ground and/or manually if the pilot wishes to compensate for INS drift while in flight. If GPS were knocked out during flight it would not affect commercial or military flights equipped with INS.
I would assume that with the $billions dumped into military drone development that they operate the same way. Instead of a pilot they rely on computer vision systems and INS during a GPS outage or loss of communication with C&C.

The real danger we face is not jamming, but cyber warfare. We have already seen the command and control compromised with the RQ-170. A $1 billion INS equipped drone that seeming landed safely on an Iranian airstrip. Think about that one for a minute. For the C&C of a drone to be taken over like that, security at the deepest levels in the military must have been compromised. Of course it is easier to play like an ostrich and keep your head in the sand and believe the official story that GPS (which is never the primary flight sensor in military or commercial flight) was used to land a $1 billion drone on enemy territory.

Re: what?

[gl4ss]

testing for simultaneous failure of everything? what's there to test, in that case wizards did it and you might just as well give up. if the mechanical, by wire and the multiple parallel electronic methods of communication break up then it was the wizards and the aliens in alliance and it's best to dig a hole and stay there and hope nobody panics and launches the nukes(oh wait couldn't do it with simul-mega-break).

btw. it's the other armies of the world that should train for it than the US, because it's most likely that an attack from the US will cause simultaneous catastrophic failure of the military network. oh wait - every fucking even semi-serious army does it! because they know their centralized network infra is going to be fucked in about ten minutes(making them a tool for peacetime and limited scale operations.. that is just another word for "fixing domestic problems").

Re:what?

[Aerokii]

Reminds me of the Onion article about the multiverse of possibilities from the US Election results. "What if your fighting machines break?"

Dont forget to ask "What if your battleships get trapped under a force field?"

And finish up with "What if you need to throw a ring away really bad, like *really* bad, but the ring itself doesn't want to be and can control YOU???"

So many irrelevant questions, so much time to waste...

In this order... Wizard, Wizard, Hobbits.

Any more questions?

Re: what?

[kenwd0elq]

Yes, and I used to TEACH celestial navigation at the USAF navigator school. Which is now closed.

GPS is too easy, too inexpensive, and too accurate, so NOBODY actually uses celestial navigation any more. But cel nav requires practice, and it is a "Use It Or Lose It!" skill.

Re: what?

[BubbaDave]

Exactly. If they took down our networks we would... not care and keep working?

People have no idea how little actual military stuff is actually networked.

I've worked on a few RFPs that point this out as untrue, multi-ship incoming missle targeting management systems, airside C2 systems, multi-tank ad-hoc networking for C2 and video sharing, all kinds of stuff.

Even the damn radios are being networked (JTRS).

Re:what?

[bkmoore]

...I also learned that Ferengi (Jews) are greedy...

Gene Rodenberry, William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy were all of the Jewish faith. Go listen to Adam Sandler's Happy Hanukkah song for proof.

Re: what?

[1369IC]

Really? Not using any night vision? No tanks? No radios, no sensors, no gas masks or MREs or uniforms or tents or mortars or... You get the idea. They all come from military R&D. Look up RDECOM (where I work) and i's subordinate RD&E centers and labs.

Re: what?

[LWATCDR]

Ahh no. Military aircraft have INS as well as Doppler radar as well as GPS. We also have Paveway bombs that are laser guided and don't use GPS, Maverick AGMs that use optical or laser guidance, and even just plane dumb bombs.

Re: what?

[Sporkinum]

Exactly.. That's why there is inertial guidance include as well.

Re: what?

[LWATCDR]

Don't you know that everybody in the military is a total idiot and that any random Slashdot users knows more than they do about just about everything.
AKA the world according to way to many clueless people.

Re: what?

[Keebler71]

Except that GPS satellites are in MEO... and would be immune from the Kessler Syndrome which is a LEO problem...

Re: what?

[pixelpusher220]

a 'greater' LEO problem anyway, but yes it would seem the risk of a Kessler Syndrome type event affecting GPS would be lower. Hostile military action still remains as a threat I would think.

Re: what?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's why it is called the 'Fog of War,' you don't know what is going to happen in advance. Thousands of tiny water craft are in the Persian Gulf to fish and make a living every day; distinguishing them from threats would be impossible, which is why General Riper exploited that fact to perform "swarm" attacks that overwhelmed US naval defenses. In addition, he used the daily call to prayer broadcast from the minaret's of mosques to signal the attack order. Do you think the US Navy can preemptively destroy mosques and still maintain the moral high ground in the eyes of the international community, let alone hold any ground with a completely hostile local population? The US needs to give more thought to the issue of asymmetric warfare before starting another "limited" engagement.

Re: what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly. If they took down our networks we would... not care and keep working?

People have no idea how little actual military stuff is actually networked.

This is less and less true every year. Without networking, forget about using Predator or Reaper drones, for one thing. Forget about chain of command as well, forget about intelligence...moving in either direction. Most importantly, forget about logistics too.

Read about TACAMO.

Re: what?

[Anonymous Coward]

I am curious to know what the outcome would have been had the US team, knowing this was happening, started destroying everything that moved regardless of threat level.

That's why it is called the 'Fog of War,' you don't know what is going to happen in advance. Thousands of tiny water craft are in the Persian Gulf to fish and make a living every day; distinguishing them from threats would be impossible, which is why General Riper exploited that fact to perform "swarm" attacks that overwhelmed US naval defenses. In addition, he used the daily call to prayer broadcast from the minaret's of mosques to signal the attack order. Do you think the US Navy can preemptively destroy mosques and still maintain the moral high ground in the eyes of the international community, let alone hold any ground with a completely hostile local population? The US needs to give more thought to the issue of asymmetric warfare before starting another "limited" engagement.

Re: what?

[WGFCrafty]

Yes, and I used to TEACH celestial navigation at the USAF navigator school. Which is now closed.

GPS is too easy, too inexpensive, and too accurate, so NOBODY actually uses celestial navigation any more. But cel nav requires practice, and it is a "Use It Or Lose It!" skill.

And in your opinion was that a good idea or a bad one (assuming you're implying they don't teach it at all, anymore)?

Re: what?

[WGFCrafty]

In the short term, maybe. What happens after you've taken your objective and lose comm and gps? Do they carry maps of everywhere around them? Do they just defend? Are more expansive secondary objectives assigned? A chronic loss of long distance communication would be quite a blow to effectiveness, even if everything holds together.

Re:what?

[Anonymous Coward]

What does abraham [sic] lincoln [sic] vampire [sic] hunter [sic] tell us about colonial life? Lots apparently.

You'd have to watch Benjamin Franklin Vampire Hunter to learn about colonial life.

Re: what?

[WGFCrafty]

Or they learned they were screwed in that type of warfare for then, and since they already mobilized quite a bit of manpower, they needed something to show for it? It's not like they didn't tell anyone about the first result.

Re:what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Go listen to Adam Sandler's Happy Hanukkah song for proof.

Check and mate. Well played sir.

Re:what?

[WGFCrafty]

Though a joke, I think assigning Judaism to the ferengi says more about you than about star trek.

Re: what?

[haystor]

And you have the Marines, who are just now getting some used TRS-80's from the Army and Air Force.

Re: what?

[kenwd0elq]

The original article's premise was "The US military may be vulnerable to a cyber-attack, perhaps vaguely similar to the one depicted in Battlestar:Galactica." I was replying to a comment saying, in effect, "we learned how to navigate by the stars at NROTC, so we don't really NEED our fancy GPS systems." I'm saying "Celestial navigation is a great fallback navigation method for when everything else goes to hell, but it takes continuous practice that I don't think people are getting these days."

DO they still teach cel nav any more? I don't know. But with the LORAN and OMEGA systems closed or closing, being able to find your way back to land might be a handy skill to know, if somebody manages to launch a few tons of 1" polycarbonate cubes into a reverse-trajectory low-Earth orbit.

The point is, we DO depend on our electronics, and our military would be crippled if somebody hacked or degraded our electronic communications and navigational systems. Is some knockout cyborg dame going to seduce our only scientist and sink our fleets with gremlins? No, B:G is a fictional and EXTREME case. The fact that science fiction is often extreme and overwrought doesn't mean that the crux of the problem is itself fictional.

Re: what?

[sxltrex]

After further analysis it appears that Riper gamed the simulation and in some cases flat out cheated to get the results he wanted.

Re: what?

[Salvage]

Even complete failured it trained of equipment is trained for. The military is taught not to rely on equipment to get the job done. Multiple failures are expected, and can easily happen in any combat situation.

Multiple failures can easily happen in any upgrade situation.

I was with a unit that was heavily into the computer based operations, and one upgrade cycle was particularly frakked. Networking was almost nothing but timeouts, apps wouldn't start, etc. Eventually, I gave the system layout a glance to see if there was something obvious. Among the many things I found in about 10 seconds of looking, was something like:

$ ls -l

---------- 1 root wheel 69 May 5 20xx /etc/resolv.conf

There were far more heinous things done to all the machines on that LAN. And even with all that, we still figured out within the first day how to get our jobs done. Not quickly, and not without a lot of hassle, but we still got it done. A fairly complete fix took a few weeks though.

And they wonder why sailors drink.

Re: what?

[LWATCDR]

that would be Zenith Z100s

Re:what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe their networks were all wireless.

Re:what?

[cold fjord]

I just can't see a US commander going "We DIE."

Kamikaze: F-16 pilots planned to ram Flight 93

Re: what?

[speederaser]

From http://www.tboverse.us/HPCAFORUM/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=289

... Van Riper actually rigged the exercise himself, by materializing forces out of thin air to make attacks, then claimed he was being unfairly bashed by the higher ups because he hadnt followed the script.

Also what I understand from reading some more level headed articles on the matter, in many ways the exercise wasnt even meant to be a real simulation of war. Instead it was a series of experiments each designed to test a specific new concept or tactic of combination thereof. In some cases tests were being conducted for the purpose of creating better simulations in future exercises. Two forces didnt simple stand up and slug it out, so declaring a winner and loser isnt even relevant.

There was also this post:

Anybody can "achieve success" in an exercise by arbitrarily creating forces that were not on the original manifest, simply refusing to accept that assets had been destroyed and continuing to use them and by reading through the scenario rules and manifests and saying "aha It doesn't say I can't do thus and so".

It's rather like playing a chess game in which one player ignores any of his pieces taken by his opponent, assumes all of his own pieces are queens and then adds extra pieces every time he feels like it. Then stands up, beats his chest and claims loudly that's he's won.

The problem is that doing all that means the exercise is worthless, nobody learns anything of value from it and the time and resources invested in that exercise are wasted. The only thing Van Riper's actions achieved was to boost his own ego and already excessive self-esteem. In terms of military planning and threat analysis, his contributions were worth far less than nothing.

There appears to be a lot less there than you think.

Re: what?

[Anonymous Coward]

The single biggest issue is GPS. How many 'smart' things simply stop working when our satellites are taken out

I'll tell you what keeps working, amateur, basic land navigation, my M-16 zeroed properly, and lower tech systems like the SINCGARS field radio.

Yes, we can still kick ass using basic systems. Will our 'kill ration' be as high? Of course not. Can we still be effective? Of course.

Re:what?

[Anonymous Coward]

In Star Trek: TNG, for example, I (through the Klingons) learned that Blacks are violent.

Perhaps one should have learned that the Kilngons originated in the Communist Threat of the 60s, before assigning it to a particular racial group...

Re: what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you kidding! Many things that have come into the real world have come from SF stories. An example was my first flip phone in the 80s. It was called a star tac and was designed like the communicators in...hold on to your seats....Star Trex. Time warping in quantum physics had its start in SF stories.

Re:what?

[samwichse]

And yet Slashdot ran a story a couple days ago about reading finger touches on an LCD screen by analyzing the power inside your house and using the EMI fingerprint to reconstruct the touch points:

http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/13/04/26/1619230/5-sensor-turns-lcd-monitors-into-touchscreens

Who knows, maybe they could game a magic bad image causing buffer overflows through the radar (dradis whatever) or something.

The lesson I took from it is the same the internet has shown: all you need is the tiniest "in" exposed and you're owned. And the Cylons had agents inside with physical access. Having no network limits the damage an agent can do to one system at a time, right? Seems reasonable to me.

Sam

Re:what?

[Jesus_666]

Then, through Voyager's Janeway, I learned that all women over thirty-five are nagging bitches who enjoy being difficult to their families.

That was not the central message of Voyager. The central message of Voyager was that a cup of coffee is worth approximately 150 human lives. At least if your name is Kathryn Janeway.

Re:what?

[PsychoSlashDot]

Battlestar Galactica also posited that connecting two computers together with an ethernet cable instantly makes them completely vulnerable to long-distance wireless hacking because "now it's a network and the cylons can hack networks", so I'd take the whole thing with a grain of salt.

Why a grain of salt?

Galactica DID have an internal network. It had several. It was connecting those networks to one another that Adama objected to.

Ship systems such as navigational sensors and communications being networked with weapons, defenses and damage-control introduced vulnerability that didn't need to be there. The little external "hacking" that did go on in the show wasn't unrealistic. Cylons would transmit code which attacked external-facing sensors, and then took down connected internal systems. There was no sign of direct-hacking of non-external-facing systems. They usually showed things like DRADIS going down, followed by engines.

You absolutely do see individual networks such as the intercom system, and the damage-control-assessment board. Sensible use of networks. Your idea that BSG was ethernet-o-phobic is simply false. Time to go re-watch the show.

Re: what?

[KORfan]

So, you're saying we can expect performance on the level of the Parachute Regiment in Arnhem when their radios wouldn't work.

Re:what?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think they were...in the first Ferengi episode, Data likens them to "Yankee traders," but it seemed obvious they were supposed to be thinly-veiled Jews, like Tolkien's dwarves....

Re:what?

[Anonymous Coward]

How does you comment undermine his? Kirk and Spock were most certainly not Jewish...

Re:what?

[bladesinger]

What can fiction tell us about anything? Man that's pretty narrow-minded. I don't know how that's insightful.

http://www.google.com/think/articles/yesterdays-sci-fi.html

Very often sci-fi becomes reality. Okay, maybe we won't have wormholes opening any time soon. But like- widespread, debilitating cyber attacks to cripple an enemy? You need to follow Slashdot and even classic news better. Cyberwarfare IS becoming the new norm. I'm going to take a screenshot of this now for when this particular scifi becomes reality.

Re: what?

[Anonymous Coward]

> Our Pilots cant fly without GPS, they do not train them to navigate. Honestly it is mind blowing that the powers that be are that incompetent.

They're not, actually. Navigation is a thoroughly tested element of even the basic private pilot tests, and for reasons that I thought were obvious, until your comment. Aircraft pilots can neither float (above a possible food source) nor stop on ground terrain (and move by foot.)

Figuring out where you can possibly land when you run out of fuel, in any direction? It is something that has occurred, even to the thousands of power that be who have actually flown, themselves.

Re: what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Seems like sextant construction training would be more fundamental.

Re:what?

[uptown jimmy]

FYI: Abraham Lincoln about 100 years after "colonial" days.

Re: what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Thats standard american military doctrine , when ever one of your carrier groups gets sunk , or the currently military idea to justify huge spendingdosnt work you restart the exercise as the other side are cheating and sides if they did that in real life we'd nuke them.

Re:what?

[flayzernax]

There's a remote chance that they deliberately picked a juxtaposition of traits and made them slightly more Jewish as a thinly veiled jibe towards Zionists (which are a non-religious and political group). But I have not met any rich Jewish bankers (do they really exist, or is this a fairy tail perpetuated by current world events, and conspiracies?) that I may see the real life comparison.

They didn't really demonstrate much nationalism... in fact Ferengi were among the least Xenophobic and nationalistic, they preferred trade empires to an actual empire and could be found in almost every Star Trek races society at some level, they were the least moralizing of all the races, fitting in with the good, bad, and neutral.

Every society has its core of wannabe capitalistic money grubbing liberals =p Even in heavily socialist countries. I think it was more a commentary on a particular ideology, one that could very well be applied to "Jewish" stereotypes, but others as well, depending on your own background. And in essence this is were Star Trek was pretty good at not being PC but taking pot shots under the radar on National Television. The original Klingons and Romulans while very stereotypical were also used in this light.

Re:what?

[flayzernax]

This ^^ =)

-- Filter error: why yes it is ascii art.

Re: what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well it's obvious YOU have never been employed by a military. How do you think the Allies kicked ass in the world wars? We don't need drones. We've gotten along just fine so far. Logistics? What? Pure idiocy. We don't NEED computers. Look up sound powered telephones. Look up the MANY different ways a ship uses to communicate. Look up the different types if radios marines use. Your welcome.

Re:what?

[Anonymous Coward]

None of whom were involved in Next Gen. Roddenberry's name was on it by contract to bless it for the fans. Paramount owned and had total control of the product.

Re: what?

[Anonymous Coward]

No. It is true that Riper blew (no pun intended) the Blue forces out of the water with his unorthodox tactics. But the reason the war game was suspended and restarted is because a war game isn't terribly useful if it's over after one day, not because there was any intention or desire to "whitewash" the results.

No doubt the Navy is well aware of the possibilities of fleet cruise missile defenses being overwhelmed. Thus the focus on getting weaponized lasers aboard ships. Tactics against small boats have also been refined, owing in no small part to US experience against the Iranian Navy in the late 80's tanker-escort operations, as well as the USS Cole bombing.

You really underestimate our military forces if you think they're a bunch of self-congratulating yahoos. They're not. They're smart, driven, dedicated individuals who form the finest military the world has ever known.

Re:what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Frack meeen!

And...

[Anonymous Coward]

The reverse happens as well if you remember correctly - something you happen to have left out in the missive.

Lesson one: don't re-reboot

[Anonymous Coward]

No one wants a preachy "wouldnt it be crazy if things were like earth, but backwards" drama filled with with apprehensive teenagers. It just isn't fun tv.

(in. re. Caprica in case anyone didnt get the reference)

Re:Lesson one: don't re-reboot

[TWiTfan]

Sorry, but the Battlestar Galactica reboot was FAR superior to the original. And I say that as someone who was a huge fan of the original. It should be the textbook case for how to do a reboot right.

Re:Lesson one: don't re-reboot

[0123456]

Personally I only got half-way through the first episode before I decided I couldn't be bothered to watch a soap opera set in space. Did it get any better (I gather that the ending was a huge let-down)?

Re:Lesson one: don't re-reboot

[Anonymous Coward]

I finally gave up when they had Baltar running a load off by hand and it was quite apparent that Starbuck had a bigger pair than Apollo.

Eeeeewwww...

Re:Lesson one: don't re-reboot

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry, but the Battlestar Galactica reboot was FAR superior to the original. And I say that as someone who was a huge fan of the original. It should be the textbook case for how to do a reboot right.

missed the part where i said i was referring to Caprica, did you? ugh

Re:Lesson one: don't re-reboot

[PhxBlue]

Caprica was a spinoff, not a reboot.

Re:Lesson one: don't re-reboot

[Anonymous Coward]

First two seasons were great. First few episodes of any show that has a decent story are going to be a little slow, as there is a lot of introduction for characters, settings, and plot.

Re:Lesson one: don't re-reboot

[jedidiah]

That would be the one where Baltar was reduced to a middle manager having waking wet dreams? The one where the level of tech made Baltar irrelevant despite all of his unwarranted guilt?

The one where they made their military systems extra vulnerable to computer attacks despite the fact that their last war was against robots?

The power of a Death Star main canon is nothing compared to stupidity of that magnitude.

Re:Lesson one: don't re-reboot

[hackula]

Speak for yourself. BSG was great, and DS9 was the best ST series.

Re:Lesson one: don't re-reboot

[TWiTfan]

DS9 was the best ST series

I was beginning to think I was the only one who thought that. It was the only ST series, to me, that seemed even remotely realistic. All the others were set in some bullshit socialist utopia where no one needed or wanted money; the Federation was a bunch of flawless boy scouts; greed, lust, deceit, and religion were nonexistent; and no one thought it even remotely strange that crewmen were bringing their families aboard battleships. The characters on DS9 felt much more like real human beings (and aliens).

Re:Lesson one: don't re-reboot

[flayzernax]

DS9 was the best overall. But the main villain, antagonist (what have you). Gull Ducat was so one dimensional and shallow it was very irritating to watch main story arc episodes were he basically sat there on screen and went "Mwhahahaha I'm DELUSIONAL!!! 11111!!!!111..."

Other then that it had some of the better stand alone episodes and the best character development.

Re:Lesson one: don't re-reboot

[nine-times]

Not only did they show a world beyond the federation where money and greed were still present, but they showed the seedy underbelly of the federation. The main characters sometimes engaged in unethical behavior. There was the whole deal with Bashir being genetically engineered. There were assassinations. There was section 31.

It was also one of the earliest shows of its type to frequently have multi-episode (even multi-season) plot-lines. They had a whole season where they had to flee the station and couldn't return. That show was really good.

Re:Lesson one: don't re-reboot

[Aerokii]

DS9 was the best ST series

no one thought it even remotely strange that crewmen were bringing their families aboard battleships.

I'm with you on every point but this one- there wasn't an actual Battleship in the Federation UNTIL DS9. The rest of the fleet, and most of the ships shown in the show, were vessels of discovery- for exploration, and science. They did have weapons and defensive systems of course, but it was quite rare that they'd be used pre-emptively against anyone but Borg (excluding of course during war time from DS9 and onwards.)

Otherwise, you're right on all counts.

Re:Lesson one: don't re-reboot

[ImprovOmega]

DS9 was the best ST series

I was beginning to think I was the only one who thought that. It was the only ST series, to me, that seemed even remotely realistic. All the others were set in some bullshit socialist utopia where no one needed or wanted money; the Federation was a bunch of flawless boy scouts; greed, lust, deceit, and religion were nonexistent; and no one thought it even remotely strange that crewmen were bringing their families aboard battleships. The characters on DS9 felt much more like real human beings (and aliens).

DS9 was more of a direct social commentary. The remainder of the Star Trek series are set in a post-scarcity culture. In fact one of the recurring themes in Star Trek TNG was bullshit reasons why they couldn't magic up the parts that they required. Think about it. Their power sources are orders of magnitude greater than required to sustain life functions (to the point where they convert pure energy back into mass for stupid shit like tea-cups and guitars), so anything that your neighbor has that you might want you just magic up on your home replicator or whatever. Starships have power problems only because they're limited in what they can carry on board, planet based installations wouldn't have that limitation.

So other than the occasional sociopathically imperial minded alien species, what is there to fight over in such a culture as that? Certainly most of the internal pressures are gone.

Re:Lesson one: don't re-reboot

[quacking duck]

DS9 was the best ST series

I was beginning to think I was the only one who thought that. It was the only ST series, to me, that seemed even remotely realistic. All the others were set in some bullshit socialist utopia where no one needed or wanted money; the Federation was a bunch of flawless boy scouts; greed, lust, deceit, and religion were nonexistent; and no one thought it even remotely strange that crewmen were bringing their families aboard battleships. The characters on DS9 felt much more like real human beings (and aliens).

If Gene Roddenberry had stuck with "remotely realistic", the original series wouldn't have had Japanese, Russian, and black officers (a *female* black officer, even!) on the Federation flagship. Gene Roddenberry specifically wanted to portray a human society that was more idealistic, and had left some of the "realistic" baggage behind. And despite having powerful weapons and shields, TNG's Enterprise-D was not a battleship.

As for DS9, I enjoyed watching it, but you can thank Babylon 5 for DS9's going in a direction with far grittier and more "realistic" portrayal of human and alien society, warts and all.

Re:Lesson one: don't re-reboot

[Anonymous Coward]

Next Generation was the best, because it did show a socialist utopia (how the world should be), where money was pointless (as it is), when technology can provide the basic needs and wants. It also showed that there is still a purpose of space exploration as the meaning of life instead of trying to have a bigger house than your neighbor.

Greed and religion were probably the cause of the world war that lead to the 2400's generation trying to live without them. And lust is kind of irrelevant when you have the holodeck.

Re:Lesson one: don't re-reboot

[zippthorne]

The first couple seasons were far superior, but the original at least didn't get to the point of having a disappointing and non-sensical ending.

Re:Lesson one: don't re-reboot

[WGFCrafty]

Much better than Janeway and her pilot screwing and making baby amphibians after turning into frog creatures from going warp 10'.

Re:Lesson one: don't re-reboot

[Anonymous Coward]

I tried watching Babylon 5, but couldn't get over the terrible computer-generated graphics. Maybe I'll give it another shot.

Re:Lesson one: don't re-reboot

[xstonedogx]

This speech is why DS9 is the greatest Trek.

"So... I lied. I cheated. I bribed men to cover up the crimes of other men. I am an accessory to murder. But most damning of all... I think I can live with it... And if I had to do it all over again... I would."

Re:Lesson one: don't re-reboot

[SteveFoerster]

That's true. In fairness, though, that's the worst episode ever of Voyager, rather than a representative example. It would be like judging TOS by "Spock's Brain" or TNG by "Code of Honor".

Re:Lesson one: don't re-reboot

[SteveFoerster]

Now that my eldest is a teenager we've been doing a rewatch (for me) and first thime though (for him). We got to that episode a few weeks ago. Best. Trek. Ever.

Re:Lesson one: don't re-reboot

[Pav]

The "terrible computer-generated graphics" were actually quite realistic even considering their age. They made an effort to model the effects of light in a vacuum (eg. sharp uncomplicated shadows etc...), not to mention realistic inertia etc...

Re:Lesson one: don't re-reboot

[Anonymous Coward]

...some bullshit socialist utopia where no one needed or wanted money...

This is the problem I have with people who have a problem with this aspect of Star Trek: they're quite willing to accept incredible advances in the physical sciences (transporters, replicators, warp drives, etc.), but they refuse to consider the possibility of comparably small advances in human socialisation (people being honest and altruistic a bit more reliably than they are in the present day).

Re:Lesson one: don't re-reboot

[Anonymous Coward]

I still prefer the original. The reboot started out with promise; the first few episodes were the best. But by the third season, even Galactica 1980 was favorable.

Re:Lesson one: don't re-reboot

[Anonymous Coward]

What's better is a matter of opinion. Sure, the reboot had much better production values, but I just didn't like it, and it was different enough that I don't think it should have had the same name. I did watch the whole first season, but I just wasn't interested in watching it after that.

Re:Lesson one: don't re-reboot

[Anonymous Coward]

The Enterprise in TNG wasn't a battleship. It was an science and exploration vessel. I don't see what need they would have had for money there, material needs were provided for by the replicators and living quarters were provided as part of the job. I'm sure there could have shoe-horned a money system in there, but it wasn't a natural fit for the environment.

Re:Lesson one: don't re-reboot

[Anonymous Coward]

Star Trek the original series helped to form my own morals and attitudes. Even today, I can make selfless decisions because I saw that it was possible. Kirk and Spock were very powerful role models for me.

Someone just discovered Battlestar Galactica I see

[Anonymous Coward]

Someone just discovered Battlestar Galactica I see. Old news, militaries already aware of this, nothing to see here, move along.

We must prepare for a Cylon attack!

[Anonymous Coward]

That's what you're saying, right?
Because if our enemies are human, then their chance of taking out the network is as big as taking out any other weapons system, if the network is constructed to be robust. Our enemies do not have intelligent-machine-like hacking capabilities.

Or Star Trek, Dr. Who, Terminator, or WarGames or

[a_big_favor]

What's so special about BattleStar Galactica? Why is this on /. to begin with?

Aren't we the cylons?

[Lifix]

In Battlestar Galactica, the humans are facing the Cylons technologically superior force with advanced cyberweaponry. Doesn't that make us (the USA) the Cylons? Sure China is a threat, but I haven't heard of any damage from any Chinese 'attack.' I have, however, heard of Stuxnet, which had real economic, political and technological consequences.

Re:Aren't we the cylons?

[aristotle-dude]

In Battlestar Galactica, the humans are facing the Cylons technologically superior force with advanced cyberweaponry. Doesn't that make us (the USA) the Cylons? Sure China is a threat, but I haven't heard of any damage from any Chinese 'attack.' I have, however, heard of Stuxnet, which had real economic, political and technological consequences.

I think our society mirrors the society of caprica prior the first cylon war. We might not have jump drives or VR that is as "real" but we are working on fixed wing drones that can kill without human intervention. Scary stuff. The UN is recommending a ban on autonomous drones with lethal weapons.

Re:Aren't we the cylons?

[Anonymous Coward]

The title says "what modern militaries can learn.." not what the "American military can learn...".

Re:Aren't we the cylons?

[TemporalBeing]

In Battlestar Galactica, the humans are facing the Cylons technologically superior force with advanced cyberweaponry. Doesn't that make us (the USA) the Cylons? Sure China is a threat, but I haven't heard of any damage from any Chinese 'attack.' I have, however, heard of Stuxnet, which had real economic, political and technological consequences.

I think our society mirrors the society of caprica prior the first cylon war. We might not have jump drives or VR that is as "real" but we are working on fixed wing drones that can kill without human intervention. Scary stuff. The UN is recommending a ban on autonomous drones with lethal weapons.

A ban that will never happen as long as the US or at least one other country on the Security Council think that autonomous drones with lethal capabilities are useful. (Hint: It only takes one Security Council member to veto nearly anything in the UN, especially where weapons are concerned.)

Re:Aren't we the cylons?

[Anonymous Coward]

Typical euro solution to things

Re:Aren't we the cylons?

[colinrichardday]

but I haven't heard of any damage from any Chinese 'attack.'

Not yet.

https://www.securityweek.com/military-database-us-dams-compromised-attackers-report

Re:Aren't we the cylons?

[EdZ]

And since pretty much everyone owns 'fire & forget' missiles that identify, discriminate, lock on and home into targets under on-board terminal guidance, why would anyone want to ban autonomous lethal robots? They've owned and operated them (in anger!) for decades.

Re:Aren't we the cylons?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you accidentally the episode of the series. :P

Never RELY on any one point of failure

[TWiTfan]

Any one point of failure that can render your entire force useless is a problem. A network should be treated as an AID to military forces, not a necessity. Soldiers should, of course, know how to still function if it goes down.

Re:Never RELY on any one point of failure

[flayzernax]

Also those networks should be redundant and decentralized this way its harder to take down an entire network. Even if its treated as only an aid, the side with the aid may have a distinct advantage over the side without. This is were having your network consist of many technologies and generations of hardware is nice. One shouldn't phase out old hardware that still works just because its "obsolete" falling back to networks of short wave radio's when your satellites and drop ships get knocked out of the sky means you are not out of the fight just yet.

Anyway as far as technical set up the BSG series demonstrates a winning scenario spot on. The Russians did well in this regard and some of their old tanks still work just fine enough to be a problem in places like Syria.

Re:Never RELY on any one point of failure

[PolygamousRanchKid]

. Soldiers should, of course, know how to still function if it goes down.

. . . and more importantly, commanders. Von Clausewitz wrote the importance of not relying on information and command chain systems. From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Von_Clausewitz :

While Clausewitz was intensely aware of the value of intelligence at all levels, he was also very skeptical of the accuracy of much military intelligence: "Many intelligence reports in war are contradictory; even more are false, and most are uncertain.... In short, most intelligence is false." This circumstance is generally described as the fog of war. Such skeptical comments apply only to intelligence at the tactical and operational levels; at the strategic and political levels he constantly stressed the requirement for the best possible understanding of what today would be called strategic and political intelligence. His conclusions were influenced by his experiences in the Prussian Army, which was often in an intelligence fog due partly to the superior abilities of Napoleon's system but even more to the nature of war. Clausewitz acknowledges that friction creates enormous difficulties for the realization of any plan, and the fog of war hinders commanders from knowing what is happening. It is precisely in the context of this challenge that he develops the concept of military genius, whose capabilities are seen above all in the execution of operations.

So you need an army where units can function independently. Even if you have a great military plan: "No campaign plan survives first contact with the enemy".

Not really new thinking, at all.

Re:Never RELY on any one point of failure

[Pope]

OK, but what happens when the Borg Cube goes up against the Death Star? What then?!

Re:Never RELY on any one point of failure

[SuiteSisterMary]

Soldier: Holy shit, the enemy is infiltrating our network wirelessly and shutting down our shit!

Commander: Soldier, initiate contingency plan 'unplug the fucking AP'.

Soldier: Yes sir, unplugging the AP now.

Cylons: Well, shit. Oh well, kinetic bombardment doesn't need a willing receiver.

Reciprocity.

[Shoten]

What's strange about the whole concept of Battlestar Galactica and the nature of the attack by the Cylons is how one-sided it was. The humans seemed to have an awareness of what cyber warfare is (they reference firewalls and viruses in the series), yet they never seemed to develop any more than a rudimentary defensive capability (CND, in military parlance) and no intelligence or attack capabilities (CNE and CNA) whatsoever. This, despite the fact that their adversary was entirely cybernetic in nature. Um...yeah, no, I don't buy it. Makes for a good story device, yes (and I loved the series), but I don't buy it as actually realistic. Think about the long-distance communication needed for resurrection, for example...WOW. Get access via that, and think of the incredible damage you could do to Cylons...heck, just a denial of service attack would drastically alter the priorities of an attacking Cylon force, since their losses would be magnified in significance.

Re:Reciprocity.

[twotacocombo]

This was at least partially explained by the Cylon's disappearance for decades. How do you build systems to fight and defend against an enemy you haven't seen in 40 years, but who have also infiltrated your society and military? They know your weaknesses while you can only guess at theirs, with zero time to adapt due to the surprise assaults.

Re:Reciprocity.

[Anonymous Coward]

Obviously the "lesson" from Battlestar Galactica isn't about cyber-anything. It's about not fighting your enemy where he dominates. The premise of Battlestar Galactica is that human network defenses are child's play for the Cylons. That's why the only working defense is one which doesn't rely on networks. It could be anything else, whatever the enemy has superiority in.

Re:Reciprocity.

[BitZtream]

Did you watch the series?

Long distances mean no resurection. Destroy the resurrection ship, and they suddenly fear death.

It was done.

Re:Reciprocity.

[gorzek]

They were screwed because the enemy had thoroughly infiltrated the operating system that powered all of their (current-gen) ships. If not for that, it could have actually been a fight, rather than a slaughter.

Re:Reciprocity.

[TWiTfan]

I think the point of the opening miniseries was that humans had become complacent in their defenses, since they hadn't even seen any Cylons for 40 years. And in those 40 years, the cylons had advanced far beyond what humans ever expected them to.

And during the course of the series, they did develop some defenses (discovering/attacking Resurrection ships and adapting the cylon virus to use as a weapon themselves, for example). But it's hard to do a lot of R&D when you're running for your lives and just trying to survive most of the time.

Re:Reciprocity.

[Shoten]

This was at least partially explained by the Cylon's disappearance for decades. How do you build systems to fight and defend against an enemy you haven't seen in 40 years, but who have also infiltrated your society and military? They know your weaknesses while you can only guess at theirs, with zero time to adapt due to the surprise assaults.

An excellent question, and I'm glad you asked it. Simply...the way the Cylons did with humans. You aren't at war with them, but that doesn't mean you go totally off the grid as far as the other is concerned. This, too, is an inaccuracy of what an armistice looks like. North and South Korea skirmish, raid, and spy. NATO and Warsaw Pact...same thing. In this case, it'd be easier for the humans, because again, CNE is incredibly effective against an opponent that is entirely electronic in nature and 100% networked, down to every last entity. If you're barely at peace with someone that you just fought a horrifyingly intense war with, the last thing you want to do is STOP WATCHING THEM.

Re:Reciprocity.

[l0ungeb0y]

Moreover, there was the episode where the Cylons were dying of an encephalitis virus which was incurable and had a 100% fatality rate and which was so virulent, that it would infect the resurrection ship if any victims resurrected since it would be carried over.

Lee Adama put 2 and 2 together and hatched a plan to commit genocide against the Cylons, but Helo "Goody-Twoshoes" Agathon killed the captive Cylon victims before they could carry out the plan.

What I want to know is why Agathon was not blown out an airlock for that piece of mutiny that resulted in casualties against the humans due to an aborted attack.

Re:Reciprocity.

[etash]

because if they did airlock him right then, the cylons would have been destroyed and the series would have practically ended. SO SAY WE ALL!

Re:Reciprocity.

[nine-times]

I think the concept was that the Cylons were just so technologically superior that technological attacks were futile. You might say that's unrealistic, but we're talking about monster space robots, so...

Re:Reciprocity.

[bigpat]

I think this lesson about keeping your friends close and your enemies closer is a good one. Having absolutely no idea what your potential adversary is up to for such a long time is a very bad place to be.

Re:Reciprocity.

[sammy baby]

They do actually address this in a couple of episodes. Part of the explanation of the retrograde technology on board the Galactica is that the Cylons were just so much better at cyberwarfare that the colonists essentially ceded that field - all computer systems were isolated so that even should one be compromised, it could not be used to stage attacks on other systems. There was a good deal of hocus-pocus involved, but at least there was an effort to explain it.

Re:Reciprocity.

[Anonymous Coward]

Much like Picard and Freddy the Borg (or whatever) episode...I guess the Borg quickly became immune to being shown "objects that cannot physically exist in three-dimensional space.." (or whatnot) LOL

Re:Reciprocity.

[girlintraining]

The humans seemed to have an awareness of what cyber warfare is (they reference firewalls and viruses in the series), yet they never seemed to develop any more than a rudimentary defensive capability (CND, in military parlance) and no intelligence or attack capabilities (CNE and CNA) whatsoever. This, despite the fact that their adversary was entirely cybernetic in nature. Um...yeah, no, I don't buy it.

40 years ago, the internet didn't exist. 40 years before that, we were riding around in street cars in our cities. And 40 years before that, electricity was the providence of a few guys in lab coats. Technological progress is exponential.

You think, in a future where they have faster than light jump drives, self-aware and self-learning artificial intelligence, etc., that the compounded exponential rate of change between an adversary that has reaction times in the fractions of a nanosecond, would find our primitive meat sacks to even be worth conquering? Please. The only reason they'd have any interest at all in humans would be for the raw materials of the planets they occupy.

The idea that humans would even have a chance is laughably pathetic. We've gotten used to the idea of our own superiority. I suspect, in the distant future, when we give birth to a new form of life, that smug arrogance will mean our end; We'll try and fight.

And we'll lose.

Re:Reciprocity.

[Anonymous Coward]

Because humanity that's why.

If humans were to commit xenocide, we would be the villains. It's the entire theme of Ender's game.

History also teaches

[Anonymous Coward]

What was stated is potentially true, but real history also teaches us lessons.
One of the reasons Japan and Germany were sometimes tactically frozen is their rigid command system and the soldiers mentality that they couldn't (shouldn't?) act on their own. We train our troops, lower level officers and non-com's to seize tactical advantages but not to be too aggressive and put their troops in danger. We should be training for reaction to events like loss of communications, gps, and other technical advantages. We should also be training for command scenarios that offer some advantages when those things occur.

Re:History also teaches

[Zedrick]

> Germany were sometimes tactically frozen is their rigid command system

Huh? Ever heard of kampfgruppe? Germany probably had the least rigid command system of all WW2 participants, unless you count various partisan groups.

Or did you mean Japan and the Soviets?

Re:History also teaches

[SuiteSisterMary]

I think (assume? Hope?) he meant Japan and Russia. Germany, as you say, was known for encouraging and rewarding tactical initiative. In Russia, doing that would get you shot (even if it worked) and in Japan, it simply didn't occur to anybody.

Re:History also teaches

[Anonymous Coward]

He's probably referencing that German generals in the field were constrained in their strategic moves by Hitler and the generals he had on-leash at military headquarters, especially when things started to go sour. Hitler was infamous for his "no retreat" mantra, his inability to bow to military reality when "prestige" targets were in sight (the oil fields of the Caucuses, Stalingrad, the Kursk bulge) and his fondness for "fortress cities". More than once his blunders prevented orderly German retreats that would have allowed the Eastern front forces, especially Army Group Centre, to most likely avoid collapse in 1944.

Good for us he did, of course, or the war probably would have gone on longer, although the border between the future Communist and non-Communist worlds would've been drawn further East.

Jump into a plan before you actually figure out...

[Anonymous Coward]

...how shitty and pointless the end game might be.

Looking back instead - Wargames, from 1983

[G3ckoG33k]

This is not very new:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0086567/?ref_=ttqt_qt_tt

"a back door into a military central computer in which reality is confused with game-playing, possibly starting World War III"

So where is the news, except the setting?

Re:I don't think you want me to answer that

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, because if you're in a firefight, you sure as hell don't want Starbuck backing you up. She's only the best pilot in the fleet.

Punch your commanding officers

[Anonymous Coward]

BG teaches us that fighting with your superior officers is a good way to "get things done".

Make sure to break every conventional rule of military discipline! Everybody will respect your rebellious attitude, and promotions will follow.

Re:Punch your commanding officers

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm pretty sure Starbuck never got a promotion. They did throw her in the brig a few times though.

Re:Punch your commanding officers

[Anonymous Coward]

From wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kara_Thrace

Soon after returning from the planet Kobol, the Battlestar Pegasus, commanded by Rear Admiral Helena Cain, is discovered. Cain promotes Starbuck to Captain and assigns her as the CAG of the Pegasus.

Ridiculous

[Grashnak]

Modern war - that is, every war the US has fought in the last decade, has been fought largely by infantrymen, light armor and close air support. All of which function just fine without a networked environment.

Maybe you learn the difference between sci fi and reality.

Re:Ridiculous

[fredprado]

Sure they do, with each unit deciding to do whatever it sees fit because there is no chain of command, while the enemy is doing coordinated attacks.

There is a motive for the military to use those nice computers and network infrastructure they have, my good sir, and if you want a hint it it is not as paperweight.

Only sheer ignorance can justify your failure to give the due importance to communication and information acquisition in any military conflict.

Re:Ridiculous

[twotacocombo]

Infantry, light armor, and air support are ALL networked these days. Do you think they still relay intel by semaphore?

Re:Ridiculous

[Anonymous Coward]

How do you expect to get close air support without communication (and thus network) ?

Re:Ridiculous

[Anonymous Coward]

As if none of these elements have to communicate with the other? And as if these communication elements are not becoming more and more network-centric?

Re:Ridiculous

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, the elements that you named still rely heavily on computer networks. Assuming that our digital/satellite communications abilities are disabled that leaves line of sight radio. Those relay's would take time to set up. The battlefield picture for the commanders would drop significantly as GPS is disabled. Weapons platforms would either fail or be inoperable. So I think that those elements would eventually adapt to the lack of computer networks there would be a time when they have to rely on older technology and the C3I capabilities would be reduced significantly.

Re:Ridiculous

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe not... but they still CAN if necessary!

Re:Ridiculous

[Minwee]

How do you expect to get close air support without communication (and thus network) ?

According to every movie I have ever seen about the Vietnam war, the best way is to have your newly appointed Lieutenant shout his own map coordinates at a hand cranked radio and hope that the pilots will figure out what he meant.

Re:Ridiculous

[Chris Mattern]

Modern war - that is, every war the US has fought in the last decade, has been fought largely by infantrymen, light armor and close air support.

I guess close air support must work by telepathy.

In any case, every war the US has fought in the last decade has been fought largely by infantrymen, etc., because each has been an asymmetric conflict, where the main difficulty is locating and identifying the enemy while avoiding ambush. Command and control (i.e., networking) is more critical in this kind of anti-insurgent fighting than in almost anything else you can name.

Re:Ridiculous

[Chris Mattern]

Infantry, and even light armor, perhaps. Close air support, not so much. The technical term for close air support that's not in proper communication with the ground troops is "friendly fire."

Re:Ridiculous

[bkmoore]

True, a lot of people on /. seem to be confusing StarCraft for real command and control. If the network all went down, it wouldn't make a huge difference, at least at the Battalion level or below. We'd all just pull out our laminated maps and grease markers and keep on executing the mission. Almost all communication is encrypted radio anyway. Most Computers in the military are used for doing inane things such as making PowerPoint slides. In that sense, loss of computing might be a tactical advantage.

Re:Ridiculous

[Anonymous Coward]

It depends what echelon of intell you are talking about. Down at the company or platoon level, most of the battlefield information would be disseminated by radio, field phone, or messenger. Back at headquarters, at all levels, there is still keep a hardcopy map of with the current situation overlaid. That map may not get updated quite as often at the computerized map, but it is still there if the network goes down, etc.

Re:Ridiculous

[bkmoore]

They are not networked, or at least on the same one. The problem with the networked battle field is it creates the illusion of perfect situational awareness. Throw in inoperable equipment, poor communication, failure to follow procedures, and you have the raw ingredients for a good-old-fashoned blue-on-blue incident.

Re:Ridiculous

[T-Bone-T]

Yes, they are networked. In Afghanistan, right now, there is probably a soldier on the ground looking through the Sniper Pod on a B-1 above him/her to help the B-1 take out bad guys.

Re:Ridiculous

[Anonymous Coward]

Just to chime in to this discussion the network and overall tracking of situational awareness matters much more to headquarters then it does to platoon who still need to use their eyes to ensure they're not blowing up the wrong targets.

Re:Ridiculous

[k6mfw]

infantrymen, light armor and close air support. All of which function just fine without a networked environment.

And have good interaction but not too much interservice rivalry. I imagine military leaders constantly study and exercise this trying to identify foibles that can cripple an entire force. There's lots of examples since beginning of time of what worked and what didn't work.

There was a documentary which the factious comment,
Navy says you cannot win the next war unless you command the seas.
Air Force says you cannot win the next war unless you command the skies.
Army says you cannot win the next war unless you have ground forces in command.
Marines say, "We don't care how the next war is won but it can't be done without an amphibous landing!"

Re:Ridiculous

[bkmoore]

Yes, if he has a ROVER System, which is a laptop connected to a radio. It's not a networked computer and requires line-of-sight with the aircraft to function. In the mountains this can be difficult. The last time I touched one was in 2009. They might be smaller, lighter now, but back then it was at best semi-portable. My point is all these systems, ROVER, JTIDS, BFT, DCS, etc. are all independent systems, and they do not talk to each other. My knowledge might be out of date, but that was the stand in 2009.

Re:Or Star Trek, Dr. Who, Terminator, or WarGames

[Nyder]

What's so special about BattleStar Galactica? Why is this on /. to begin with?

It's covered under the Nerds part. Why are you on this site again?

Just like copy protection/DRM schemes

[kheldan]

What one man or team can create, another man or team can break, usually faster, easier, and cheaper than it took to create in the first place. That's the lesson learned from the copy protection/DRM wars, yes? With exceptions, of course; some forms of encryption are difficult to break, and are getting harder to break all the time.

Remember to.

[Anonymous Coward]

Set the giggers to pulse when you do abandon your craft to look for a lost comrade.

Hard ware Network Kill switches

[gurps_npc]

When facing an enemy whose ability to infiltrate your IT network far exceeds yours to keep them out you should: 1) Only network equipment that actually needs to be networked together. As in targeting system with weapon. 2) Create no physical links at all between systems that don't need to be networked together. 3) Honeypot them into a virtual trap.. (Never understood why they never tried this in Galactica). You want them THINK they have compromised your system, especially whey they have not.

Re:Hard ware Network Kill switches

[Anonymous Coward]

When facing an enemy whose ability to infiltrate your IT network far exceeds yours to keep them out you have allready lost that battle. try unplugging them and killing the enemy instead. It does tend to negate their advantage.

Just stop invading other countries...

[Anonymous Coward]

That's all the US military needs to learn.

Re:Just stop invading other countries...

[Anonymous Coward]

Invading other countries is good now, you racist.

Re:Just stop invading other countries...

[Anonymous Coward]

The military doesn't decide that. Supposed to be Congress, but the Presidents have figured out a few ways.

Re:Or Star Trek, Dr. Who, Terminator, or WarGames

[TWiTfan]

Batlestar Galactica not relevant on /. ?

Hi, you must be new here.

Re:Or Star Trek, Dr. Who, Terminator, or WarGames

[a_big_favor]

What's so special about BattleStar Galactica? Why is this on /. to begin with?

It's covered under the Nerds part. Why are you on this site again?

I like those shows I just see very little to do with that particular show in the article other than OMG AI which is about all the article is, which is very uninteresting.

Modern warfare is not a video game

[Anonymous Coward]

No matter how much you want to pretend it is.

Yeah...

[glwtta]

TV computer systems and "viruses" have very little in common with real-world computer systems and viruses.

Contingency planning

[GodfatherofSoul]

That's all our military does in peace time. They even develop contingency plans *for* their contingency plans. Hell, even the CDC has a contingency plan for zombies!

But maybe the enemy is running Windows XP

[Megahard]

So we can send Jeff Goldblum up to their mothership and infect them with a virus.

Re:But maybe the enemy is running Windows XP

[TWiTfan]

Be sure to bring a Mac though. Aliens don't use Windows.

Re:But maybe the enemy is running Windows XP

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, according to one quick scene, the CYLONs were actually using windows. (or at least, the production crew was and a modal box popped up on a Cylon terminal)

I don't know...

[Chessucat]

... mayhaps the Navy could learn to design hatches to make a cricket sound when opened?!?

Re:Someone just discovered Battlestar Galactica I

[Zedrick]

> Someone just discovered Battlestar Galactica I see

If that's true, I envy them. I'm currently watching BSG (the remake series, sorry puritans) for the 5th time.

Three cyclons per spaceship is a waste!

[Anonymous Coward]

Can you please tell me why it took 1 gold Cylon and 2 silver Cylons to fly one single ship? That seems like such a waste.

Re:Three cyclons per spaceship is a waste!

[TWiTfan]

In the new series, the ships WERE individual cylons. Made a lot more sense than the original.

Re:Three cyclons per spaceship is a waste!

[Anonymous Coward]

It took three cylons to fly a single ship because that's exactly how many cylon costumes they had.

Also, because it looked really cool.

Re:Three cyclons per spaceship is a waste!

[jedidiah]

When you can churn them out like sausages, you might not be so concerned about the wasteful aspects of the situation. Just make 500 more and throw them at the enemy.

Although it would make sense to make systems redundant whether that's at the pilot level or within the pilot itself.

ITS A TV SHOW, the cylons should have won

[alen]

the whole point of tech in the military is to shorten the decision making cycle. most times you don't know where the enemy is, so you have scouts looking for him. once they sight the enemy it has to be reported to the highest levels command so that the general and everyone below him has a clear picture of the battle.

in the old days it was done by radio and scouts on feet and wheels. now its done by drones, cameras and the data is networked to everyone. this allows you to make decisions where to attack faster.

since the humans in BSG were so far behind the cylons technologically, they should have been exterminated in the first few episodes. but you need lots of episodes to make money and the good guys to win to make people watch

scientifically it was a dumb show. robots using eyes instead of heat, sonar, radar and other sensors to find humans hiding on the planet and out in space

Re:ITS A TV SHOW, the cylons should have won

[colinrichardday]

in the old days it was done by radio

So that's how Wellington defeated Napoleon at Waterloo.

Re:ITS A TV SHOW, the cylons should have won

[Anonymous Coward]

No, he used Prussians and Poles

What is this pseudo-intellectual bullshit?

[siddesu]

Foreign policy discusses Syria from a Startrek perspective, now military "learning lessons" from a dumb TV show. WTF? How about a reality check -- what could you have "learned" from a Hollywood disaster movie that would have helped you survive the Japan 2011 tsunami?

Go ahead, slashdotters, make an experiment. Rent a movie or two and then watch the real thing on the youtubes and tell me honestly what the fuck could you have learned from the movies to help you escape the disaster? Well, that one's easy -- absolutely nothing. Because what Hollywood imagined isn't anything like the real thing.

Sci-fi shows are entertainment, and they don't teach "lessons", just help you kill time.

The argument suffers a bit for referencing fiction

[Karmashock]

I completely agree with the premise that you want to design weapons platforms from the ground up assuming a broad spectrum of threats. Be those direct physical attacks or more subtle network intrusions.

War.

What will one human mind do to overcome the machinations of another hostile human mind? Anything. Everything.

Be prepared for anything. Biological. Nuclear. Chemical. Hackers. Sexy honey pot assassins. Everything is on the table.

Let your guard down anywhere and you've told the enemy how to kill you.

Re:Or Star Trek, Dr. Who, Terminator, or WarGames

[Bacon Bits]

I don't think the basic premise of BattleStar Galactica is particularly nerdy. Sci-Fi is full of technological over-reliance causing apocalyptic disasters when it fails. I don't think it's something nerds would talk about as a BattleStar-centric theme. I mean, Dr. Strangelove is a far better example of the theme, as is Forbidden Planet. Heck, even Frankenstein is arguably a better example of the theme, although the consequences of Dr. Frankenstein's experiments were not as destructive. Seriously, what makes Battlestar Galactica more appropriate for this idea than Mad Max, or, hell, The Dark Knight Returns comic?

It's kind of like using the Star Wars movies in particular for how military and political forces can be manipulated into electing a dictator as leader. Yes, that happens in the movies, but it's not a particularly unique story element of the series, nor is the series a particularly good example of it. How the Cylons attack is essentially background information about the setting. It could just have easily been that Cylon agents had been able to infiltrate all active starships, but they neglected to consider the BattleStar Galactica because she was decommissioned and being converted into an inactive museum ship.

Centralized systems

[Xeno-Root]

I don't see so much of a problem in having networked systems, since networked doesn't necessarily mean centralized.

Most sci-fi and action movie plots involving networks out there show an attacker going after a centralized system. They are assumed not to have enough resources to go after multiple independent systems. I've seen countless films where an alien force attacks us, we don't have any chance of winning, but then someone notices that the aliens depend on a central system. We defeat that system and win. Heck, sometimes it goes so far as having all attackers die on their own after their mothership is destroyed.

I guess most first-class military strategists understand the danger of having centralized command-and-control systems. I don't think we must give up networks. Cylons in Battlestar Galatica were essentially machines. They had optical fiber running to their nervous systems, and their minds could be linked to computers directly. Not having so many interconnected systems with such an enemy was a very sensible choice for them. Not so much for us as we generally need to defend only from other humans.

There's a bigger conceit

[AdamHaun]

The bigger conceit in Battlestar: Galactica and many other TV shows is that any computer or networked system can be *always* hacked in an *arbitrarily short amount of time* if the plot demands it. For dramatic purposes, computers are stationary targets.

Re:There's a bigger conceit

[0123456]

Just like encryption will always be broken a few seconds before the plaintext is required.

Actually,

[Minwee]

Since the Cylons were able to dominate the colonial computer networks because they manufactured most of the key parts, wasn't the lesson of Battlestar Galactica more like "Hey, maybe it might not be such a good idea to outsource production of all of your really important defense stuff to the people you are going to use it to defend yourself against?"

Re:Actually,

[colinrichardday]

Maybe the Belgians shouldn't have ordered the heavy guns for Liege from Krupp (although that was more a case of nondelivery).

joshua

[Anonymous Coward]

do you want to play a game?

So maybe the title of the submission should be

[93 Escort Wagon]

"What Modern Militaries Can Learn from Science-Fiction Television Show Writers"

It wouldn't have been any less sophomoric - just more accurate regarding the point being proposed.

Fact: Bears eat beets.

[Anonymous Coward]

Bears, beets, Battlestar Galactica.

Re:Or Star Trek, Dr. Who, Terminator, or WarGames

[jedidiah]

> It could just have easily been that Cylon agents had been able to infiltrate all active starships, but they neglected to consider the BattleStar Galactica because she was decommissioned and being converted into an inactive museum ship.

BATTLESHIP!

Now that's a comparison that the neo-galactica fans won't like.

Although the "infiltration" bit overlooks the problem of only having a small number of physical variations. How can you actually infiltrate like that? It's bound to get noticed.

What I learned from BSG

[OglinTatas]

Always do it doggy-style the first time.

Re:What I learned from BSG

[Anonymous Coward]

If her spine is glowing, it's time to get going....

Re:What I learned from BSG

[Anonymous Coward]

Speaking of which, the Cylons started their campaign with a hot-blonde-attack which definitely belongs in the category of social engineering attacks.

Next up on Slashdot....

[Lumpy]

What Congress can learn from Watching PokeMon Cartoons....

Re:Next up on Slashdot....

[VortexCortex]

What Congress can learn from Watching PokeMon Cartoons....

Always repeat your name as often as possible so you're more likely to get chosen.

NEXT!

Fear of smart computers

[phorm]

It seems partly due to humanity developing a fear of smart computers, or AI.

While no doubt some level of computer automation is needed, it would stand somewhat to reason that they might not have anything too advanced because fear of higher-computing technology (basically a worry that it would end up something like Cylons again).

It wasn't the networks, it was OUTER SPACE

[Gothmolly]

Unlike robot Cylons, humans can't live in outer space without an absurd amount of technical automation. The same argument can be made if you replace 'networks' and 'computers' with 'air'.

-1, Stupid Article

Are You Fing Kidding Me?

[Anonymous Coward]

I used to watched Battlestar Galactica and laugh at the stupid things like successive fire walls used as a defense against a cylon attack, as if they were physical walls the enemy had to get through. If an enemy can completely take out one of your firewalls they could take the rest out in seconds, unless each one is designed with different hardware, firmware and security algorithms. complete crap!

Squadron of F-22's Lost Crossing the Date Line

[Cassini2]

While attempting its first overseas deployment to the Kadena Air Base in Okinawa, Japan, on 11 February 2007, six F-22s of 27th Fighter Squadron flying from Hickam AFB, Hawaii, experienced multiple system failures while crossing the International Date Line (or 180th meridian of longitude) caused by software errors.[230][231][232] The fighters were able to return to Hawaii by following tanker aircraft.

From wikipedia. The references are:
230 "F-22 Squadron Shot Down by the International Date Line." Defense Industry Daily, 1 March 2007. Retrieved: 31 August 2011.
231 "This Week at War". CNN, 24 February 2007.
232 Johnson, Maj. Dani. "Raptors arrive at Kadena." US Air Force, 19 February 2007. Retrieved: 9 May 2010.

Re:Squadron of F-22's Lost Crossing the Date Line

[YrWrstNtmr]

The tanker was there anyway. it also had to return to Hickam with the F-22's to tank them on the way.
The software glitch was a one time thing, in a brand new aircraft. Fixed within 36 hours.

But yes. Let's continue the theme that the pilots suck, the aircraft are useless, and up until recent times, each and every deployment (be it people or a new machine) went perfectly.

Re:Squadron of F-22's Lost Crossing the Date Line

[Anonymous Coward]

But still, the software error was not thought out ahead of time, good programing? Or bad raptor? Could not reset the aircraft in flight? Unable to reboot the aircraft in flight, what happens in an emp, the acft flies to the last waypoint? No problems here, look over there....see no problem? Come now, the average pilot, in training should know basic navigation, just as the basic sailor should. But these people can see no problem?

Re:Squadron of F-22's Lost Crossing the Date Line

[stymy]

The point is that if the computers on a modern military plane go down, so does the plane (or at least becomes useless in combat and a sitting duck).

Idea #32504

[Anonymous Coward]

One advantage the U.S. military had in WWII (The Big One) was that, when cut off, low-level units could operate effectively, because American society was not as hierarchical as the German and Japanese societies.
Such redundancy should be built into any network.

Re:Someone just discovered Battlestar Galactica I

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

Damn! Someone, maybe a military research project group, should invent a robust networking system resistant to outages and automatically rerouting through many other connections. It could connect various military networks, and if any site goes down due to a bomb, rerouting is instantaneous.

Re:I don't think you want me to answer that

[Anonymous Coward]

...and worst military officer. Her emotional problems made her a threat to herself and others. Starbuck was a liability to the fleet's security which far outweighed her ability to blow up Raiders at a slightly above average rate.

Re:Someone just discovered Battlestar Galactica I

[k6mfw]

Somewhat surprised to see such an article years after BSG remake was shown. My impression of first episode was I thought if we were to go into major war with one of our major business partners, our forces probably suffer something like this. Regarding the show, Galactica survived and was able to carry out counter attacks because Adama is an old guy sticking with archaic systems, you know those DEC computers and Mocom-70 2-way radios are tough stuff! None of it is networked and hardware itself is housed in solid steel containers.

When all seems lost

[Anonymous Coward]

Pray and believe that God will send angels to protect you.
And hope they make your clothes white and light-gray, because that's a cool effect.

Okay, that's one down, two to go.

[VortexCortex]

So that covers Battlestar Galactica; What of Beets, and Bears?

But....

[meglon]

Hmm... i thought the lesson to be learned was being about to take a broadside of nukes with minimal damage was good.... and that Gracie Park is just damn hot (and you can never, NEVER, have enough copies of her).

Never Underestimate 'em

[Molochi]

Never underestimate the bandwidth of a fleet moped riders wearing backpacks full of flashdrives.

Back in my day it took tapes and stationwagons

Re:Never Underestimate 'em

[DMoylan]

some scooters are more dangerous than others :-)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vespa_150_TAP

Re:Never Underestimate 'em

[Molochi]

That needs to be used (as not intended) in a movie.

It is Called Contingency Planning

[Anonymous Coward]

I spent 20+ years training for a broad range of scenarios involving "what ifs" that included failures of every piece of tech for a wide range of reasons. We are not at the point yet where institutional memory of old tech, from the "mark 1 eyeball" for shooting to semaphore and mirrors for communications, as a matter of routine has disappeared but we will reach that point someday. Training & preparation for a broad range of scenarios are the real difference between a first class military and one meant for parades. The improved battlefield mobility of the modern era has largely replaced the apparent necessity of infantry marching into combat but NATO armies didn't stop long marches as a matter of training & routine and that served them well in Afghanistan. Well trained & well led soldiers can handle losing the support of the range of battlefield technologies but the same thing has to be true of their logistics services as well as those in higher levels of command. I do know of logistics exercises that modeled the loss or failure of the computers that are essential to the smooth operation of military logistical operations: lower echelons had an easier time than higher up the chain. High command is where the real issues will arise as those ostensibly directing operations may not be prepared to lose all their high tech theatre or world wide C&C technology.

The greater the distance between the mud & blood the more difficult it is to operate without this magical high tech gear. When I was a lowly private working up the ranks I was fortunate in that leadership made sure we trained for a wide range of contingencies. As I moved up the chain I made sure that the growing numbers over whom I had some responsibility learned how to operate under adverse conditions. When I was commissioned I made sure that those under my command could be effective without all the bells and whistles functioning, something only one officer under whom I served believed was a waste of time. It is becoming more important that those coming into the military at this point be drilled in some basics which they likely have no idea exist having grown up in this era. Like being able to take a pencil & paper and do long division there are many "retro" things that people passing out of the military now can do as a matter of course that must be passed on. Land navigation with a compass seems daunting to most of the incoming ranks but it was the only option until a relatively short time ago. Plotting artillery without the convenience of GPS isn't easy but it is an essential skill that a few think unnecessary when they believe their screens will never be blank.

woot woot

[hesaigo999ca]

I always knew that many ideas in real life came from the sci fi of yerteryear.... this one is no different.... in future when networked pcs will be at risk due to that exact reasoning, the only thing to do is to run it locally without interference. We could list so many examples of such cases, but the best is having a pc that takes care of a nuclear reactor, that also has been used to surf the web and look at emails.... doh!

Re:Someone just discovered Battlestar Galactica I

[Anonymous Coward]

Old news, militaries already aware of this

Predator drones have been taken down by forging gps data (wasn't it the navigation systems that the Cylons broke into in episode 1?) and they've been broadcasting unencrypted video streams. The latter vulnerability discovered by people otherwise known for living in the stone-age. I don't think our military has thought through network vulnerabilities as much as they should.

Drones are just in the news (and front lines) a lot, but other portions of the military have their share of network vulnerabilities. Warfare against a technologically advanced enemy, might be messier than our military has thought through.

This should compound it: China stealing our tech

[JTsyo]

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-05-01/china-cyberspies-outwit-u-s-stealing-military-secrets.html

Don't know about you...

[Adam Appel]

I found that Battlestar writers to be utterly ignorant to military issues from big to small. They may have had some consultants early on, but they either didn't ask them questions or ignored to what they were told past the first 4 openers. And those first shows you had to get past this network issue that seemed a massive exchange of Easy for Security. For me it often blew my suspension of disbelief. Nobody top to bottom acted as though they were in a war that held a zero survivability outcome. I couldn't believe what I was seeing for planing of military ops. Of course the other option in a story about a technology advanced race battling is a show that lasts 10 minutes with a Struss-ian outcome via some sort of gravity bomb deployed to the starts of the inhabited worlds. Anyway.

Already working that

[1369IC]

The Army's already working things to work in GPS-denied environments. Here's a story. Full disclosure, I work at the Army's R&D command.

Re:Already working that

[budgenator]

Well be careful the grunts have enough shit to hump, now if they take a round in the rucksack, the battery fire is liable to kill half the squad.

** SPOILER ALERT ** geeze

[flibbidyfloo]

Label your spoilers next time :) Maybe not every nerd here knows how it all started.

Uh ...

[wylderide]

... This is a show where they hooked two computers together WITH CABLES and the Cylons were instantly able to start hacking into it, because apparently that's how cables work. There's nothing to learn here.

Re:Or Star Trek, Dr. Who, Terminator, or WarGames

[Anonymous Coward]

Nyder, we've discussed this before. Your job is to keep the mutos in the DMZ and keep the military fighting the Thals. For your own sake, stop fraternizing with the scientists, or you might get used in the next fighting machine demo. That is all.

Re:Or Star Trek, Dr. Who, Terminator, or WarGames

[Bacon Bits]

> It could just have easily been that Cylon agents had been able to infiltrate all active starships, but they neglected to consider the BattleStar Galactica because she was decommissioned and being converted into an inactive museum ship.

BATTLESHIP!

Now that's a comparison that the neo-galactica fans won't like.

Although the "infiltration" bit overlooks the problem of only having a small number of physical variations. How can you actually infiltrate like that? It's bound to get noticed.

Thank you for providing such an accurate example of the kinds of things nerds would discuss about BattleStar Galactica.

Re: what? (smart bombs)

[WillAffleckUW]

More worrying, what about instead of taking out satellites and drone control towers, an enemy takes over them with a virus.

Sure the average foot soldier might not use or encounter very many networked devices. But what if the guidance system in every smart bomb was redirected back at our own troops, ever Predator drone was reprogrammed to search and destroy all humans.

Nice fiction. Actually, what you think of as smart bombs are actually very cheap bombs that just have a cheap add on to improve targetting.

They still drop and explode. It's called gravity. And that's what sets them off - contact with the ground.

To disable the stealth bomber, you'd have to get thru the shielding, and if the bomb loses GPS it keeps on last known trajectory.

(based on my old Boeing mil side work)

Re: what? (smart bombs)

[wisnoskij]

"and if the bomb loses GPS it keeps on last known trajectory."
And that was the point of my post. It is completely reasonable to assume that the military has measure in place to deal with some of their network going down. If the bomb loses its GPS guidance, it is easy enough to spot and do whatever best practice is. But that smart bomb is not going to spot a GPS that is being hacked or interfered with to output wrong information.

Re: what? (smart bombs)

[WillAffleckUW]

You assume we use the same satellites you use. Most circuitry uses a wider bandwidth, and error correction protocols for authentication which we don't tell you about. We are just not jamming (adding in a fuzzy offset) the original source signal as we used to, but we do use other signals to authenticate that they are the correct ones, and we usually get at least 5 signals, not the 3 you use, to target. If one goes off, we ignore it.

(caveat - that I will admit in public, that is)

Re: what? (smart bombs)

[wisnoskij]

Which assume that it is impossible to hack 5 satellites, or that it is impossible to hack a GPS with control of one of the satellites it connects to.

Re: what? (smart bombs)

[WillAffleckUW]

Again, nobody said we told you which ones they are, or how we 'read' their signals.

Pretty much, though, you're wasting your time. The exposure period where you could hack them is fairly short and random and it's not like they are complicated devices. We don't tend to do massive ops, if you look historically, except against nation states for brief early periods. You'd have to know when and where and why and how - and if you knew that, we most likely would have lost a long time ago.

It took decades before people even knew about some of the systems from the 80s and you only now found out about the NSA listening shack after it was decommissioned. So, good luck with that.

Cylons Didn't Have to Face Chinese Hackers

[0xG]

EOM

Armin Shimerman

[Latent Heat]

Actually we didn't have a clue has to who the Ferengi "were supposed to be" apart from Lt Cmdr Data calling them "Yankee traders."

And then actor Armin Shimerman came along with his scenery-chewing rendition of Quark on DS-9, portraying a Ferengi as an angst-driven discriminated-against entrepreneur, evoking memories of a character in, dunno, Shakespeare's "Merchant of Venice" ("does not a Jew bleed . . .").

And then the Ferengi became an ethnic stereotype -- superintelligent for having a four-lobed brain, but adhering to an ethical system known as the "Laws of Acquisition" that are studied with an almost religious devotion, well, you kind of get the idea.

Look, just because Jewish people were involved in the creation of Star Trek doesn't mean Star Trek doesn't reinforce certain stereotypes, maybe by Mr. Shimerman having a blast with his campy character.

Contradicts fundamental military realities

[Anonymous Coward]

Interesting post in theory, but I'm not buying it.

Military history is replete with "fog of war" stories where the commanders lost contact with, and detailed situational information on, their troops. In fact it's my understanding that the US military actively trains it's troops to take initiative and take command, where needed and as appropriate. That way if/when the chain of command is lost during engagement, units can still be effective. They will lose maximal effectiveness, sure, but you want them to be able to continue their engagement.

Think of it this way. Any time 2 competent militaries clash, the goal of each is to degrade the other, with the ultimate aim of winning. Degrading means anything that makes the enemy effective, so that includes personnel, arms, logistics, command & control, communications, the works. Since this is an ever-present battlefield danger, every military spends some time training to cope with degraded conditions. War is only ever "video game pristine" when there is a huge imbalance in size, technology, and capability.

Now don't even get me started on the "Cylons infected humanities computers with viruses" notion. This is as silly as Independence Day, where simply knowing that the aliens had computers made Jeff Goldblum's character competent to write a virus for the enemies computers. Yeah, right.

Re:Contradicts fundamental military realities

[aristotle-dude]

Now don't even get me started on the "Cylons infected humanities computers with viruses" notion. This is as silly as Independence Day, where simply knowing that the aliens had computers made Jeff Goldblum's character competent to write a virus for the enemies computers. Yeah, right.

Ok, you obviously never watched the entire series or the movie "The Plan" because then you would have know that the Caprica 6 model "rewrote" half of the algorithms for Gaius which really meant that she hid a trojan in the military computer operating systems which was then spread to the battlestar ship as a "upgrade" right before the attack.

The only two capital ships that survived was an outdated one called Galactica and the Pegasus. The latter survived because the upgrade had not be installed completely.

What people have to learn

[Anonymous Coward]

when a military is so corrupt and incompetent that a TV series could do better and that people are so corrupt and incompetent that their efforts/solution to problems with the military amount to suggesting a TV series..

Uninventive Objections

[Metahominid]

I am astounded by the number of meaningless objections with entirely uncreative reasoning.

If one actually thinks of the analogy in terms of the show, it is perpetrated by the Cylons decades after they analyze their opponent, mankind,
begin to infiltrate them and the largest source of their offense was made possible through a honey pot. Nothing more than social engineering followed by a well
orchestrated attack on an unsuspecting opponent. Mankind was caught completely unawares due to the fact they saw no threat.

Networking is not just electronic, it bridges both human and machine and nations have been using this to their advantages in intelligence gathering and war making with for decades. If any nation were to attack it would be from years of setting things in place, key assets with high ranking officials or technical officers. Why not infiltrate numerous communications and mobile devices or nearly any technological corporation and over years, make backdoors, gather your information, blackmail key targets or terrorize them for information and ways into more secure areas. Cripple infrastructure and cause widespread panic economically and either let it fester and cause civil unrest or further use electronic attacks.

The arguments about militaries being able to rely on older methods of communication, surveying or information gathering are purely asinine. If you cripple a modern militaries communications and targeting capability and then attack, the force that react quicker and is not wondering why everything went black will win. Grab the tempo, use it to your advantage. Their inability to pass information efficiently will allow you keep the tempo, you're not for one bite you're going for the whole thing. Blitzkrieg with overwhelming force, physically and digitally thanks to years of patience.

Freudian typo?

[darkonc]

I think that that should be the concept behind the show, not the conceit.

The conceit behind the reboot of the sci-fi epic Battlestar Galactica was that networking military forces exposes them to disaste . . . . .

failure

[thunderclap]

They could learn that a significantly advanced technology could give up all advantages and live in caves without protest. Sorry there is nothing in BSG that could help our military. Its fiction and a briefling.

Re:Or Star Trek, Dr. Who, Terminator, or WarGames

[Nyder]

Nyder, we've discussed this before. Your job is to keep the mutos in the DMZ and keep the military fighting the Thals. For your own sake, stop fraternizing with the scientists, or you might get used in the next fighting machine demo.

That is all.

I think you forgot, we won.

Learn from Today's Technology

[minstrelmike]

Fuck Battlestar Galactica. Just think about drones.
If I have a swarm of 100 drones, you cannot defend your battleship from me. You cannot defend your aircraft carrier from me.
Yet Congress continues to fund targets for the next war. It's like the Polish Cavalry buying bigger horses while the Germans build tanks.

Re: I don't think you want me to answer that

[Anonymous Coward]

Starbuck is wrong for all the right reasons. Unstable, crazy and a bad officer make her a good post apocalyptic officer...