They’re Sensors in Them Thar Hills
May 22nd, 2007Heading for the hills? Planning on taking a rifle with you?
With the system described below, and currently available armed/unmanned drone technology, a lethal and autonomous response to trespassers/intruders/enemy combatants/etc. is easily possible. Right now.
Autonomous acquisition and engagement of human targets is old news. See Israel’s robotic gun turrets. Picking out individuals for termination from a crowd will take a few years (requires human middleware for now), but to have a robot autonomously kill people in a specified area is easily doable now.
Drones could orbit a huge area, looking for heat signatures on their own, or waiting to respond to a target picked up by one of these ferrous metal detecting ground sensors. If the operators wish, the weapon system could acquire and terminate the target autonomously, keep it under surveillance or have a human pull the trigger. The point is to automate the lockdown.
The military has used ground sensors for decades. I don’t follow the specifics, but I’d be surprised if they haven’t used something like this for a long, long time. I’m mentioning this because the technology is now using ubiquitous, civilian grade gear. Off the shelf. Internet based. Inexpensive. Coming to a wilderness retreat near you.
Ahhh, maybe the Blackwater boys will run some of these hunter killer networks. One merc, a few drones and a BIG area.
Via: MIT Technology Review:
The closest that park officials often get to catching poachers is stumbling across carcasses days or weeks after the culprits have fled the scene. Now a new surveillance system may help locate, track, and intercept poachers before they strike.
The system consists of a network of foot-long metal detectors similar to those used in airports. When moving metal objects such as a machete or a rifle trip the sensor, it sends a radio signal to a wireless Internet gateway camouflaged in the tree canopy as far as a kilometer away. This signal is transmitted via satellite to the Internet, where the incident is logged and messages revealing the poachers’ position and direction are sent instantly to park headquarters, where patrols can then be dispatched.
“[This system] is a force multiplier,” says Steve Gulick, an electrical engineer and director of Wildland Security, a Brooklyn-based organization that develops antipoaching technology. “It could potentially make the patrols more efficient. They would know where to go and could mount a real-time response.”
This is childsplay, if they can’t learn and self-replicate.
Anyone remember the “autonomous mobile sword” from the movie (1995) Screamers?
:o)
http://www.darpa.mil/sto/smallunitops/SHM/sandia.html
Sandia National Laboratories
Intelligent Mobile Land Mines (IMLM)
Sandia National Laboratories has developed an Intelligent Mobile Land Mine (IMLM) System to meet the needs of DARPA’s Self-Healing Minefield Program. The IMLM System consists of individual IMLM units that add intelligence and mobility to antitank (AT) landmines. The IMLM units work together in a collective fashion to perform the Self-Healing Minefield mission. The mission consists of having the IMLM System autonomously detect that a breach has occurred, determine which mines need to move to heal the breach, and deploy the mobility system to make the required moves. Sandia has developed and integrated the technologies required to meet this objective that includes the mobility system, a communication system, a ranging system, and control electronics and software.
What gets me is that people working to develop these things simply clock out of their 9-5 gig and go home to soccer games and mowing the lawn. One moment building better ways to blow humans to bits and the next coaching youngsters to dribble the ball. What kind of cerebral disconnect is that?
How does an empire “defend” resource-rich territory rendered unfit for human habitation with say, depleted uranium munitions?
Why, send in the H-K’s, but of course.
Look there, “Cyberdyne” stock is on the rise again.
I can hardly speak with “normal” folk anymore, for all the absolute silliness that spews forth from the programmed first-world mind. Control the meaning of colloquial language (“conspiracy”) and the terms of the argument back home, then sit back and watch little ants in some Asian desert scatter on a video display when we rain fire.
At exactly what point does the word “defense” no longer apply?
Like Chuck D said, “Don’t believe the hype.” The historic question the military keeps asking over and over and over and over again: “Can we perfect our ability to kill without being killed in combat such that we can take over any territory we want at minimal economic and political cost?”
See, its not enough to kill a lot of people, or to minimize casualties, or even to take and hold territory; it all must be done with respect to the bottom line. Hence the development of increasingly sophisticated technological solutions. However, one thing THEY will probably never perfect is their ability to control the human “middle-ware.” THEY have all kinds of rivals, since everybody wants to be THEM. Thus, THEY are constantly being thwarted at every turn by people behaving in their own selfish interests.
Let’s face it. If you have to use the military, you’ve failed in your bid for control. Seriously. People loathe the military. It’s nothing personal, but the institution scares the living shit out of people. That’s why troops are typically quartered in separate (but equal) military bases, where they can be out of the sights and minds of the civilians.
Just the sight of military vehicles, like police squad cars, is a reminder that the civilians are no longer in charge, or have had to abdicate. When a foreign military occupies, this is especially intolerable for the domestic population.
Thus, you have insurgencies.
And the insurgencies have the practical effect of being attacked by a bunch of MacGyvers. If you read about the Vietnam war, you learn that the Viet Cong spent an average of 37 cents to kill an American, in contrast with the $250-350K Americans spent to kill one of them. The Viet Cong were extremely resourceful, having the home field advantage, and they pulled all kinds of cheap, but effective tricks. Thus, the Americans were eventually driven out.
Of course, THEY still get what THEY want; which is profits from all of the carnage. Do THEY really care if THEY win? Not necessarily. If THEY had won too quickly, it would not be profitable. THEY would rather have a profitable loss than an unprofitable win. This is because THEY look at the big picture, from a historical standpoint. THEY think hundreds of chess moves ahead. That is why individual lives, or even human lives in general, mean very little to THEM. Human life is cheap because there is so much of it. Supply and demand.
That being said, the people who rely on technology to rule are nothing more than a bunch of Star Trek geeks who are deluding themselves. All of the robotic gun turrets in the world will not protect you from the wrath of King Mob; nor will it protect the mandarins from the tongs, nor the tongs from the mandarins. It is a constant war of escalation between factions, with the little people being continually cut down in the crossfire.
I’m not so worried about the next weapon as the last weapon.
I’ve had to remind my son “just how many bullets does it take to kill you?”
Only that one in the right place.
Oh, BTW, good ole GW has quietly been doing the following:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2007/05/22/MNG7QPV65N1.DTL
Check it out.
We need to remind ourselves that the guys who think these things up are not simply the enemies of THEM. They are the enemies of US!