Aftermath News

The agency’s National Cyber Range for cyberwar simulation would be similar to Star Trek’s holodeck or a Snow Crash-style Metaverse.

InformationWeek | May 8, 2008

By Thomas Claburn

Police officers practice their firearm skills on a shooting range, so why shouldn’t government computer security experts have the same kind of training ground?

In other words, Darpa wants to build something along the lines of The Matrix, Star Trek’s holodeck, or a Snow Crash-style Metaverse to test cyberwar strategies and drill cyberwarriors.

That’s not to say Darpa is aiming for a visually immersive world to entertain people; rather, it wants a place to pit hackers against simulated machines.

Darpa’s interest in such matters reflects a growing U.S. government and military commitment to develop more sophisticated cyberwar capabilities. A major reason for this is that other countries, such as China, are pursuing similar goals.

“The NCR will become a National resource for testing unclassified and classified cyber programs,” Darpa’s announcement explains. “Government and Government-sponsored Test Organizations (TO) authorized to conduct cyber testing will coordinate with the NCR performer for range time and resources. …The NCR will support multiple, simultaneous, segmented tests and testbeds. At the completion of the test the NCR will sanitize and de-allocate the testbed resources, thus absorbing them back into the range.”

The NCR aims to provide the ability to replicate military, government, and commercial IT systems and infrastructure; to monitor and manage events; and to analyze, collect, and present test data.

The NCR should be able to “realistically replicate human behavior and frailties,” to provide “realistic, sophisticated, nation-state quality offensive and defensive opposition forces,” and to “accelerate and decelerate relative test time.”

With any luck, human frailties won’t manifest themselves in the form of a ballooning budget as the NCR takes shape.

Predictive programming: Government agents release swarms of robotic spiders which jump onto the faces of innocent citizens forcing them to endure retinal scans in the movie Minority Report.

Daily Mail | May 4, 2008

By DANIEL COCHLIN

It may have seemed like just another improbable scene from a Hollywood sci-fi flick – Tom Cruise battling against an army of robotic spiders intent on hunting him down.

But the storyline from Minority Report may not be quite as far fetched as it sounds.

British defence giant BAE Systems is creating a series of tiny electronic spiders, insects and snakes that could become the eyes and ears of soldiers on the battlefield, helping to save thousands of lives.

Plans for a robot that can crawl like a spider are ‘well developed’

Prototypes could be on the front line by the end of the year, scuttling into potential danger areas such as booby-trapped buildings or enemy hideouts to relay images back to troops safely positioned nearby.

Soldiers will carry the robots into combat and use a small tracked vehicle to transport them closer to their targets.

Then they would swarm into the building and relay images back to the soldiers’ hand-held or wrist-mounted computers, warning them of any threats inside.

BAE Systems has just signed a £19million contract to develop the robots for the US Army.

Researchers hope they will eventually create machines that can fly like a butterfly

Plans for a creature that can crawl like a spider are said to be well developed, and researchers eventually hope to be able to create creatures that can slither like a snake or fly like a dragonfly.

While some of the creatures will be fitted with small cameras, others will be equipped with sensors that will be able to detect the presence of chemical, biological or radioactive weapons.

A computer-generated video from BAE Systems shows the tiny invaders being released by a soldier, before scouting out a suspect building, which is finally blown up by ground forces.

BAE Systems scientists from the UK and America plan an army of the electronic bugs, and have ambitions to equip every front-line soldier with them.

Programme manager Steve Scalera was inspired by the way creatures use their senses to detect danger.

“What we are doing is providing an enhanced awareness for soldiers, basically an extension to their eyes and ears,” he said.

“The creatures have external sensors. They can be tossed out into a building or a cave or even a pile of rubble and then send images back to the troops.

“The idea is to get a number of these working together – some tiny, some maybe up to a foot in length, and all going into a building together carrying out different tasks. Eventually we hope to have animals flying and slithering.

“The five-year programme has just started but we could have them with soldiers within six months, and then continue to develop the concept as the project goes along.”

Despite the high-tech gadgetry involved, BAE Systems insists once production is in full swing, each bug will cost no more than £100 to produce.

The Ministry of Defence declined to comment.

Related

Minority Report: A Dystopic Vision
When government agents search for Anderton, they release swarms of tiny, robotic “spiders” which leap onto the faces of innocent citizens and force them to endure retinal scans.

NewScientist.com | May 1, 2008

By Celeste Biever and Rowan Hooper

A couple of things make Iron Man different to your regular comic-book superhero movie.

But it is the technology that Stark uses to turn himself into Iron Man that gets us going. The tech in the movie is probably more firmly rooted in reality more than you might think – unless, that is, you are a regular New Scientist reader.

We have spotted at least six classes of tech in the movie that we have written about before. So, for those keen to find more about the real science behind the fictional Iron Man, read on…

Flying machines

Stark is a brilliant engineer who has made billions from building weapons. Kidnapped in Afghanistan, he questions his life, and resolves to put his genius to better use: to protecting rather than destroying. To that end, he builds himself a suit of armour that gives him superhuman powers. Watch a short excerpt from the film showing the suit’s capabilities

No such suit exists – yet. The leg sections of a wearable exoskeleton have been built, however.

This contraption does not yet give the wearer added strength, but it does make the backpack they are carrying feel lighter, by transferring its weight to the ground. This can makes a 36-kilogram (79-pound) load feel about 80% lighter. Other teams are building similar suits.

Of course, the coolest thing about Stark’s suit is not its strength but its ability to fly. In the film, Stark zooms to Afghanistan, just in the nick of time to stop warlords killing a group of poor villagers.

It could not reach Afghanistan, perhaps, but SoloTrek was a flying exoskeleton that was apparently capable of travelling more than 200 kilometres. (The project shut down after a crash in 2002.)

Danger and possible financial ruin hasn’t put everyone off. UK inventor and pilot Stuart Ross reckons his Rocketbelt packs enough power to lift him 2500 metres in the air and plans to test fly the latest model this year.

Friendly bots

In the movie, Stark has a friendly robot to help him build his armour. It looks too clever to be true, but in fact it is highly reminiscent of AUR. Built last year by MIT scientists, AUR is a robotic desk lamp that calculates where you are looking and moves its flexible neck to shine light on that spot.

And while Stark’s robotic helper doesn’t always correctly guess what he wants, as real-world software grows evermore sophisticated, it too is making the same mistakes humans do.

In the great tradition of robots in movies, Stark forms emotional bonds with his. At one point, his assistant Pepper (Gwyneth Paltrow) catches him in what looks like a compromising position with his robots (”Let’s face it, this isn’t the worst thing you’ve walked in on me doing,” says Stark).

Will humans and robots ever have relationships like this? It’s certainly something NASA is trying to figure out. Should robots be better tools or better teammates?

Owners of the robotic vacuum cleaner Roomba seem to think the latter, treating the machine more like part of the family than a tool.

Cunning software

Moving from robots to software, when Pepper sees a video clip sent by terrorists who have captured Stark, she uses nifty real-time translation program to understand their demands.

The most fashionable way for software right now to learn how to translate is for it to scan through thousands of previously translated documents. But the approach doesn’t always work, with sometimes unfortunate results.

This is just some of the tech used in Iron Man that is rooted in reality. Others include a 3D tactile interface that Stark uses to design his armour, targeting software that homes in on human heads, and the problem of ice formation when flying.

Science fiction inspires DARPA weapon

New Scientist | Apr 24, 2008

The late Arthur C Clarke is famous for having popularised the geostationary communications satellite in 1945. Now the Pentagon’s Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is working to turn one of his more dangerous ideas into reality.

Clarke’s 1955 novel Earthlight climaxes in battle between a lunar fortress and three attacking spacecraft. At the height of the battle the defending commander unleashes “The Stiletto”, which resembles “a solid bar of light” and pierces one spacecraft “as an entomologist pierces a butterfly with a pin.”

Clarke’s Stiletto is actually: “a jet of molten metal, hurled through space at several hundred kilometres per second by the most powerful electro-magnets ever built.”

Now DARPA are working on a weapon called MAHEM - Magneto Hydrodynamic Explosive Munition - that uses the same principle as Clarke’s fictional device.

Using magnetic fields it will propel either a narrow jet of molten metal or a chunk of molten metal that morphs into an aerodynamic slug during flight. Unlike Clarke’s Stiletto, they will come from a device that generates a powerful electromagnetic field from an explosion, not giant capacitors.

The concept resembles existing weapons which use an explosive charge to squirt out a jet of high-velocity molten metal on impact. Known as High-Explosive Anti-Tank (HEAT), this type of round has been widely used since the WWII bazooka.

Like HEAT devices, MAHEM is currently envisaged as something delivered by a warhead rather than a cannon: “MAHEM could be packaged into a missile, projectile or other platform and delivered close to target for final engagement and kill,” says DARPA.

MAHEM would apparently be useful against tanks and other missiles. And who knows, it might even work against spaceships. Notch up another one to Clarke - but here’s hoping his next idea to see reality is less hazardous to health.