US Military Develops P2P Wireless Network Sniffer 299
Merlin83 writes "As being reported on The Register, the US Military is developing a new system for monitoring enemy battlefield communication. Called WolfPack, each node is a 6"x4" cylinder, launched by missile or dropped from aircraft. Once the node lands, it stands up, extends its antenna and contacts other nodes. The nodes can also jam cellular communications by transmitting a signal themselves. "
Life is starting to remind me more and more... (Score:2, Interesting)
Of "the Diamond Age". We just have to get these things smaller...
Not a smart move (Score:3, Interesting)
And they propose to drop them on the ground in unfriendly areas, where anyone can come along and pick them up!
-1 Idiotic
Re:Not a smart move (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Not a smart move (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Life is starting to remind me more and more... (Score:5, Interesting)
Vernor vinge wrote about these things in his story "Fast Times at Fairmont High"
In his story they were super small and sprinkled around to create a robust network. the only problem was cleanup when they went bad.
RIAA (Score:5, Funny)
Re:RIAA (Score:2, Funny)
You must be new here. Don't you know there are 10 types of people on slashdot: those who RTFA, and those who comment. If you read, you don't have time for a witty comment.
Re:RIAA (Score:2)
Guess they've figured out how to get around these (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Guess they've figured out how to get around the (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Guess they've figured out how to get around the (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Guess they've figured out how to get around the (Score:5, Interesting)
Digital communications with IFF that are ignored by the jammers? Like the pay-per-view stuff -- if your key code is correct, we don't jam you.
Ultra wideband that doesn't rely on a specifig frequency.
etc.
Re:Guess they've figured out how to get around the (Score:5, Interesting)
The devices themselves are used as comm nodes for the U.S. military. They could forward encrypted, digital communications through the network they create.
Re:Guess they've figured out how to get around the (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Guess they've figured out how to get around the (Score:2, Insightful)
but a few sparse well placed messages cannot easily be unencrypted in a timely fashion to be useful to the party trying to decode it, especially if you continually change your encryption methods.
Re:Guess they've figured out how to get around the (Score:2)
Re:Guess they've figured out how to get around the (Score:4, Funny)
Seems that they dealt with the GPS jammers Iraq was using by following this method in the past war. I've been unable to find references for that particular action, but I seem to remember discussing it in my signals class last spring.
Re:Guess they've figured out how to get around the (Score:2)
My point isn't that the US Military devices won't screw up US military communications, but that the US military has come up with a mechanism to deal with this if someone else has similar devices.
I thought that the point was that nobody we're likely to fight uses this stuff.
And frequency hopping too (Score:2)
easy... (Score:2)
Small and cylindrical? (Score:5, Funny)
Dark Helmet: Jammed... Raspberry!
Re:Small and cylindrical? (Score:2, Insightful)
Sorry, I don't usually bicker about movie details in Slashdot posts--but this has always been something that bothered
Re:Small and cylindrical? (Score:3, Insightful)
Do a couple orbits around the planets in a system scanning for the strongest power source and start there. We are never really told how long the probes had been out there, But we can assume a good little while because of teh time that had passed between New Hope and Empire. Also we don't really know how close the Star Destroyer fleet was to Hoth on top of that. It's quite probable that they got a bit lucky.
Re: (Score:2)
Homebrew Cellular Phone Jammers (Score:5, Informative)
Cellular Phone Jammers [dyndns.org]
Can you... (Score:5, Funny)
P2P? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:P2P? (Score:2, Funny)
Re:P2P? (Score:2)
binladen has quit IRC (Quit: NO CARRIER)
[aol_grl] LOL!
Does it run Linux? (Score:5, Funny)
Each device, which runs on battery, should last approximately two months. When possible, devices can be recovered and reused. The cost of each is estimated at $10,000.
$10,000??!! I bet there are plenty of Linux geeks around Slashdot that could do it for a fraction of that! ;^)
Re:Does it run Linux? (Score:5, Insightful)
$10,000 sounds like a bargain.
Re:Does it run Linux? (Score:3, Insightful)
You forget, the NASA cylinders would be certified for a drop on Mars.
Re:Does it run Linux? (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Does it run Linux? (Score:5, Funny)
And the average
When dropped from a height, if your first reactions are to stand up, contact other geeks, and begin finding local networks, then yes, Uncle Sam Wants You!
Imagine a... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Imagine a... (Score:2)
Re:Imagine a... (Score:3, Insightful)
It's not terribly practical.
Such a device would have to do more than eavesdrop and relay. It has to continually broadcast to let cell phones know it exists. This will likely consume a lot more power than the military device.
Such a device would almost by definition only be used in emergencies, where phone usage is expected to peak. The
Why the limitation? (Score:5, Interesting)
Why limit the system to only battlefield? I mean if this works for the US Military it is also usefull in a more civill environment.
The Army could license the technology to companies and earn in some of those tax dollars.
This has happened before with a lot of tech and it could happen again. Just think about the possibilities in for example the fight against terror.
Re:Why the limitation? (Score:5, Interesting)
Why limit the system to only battlefield?
Because in a civil environment, we call devices that allow eavesdropping and jamming of communications "cell towers" and "central offices."
Seriously, something like this is designed to intrude into an area of no control or hostile control. The civil scenario you describe is one where the authorities have control, and have laws requiring the telecom carriers to allow access to the infrastructure in certain circumstances. No need to drop pringles cans.
Dare I say it? (Score:4, Funny)
How Interesting (Score:5, Interesting)
Slave these to a smart 'expert' system, that creates a 'map' of the area over which they have been spread. Now you can 'see' when anyone intrudes into that area.
Slave THAT to some artilery (or better yet, a jeep towed high energy rail gun
I wrote a high end overview of such a system for my technical writing class in 1989... As I recall, I got a 'D' for it, because my diagrams were not good enough. Ahh, I wish I could have had Visio back then!
Re:How Interesting (Score:5, Interesting)
I think custom-camouflage would be good for this sort of thing. Just drop a bunch of these in individualized 'rock' shells that blend in in Afghanistan, etc.
Re:How Interesting (Score:2)
It's also a minefield you can get through by driving through quickly (too much lag between detection and shell impact). Just change directions occasionally so they can't project your location.
Re:How Interesting (Score:2)
Driving 'fast' through the area was not though to be much of an issue, because at that point, you arn't trying to infiltrate, you have gone from a covert to an overt mode of operation.
Also, you would use a diffrent type of mine
Re:How Interesting (Score:4, Insightful)
if your maximum p2p range is 500 feet, and you have dropped these sensors every 100 feet, it would take a sharpshooter a LOT of ammo to make a big enough hole in this thing to sneak through... and by then, someone has already noticed that sensors have started malfunctioning in a strange way...
Re:How Interesting (Score:2, Insightful)
Don't get discouraged by narrow-minded instructors.
Re:How Interesting (Score:2)
I went on to design some pretty cool OC-48 and OC-192 Internet Backbones
And I still havn't gotten around to going back and getting a degree....
The other fellow is right about sharpshooters, I had designed my sensors to look like mushrooms or rocks.
A burrowing mine was also conidered, after I presented my paper.
This type of mine field is also not a Denial of Area system, like you would use with tank mines, it is designed to prevent infiltrators, accross a la
Re:How Interesting (Score:2)
Re:How Interesting (Score:2)
dromedaries twitching in the night (Score:2)
Slave THAT to some artilery
If camels have nightmares, I think you just summed up what they are about.
Re:How Interesting (Score:2)
The networking fits (mostly) the P2P definition. Its actually a MANET (Mobile Ad-Hoc Networking) implementation. Take a look around for the DARPA GloMoSim work or a couple other projects.
When you get into actual explosive mines you are talking about SMARTAPAT (at least that used t
Re:How Interesting (Score:2)
How long ago was this implemented. do you know?
So, how come we never hear about this when the Anti-Military/Anti Mine folks whine about the evils of the Military and its horrible maming of civilians with their EVIL MINES!!!!
That was sarcasm, as we know text does not route sarcasm well...
In related news, RIAA to sue US military (Score:2, Funny)
what is it? (Score:5, Funny)
Commander: "That's it, everybody, shut down Kazaa, the RIAA has found our base!"
I think I see the problem (Score:5, Interesting)
Unless they are fitted with antipersonnel devices (looking unlikely given the current trend towards banning cluster munitions) they will make nice souvenirs of the conflict.
2 days after they are released in the wild we'll be bidding for them on eBay.
Jamming (Score:2)
And if that doesn't work, the military sends in guys with bucket trucks to install Broadband over Power Line and it jams everything from DC to daylight.
Seems like an unfortunate choice of name (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Seems like an unfortunate choice of name (Score:2)
Wait... lotsa men, close quarters, isolated from the world for weeks at a time...
Oh, ok.
Re:Seems like an unfortunate choice of name (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Seems like an unfortunate choice of name (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Seems like an unfortunate choice of name (Score:2, Funny)
And now the UWB reference... (Score:3, Interesting)
Can I meet the man in charge of naming these? (Score:5, Funny)
I nominate we rename it the Sniff 'n Shout. Or something in that vein
The art of naming military operations. (Score:2, Interesting)
There are numerous articles on this subject, and the Army acyually uses special guidelines when they name operations.
A liutenant Sieminski wrote a article about this (do some googling).
At the end of his article, Sieminski offers four guidelines for naming operations in the future.
Operation Desert Storm was a good name but Operation Iraqi Freedom was even
Re:The art of naming military operations. (Score:2)
Re:The art of naming military operations. (Score:3, Insightful)
"someone wanted to call it "Operation Iraqi liberation" but for some reason they abadonded that"
It was a little too meaningful. It spells OIL.
"I think this was a good thing as the word "liberation" is a reference to a french word."
Along with alot of our language; notably "Operation".
"In a perfect world this would not be neccesary, but as long as the public is so relluctant to wars in general this is a good way to convince them to fight for the cou
Funny how the US develops technology... (Score:5, Insightful)
...that seems to be mainly aimed at countering themselfs.
Wait, don't mod me down just yet; let me elaborate on that. Basicly, you have two situations when in a military conflict: Either you are invading, in which cause you depend on mobile, wireless communication. Or you're defending, and that means most of the time relying on fixed lines of communication (fiberoptic cables buried deep in the ground is a favorite). Now, if you're using fixed lines of communications, you don't have to worry to much about these. Sure, some forms of landlines are radiates energy that can be detected by the 'wolfpack', but I've yet to hear about any armed forces worth it's salt that don't use encryption these days. If you're attacking however, you need to carry your own coms. Most armed forces don't roll in money the way the US forces do, so most forces has to rely on older equipment, like the good old AN/PRC [napcointer.com]-77 [armyradio.com]. And those can't be affected by a jammer designed to knock out cellular transmittions.
On the lighter side, how long until the troops use this P2P-network to share violent videos and hard porn [aftenposten.no]?
Re:Funny how the US develops technology... (Score:2)
Re:Funny how the US develops technology... (Score:4, Interesting)
armed forces worth it's salt (Score:2)
Hear about Chechenyans
Re:Not for foreign wars... (Score:2)
On the other hand, when you look at the many portions of the 3rd world that are looking to bypass ground lines and build their telephone infrastructure around cells instead, this looks like a way to prepare for future battlegrounds in Africa and Asia.
More questionable govt garbage (Pork?) (Score:3, Interesting)
This looks like the results of a flashy bid for government dollars through a beurocratic bid system the values WOW glitz as higher than good ole useful application.
Re:More questionable govt garbage (Pork?) (Score:5, Interesting)
Working in the norwegian armed forces myself - who has been trying to tell our politicans that a) running a defence costs money, b) doing a lot of operations overseas costs more, and c) we could really need more and newer fighters, preferable by 1997, and some new tanks, rifles, chemical protection suits and naval ships wouldn't be out of the way - I would say this has a simple reason.
Buying 'more of the same' just ain't sexy enought.
Nor does it look impressive. Telling your mistress that you signed a deal for a score of flying gasstation is not as cool as telling her you just signed a goverment contract to develop an airportable selfdeploying P2P network with cellular jamming capability.
That, and we most not forget that the arnament industry in the western world is technologydriven. The defenceindustry comes up with something new and sexy, and off course the top brass goes along with it (see above for why). In the old eastern block, things worked (well, barly worked, but thats another matter) differently. The military went to the industry and said 'this is what we need, you have two years to come up with a solution'. Worked much better, at least as far as maintaining capabilities goes. A bit less so if your focus is on developing new capabilities thought...
Re:More questionable govt garbage (Pork?) (Score:4, Informative)
Damn man, I thought I was cynical about the leadership during my time in service, but you take the cake. The *primary* concern of the majority of the people at the top is, and always has been, "Will this save our troops lives and/or kill more of the enemy?" Every other consideration comes after that, and if you think otherwise you're insulting the hell out of a lot of people who care deeply about the lives of the men under their command. Granted, there may be the occassional officer who thinks nothing of the lives under him, but these are a rarity.
American troops are constantly told that they are the best equipped, most highly trained military force on the planet. Making sure that it's true is a big chunk of military morale, and is official policy. Having that equipment be "sexy" also helps with morale. Nothing is ever as simple as it seems, certainly not as simple as developing sexy military equipment to impress one's mistress.
Give the brass *some* credit for not being total dipshits.
Re:More questionable govt garbage (Pork?) (Score:2)
Oh well... I take it you was what we refer to as an 'indian'? In other word, a common soldier? Things looks different in differnt armed forces son, and they sure looks different when you got some stuff on your shoulders like I [easyspace.com] do. So no, I don't really give the top brass - most of which are civilian politicans anyway - much credit.
As for your second paragraph.. beeing told something is not the same as it beeing true. True, the avrage US soldier carry more and newer equipment than most other soldiers... they
Re:More questionable govt garbage (Pork?) (Score:3, Funny)
Rat Pack (Score:3, Funny)
Wow, I like it! (Score:4, Interesting)
Seriously, remembering times from IIWW when in occupied Warsaw people commonly made grenades from dud bombs, that thing with some technology applied, could provide great means of communication network for the enemy
I wonder... (Score:3, Interesting)
5th Element Cockroach (Score:2, Interesting)
smart dust (Score:5, Interesting)
The smart dust was supposed to be a 1 cube mm sensor with some computational power that was also supposed to transmit signals. I also recall that it was supposed to cost very few $ (one?). Clearly, you do not need parachutes for it and you can just deploy thousands on the battlefield or whatever you want to spy on. I don't know if these can send such a strong signal, but I believe that if you deploy enough of them you could. And being much smaller and many thousands, they would be much harder to get rid of. However, I haven't heard of smart dust in a while. Maybe they have perfected it and started using it. Or maybe the project just died.
cost very few $ (one?) (Score:2)
Assume a typical new generation guided missile is about $1mln. A million pieces of the "dust" could cost maybe a bit more. Reasonably assuming communication range about 2m you can drop it with 1m spread and maintain communication between almost all of them. That's 50m wide, 2km long stripe of ground (and not only ground. Treetops and such too) monitored in such a way that nobody could pass unnoticed or alive. Now hook this to a few robotised machineguns and r
groovy (Score:4, Funny)
I was going to buy their music but after listening to it I think I will download it from KazAa in stead.
fyi (Score:2, Funny)
This just in: The Russians have developed nodes that land next to nodes already present on the battlefield, stand up, extend their antennae, and contact other nodes with information about hostile nodes on the battlefield.
This just in: Americans have developed nodes that land next to Russian nodes that have landed next to their nodes. These American nodes, upon landing, stand up, extend their antennae, and contact other
Size & Mass (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Size & Mass (Score:2)
I'd steal em (Score:5, Funny)
If I were a low-income thug and the US military invaded my country and sprayed the land with these things, I would probably run around and pick them up for resale. They start at 6x4 inches, but then they extend fins and an inflatable antenna, which should make them pretty easy targets to spot. And I bet to foreign military hands, they're worth more than the $10K they cost the US military. All things considered I could probably feed my family for 10 years by picking up 5 of them or so and selling them on the black market.
Re:I'd steal em (Score:2)
If they were smart they would make an anti personnel mine that looked identical to a node.
Re:I'd steal em (Score:2)
Hmmm I know which country should get them first (Score:5, Funny)
They could even claim it was 'field testing'.
Best wishes,
Mike.
it WON'T impair US forces' communications (Score:3, Insightful)
from the article: without hindering US forces' own communications systems. Clearly the DoD thought this through a little more than most people here give them credit for.
IMO this is a really cool project. All the people complaining about the gamma ray "nuke" should be happy about this method of disrupting communications without bombing things.
OpenSource Version (Score:3, Funny)
WeebleWobbles...
They're self righting... "They weeble and they wobble, but they don't fall down"
I even have the project name down:
WWWWF
(WeebleWobbles with WiFi)
Who's With Me???
Another possible application (Score:3, Interesting)
The function of a single can would be some combination of:
Maybe they could even have solar cells to make them last more than 2 months in the field.
Igloo White - 1966 Sensor Net (mildly OT) (Score:4, Informative)
The U.S. military actually used a lower tech version of the sensor net along the Ho Chi Minh Trail in 1966. The program was called "Igloo White" and involved a number of audio and seismic sensors. Check out this link [rand.org] and look at page 11 for details. Very interesting read.
Some bits:
Moderators on crack (Score:4, Funny)
This is informative?
Re:Slashdotted - here's the article (Score:2, Interesting)
The Registrers version:
Re:Slashdotted - here's the article (Score:2)
Re:Force Multipliers (Score:2)
Warm and fuzzy (Score:2)
Re:P2P - The new revolution (Score:2)
You should explain to him, then, that Windows file shares are, basically, a P2P network. Ask him if opening Wind