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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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.

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.

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.

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: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.

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

[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."

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.

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.

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: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: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.