Check out this quad rotor video from UPenn’s GRASP lab:
There are some pretty neat potential military applications of this kind of technology, and they are not necessarily kinetic. Imagine that you could lean out Cisco’s OSPF network layer protocol – or adopt some existing lean layer 3 protocol – in such a way that it could run on a circuit card. Network traffic could flow between the UAS nodes in such a way that not all possible routes would have to be advertised, thereby reducing the overhead burden and increasing “goodput.” Potentially some larger, “master” UAS or other battlefield system would be aware of all potential routes so that the network could self-form and self-heal as nano-UASs joined or left the network.
Now picture that you have a dispersed number of troops in some place where the cellular network is either compromised or unavailable. A soldier in one building could launch his nano-bot, establish a network link, and over line-of-sight connections to the other network nodes and master, establish connectivity to the Global Information Grid. Now on his iPhone or iPad – or whatever secure, handheld network device you might think of – he could tap into virtually all web-enabled services; imagery, voice/video, ftp, email and text. Assuming of course that the master system has wide-band SATCOM, which why wouldn’t it?
Taking fire from a site beyond yonder hill? Employ a cross-domain solution at the master system which enables you to go to Google Earth and see what collateral damage implications would be involved in counter-fires. If the nano-bots themselves had sensors, they could create a common operational picture that is viewable both by troops in the field and from higher headquarters for combined fires.
What’s your idea?
It’s the natural synthesis of common network capabilities and UAS. The exploitation of commercial based technology could keep the cost low enough to allow wide deployment. The security needs will doom it cost wise unless requirements are matched to commercial (IPSec) based approaches (not suite B).
Totally concur. IAVA issues will doom it to impossibility except in the USMC where I bet they already have these things flying around at MCTESSA.
Till none of the shit works because either:
a) It got sandy
b) It got dropped
c) Ran out of power, no resupply for batteries
d) Could have power, the whole thing got ditched for more ammunition and water
e) It’s raining
f) Too windy
In which case you’re back to ringing the Apes on mortars or someone with something in 155MM and asking could they please drop something useful here…
Sim,
You left out that it would cost $$$$ per unit and they would take months to produce a single unit due to the way our military procurement works ( unlike WW2 where we had a new plane leaving the manufacturing line every 40 minutes and below cost I might add)
The new method of MILTECH is to overcharge and under deliver….in that way, we soak the taxpayers and ensure a need for more mega$$$$ to fix what was done wrong in the first place.
We’re going to be caught with our pants down if a REAL WAR occurs in the near future.
Long live King of Battle.
No Infantry, but unloved till you need them.
The Linux geeks have been running sims like this forever now, and doing it in shrink-wrapped packages small enough to put on a credit card. Verizon has a wireless router card (Credit card size) capable of feeding 5 IP addresses and services addresses to a household, so this is very doable. It takes no reach of the imagination to see the above happening in present time. It’s not phasers and photon torpedos, but we’re a damned sight ahead of where we were when Reagan launched the Star Wars defense project.
As to availability and cost, yeah, it could become expensive, but costs at the vendor level are miniscule compared to what
retailgovernment costs would be.SK1,
Did you ever buy sonobuoys in bulk lots by the pallet? A deployable one time only sensor that cost a lot of money if they came out of OPTAR and then you dropped thousands of them?
Cost is relative.
Or you get distracted playing Angry Birds.
Very cool.
If available in sufficient quantities it will increase the tactical situational awareness – what is going on around you in real time.
Always a good thing.
Plus they look cool!
Make them even smaller and harder to detect and the possibilities for unobtrusive surveillance come into play (which may lead to some bad unintended consequences…).
Lex once said “Imagine that you could lean out Cisco’s OSPF network layer protocol – or adopt some existing lean layer 3 protocol – in such a way that it could run on a circuit card.”
Actually what you are describing is a relatively new branch of networking called Mesh Networking. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mesh_networking
As a network geek, and lurker on the blog, I never would have guessed that Lex would know what OSPF was
-Tim
Well, thanks! We all have our hidden sides. Including that link on “network traffic” which goes to the same wikipedia page
Might have something to do with that salt mine he used to hang out at.
Heck, I just took a RIP/EIGRP/OSPF/BGP class a couple of weeks ago. You could strip a whole lot out of OSPF (or EIGRP) to get these guys to talk to each other. There are obviously some challenges. I’ll have to read the references given earlier. And yes, I, too confess surprise when I saw Lex throw OSPF out there.
Not to be pedantic, but what we are truly discussing is Mobile Ad-Hoc Networking (MANET, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_ad_hoc_network ) a slight variation on the Mesh Network that Timo introduced.
MANET in the DoD tactical arena is already in play. Big Army has done a lot of work with it in NIE and had quite a bit of operational success in theater(s). Navy (NECC/NSW) and USMC have been employing MANET for several years. Most Service applications of MANET include GiG reach-back node(s) and UAS inclusion to extend range/reach.
Current and future MANET waveforms and radios are simply transport methods on which the operational forces can throw voice, data, FMV, what-have-you to meet their tactical needs.
I will argue against your cross-domain solution, Lex, as 1) IA is the biggest hurdle to system adoption and 2) Google Earth presentation tools (software) and products (imagery) are available in places such that a tactical user does not need to go outside his secure domain for that type of fire mission evaluation.
Portable/expendable (for as long as the battery runs) Ku-band jammers that deny the network.
No fancy and reliable wireless LAN within a mile.
….”Send a runner up to Battalion and tell them….”
Intel gathering like filtered acoustic / IR tripwires, GPS offset for blue forces? or blip enhance for missile decoys? Beach recon (in season)?
Oh yeah, the days of blip enhance. Order from the top, oh hey expendable, just turn on that ole blip enhance thing we gave you.
Get this small enough to launch it out of the fwd signal ejector, make it water and pressure proof, and then stealth it. Mate it with a dipping acoustic data link transmit transducer and rf data link receiver bouy, which floats up and launches the mini drone carrying a video head and data link transmitter (frequency hopper antijam circuit, natch).
Instant roving autonomous periscope and ECM, no mast required. Some R&D required,1% courtesy royalty would be appreciated.
I think Frank Herbert anticipated application as a tool of assasination in “Dune”.
I remain mightily impressed with the discussion on this blog. I also have made my bones in networking (your Google is welcome) and I heartily applaud your approach to the topic.
I note that there are OTHER Milblogs (Naval, even!) that lauded these four-rotor widgets as changing the entire military equation. “They’re going to swarm the carrier deck crew!” Uhum.. BS. Battery-powered threat vehicles controlled by off-board computers impress me about as much as a Chevy Volt. It’s ALWAYS about payload versus every other factor. But yes, the policy, procedure, protocol impacts illustrated here are interesting.
The bottom line: a bunch of smart folks hang here.
Youz guyz are way beyond me. Down here in enlisted berthing we’re laying odds on how Madonna will work these into her next half time show.
Army is integrating drone control in the Apache Block 3, with three levels of connectivity. Level 3 has the drone directly controlled by the Apache crew, as in: “I don’t like what I hear is over that hill–send the drone to look at it.” Cool stuff, and it gives “The UAVs are gonna take over aviation” folks a good dose of STFU.
TC
Leatherneck,
Here you begin to touch on what worries me about the coming network connected forces:
- Each node (unit) in a network is presented with more raw data to process and act upon…dangerous, if you consider that most battlefield users are already saturated keeping tabs on data within their sensor range (eyes, radars, OPs, etc.).
- Making each unit a node in the network essentially makes them a sensor in and of themselves capable of producing raw data to the network, but consumers of their product will likely expect information as opposed to data, further overloading that unit with processing tasks.
- Ubiquitous connectivity inevitably shortens the C2 links…the strategic Corporal is threatened to be replaced by the tactical General. If we build a system where the higher HQ staff has real time visibility of fire team employment AND the means to exercise control, we’ve created a method of losing operational focus.
Don’t take my points as a Luddite argument, I’m simply pointing out that technical capabilities are only as useful/safe as the counterparts of policy and doctrine. Unfortunately, many programs have fielded amazing new enabling technologies which have been torpedoed by poor doctrine once employed. I’d hate to see that happen yet again with this stuff.
Regarding you rsecond point – it seems to me that not all these nodes are equal. The fliers are indeed sensors supplying data. Let them specialize as such, then. Let the cycles that process data into information be at a server. Anyone who needs the information gets it and processes it on their own, as the sensor nodes are multicasting their data back to them.
Depends on how the MANET architecture (using the term very loosely) is designed. Your idea is likely one of the better approaches…if DoD goes that way. The cynic in me sees no unifying networking concept in the wings.
Vernor Vinge already explored the idea of battlefield “network supremacy” via swarms of disposable nodes in “Rainbows End”.
Things are at a primitive level at this point and the poo pooers will run riot for awhile.
I can remember my younger days when the 8080 was the bleeding edge and how the wizards at DEC, Control Data, Burroughs and IBM dissed micro-computers. By the late 70s almost every high level language was running on a Micro and IBM and DEC started taking them seriously. We already know where that process ended.
Yes, the things are pretty limited now, and, most likely, they will end up larger than they are right now both to obtain reasonable range as well as the processing power required to do what people think they will eventually do. Such things will come and certain needs will drive their development.
I’m not willing to join those poo pooing this right now, because I’ve seen to many things get that treatment in the last 35 years and those same people having a Crow feast when it was over. I hope they enjoy it.
Quartermaster: I note with rye amusement the quote for CDC stock today: CDC Corp (OTCOTHER: CDCAQ)
3.19 +0.14 +4.59%
I was a regular passenger on DEC’s fleet of helicopters between Logan and the Old Mill. If only Ken Olsen had taken the meeting with Steve Jobs.
You said, “they will end up larger than they are right now both to obtain reasonable range as well as the processing power required…” Yeah, and it will be chemically powered and end up just about the size of the MQ-1 Predator… or a cruise missile… or the V1. There are some laws of physics untouched by Gordon Moore and his law. Invent me a microscopic tap into the dark matter (ZPM) and then perhaps a craft the size of your palm will be a real threat.
As I said, I ain’t joining you. You have no idea how this is going to be employed later, or how they will be launched, or what they will be launched from. Engineers are just a bit creative in solving problems.
CDC is a much different company than it used to be. They gave birth to Cray which basically took over the super-computer market. DEC failed and was bought by HP. Even IBM is different, although they still manufacture computers, but nothing like it was before Micros.
As for your lack of imagination, I’m at least willing to say I don’t know how this is going to work out. You need to be a bit more circumspect about your certainty. More than one has come off looking like a buffoon with such an attitude.
All this mil speak and I am cross-eyed. I am not sure where this will go but if I was in the center field bleachers and it was hot and I was thirsty and the little devil could get me a beer………
Airmail: It could perhaps get you the empty can… if you weren’t very far up the stands. And that would be a load.
There are already complete x86 computers the size of a credit card, which can be run off of the current of a USB port.
Interesting times, indeed.
And they are cheap: http://arstechnica.com/open-source/news/2012/02/raspberry-pis-35-linux-computer-on-track-to-launch-later-this-month.ars
We are actually 28 comments into this thread and no one has said “Kill Sarah Connor?” You guys are slipping.
That’s because she went back in time with a worm that ate Skynet’s source code’s execute program, 8 different times (The first seven had unforeseen consequences that were worse – (in the worst one some kid of a lonely and vulnerable grad student and a Kenyan bigamist got elected President, and tried to appease the Moslem Brotherhood – that kept popping back up for years before Sarah’s boy John finally stamped it out – they hope.) Something about knotted quantum do loops in the time stream jumping from alternate universe to alternate universe along hyper superstring wormholes,kinda like a bad case of jungle rot that keeps growing back and contaminating the dryer….)
Grandpa Bluewater: Arrrrrgh… spectacular! Go John Boy, Go!
I think a cloud of these things would make a pretty good defence system for an incoming cruise missile. Put a proximity sensor on it and an annular warhead like the one on a Sidewinder and there you have it.
You could have a variety of them with radar reflectors and heat generators setup to look like a carrier to the missiles’s sensors.
I’ve built such a network – intended for use in commercial airport security.
The technology for military use will occur (if not today, then tomorrow).
The bigger problem/questions are organizational:
a) will the military (as an institution) be hostile to it, and prevent its use?
Remember that drones were pushed out for years (from what I’ve read) by US military, while the Israelis made great strides
b) will the military change its attitudes and procedures to make effective use of them?
Perhaps the question I hope that the US military will ask itself: when someone uses this against us, will they want
(a) to be better at it.
(b) to be equal.
(c) to not have it at all.
And then I hope they’re willing to make the changes so that (a) comes true.
First time to your site, wonderful writing. And an outstanding signal-noise ratio.
Keep up the good work!