Super Cool Military Wheels

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has come up with a Reconfigurable Wheel Track (RWT). 

The tires can switch shape from round tires for flat terrain to triangular tracks for soft or rugged terrain in just 2-seconds!

You can see in the screenshot the rear wheels in tire formation and the front wheels changed to tracks. 

The agility of this technology makes for better maneuverability and survivability for our troops and their transports and combat vehicles. 

I wonder if someday soon, they will commercialize this technology so rather than all season/year tires or snow tires on our cars, we have these gorgeous ruggedized military grade babies.

I for one would gladly pay extra! 😉

(Source Screenshot: Andy Blumenthal from here)

USA Surrendering The Internet

So here we go again, we cut off the hand (and arm) despite the face.

We are recklessly giving up control of the Internet, specifically of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), which oversees the Domain Names Servers (including all the DNS root zones like .com, .net, .gov, etc.) that handle all the addressing of our Internet traffic.

Despite repeated cautions from many in industry, academia, and government not to do this, we are moving ahead anyway with tomorrow being the transition date!

Why would we give away anything, let alone control over the awesome technological power of the Internet that we depend on in some way for virtually every activity we do these days?

Aside from non-explanations of “fulfilling historic promises” to cede control (i.e surrender the Internet out of fear that other countries will challenge us and set up their own alternate DNS’s) and nonsensical talk of “protecting Internet freedom” by giving it away to authoritarian regimes and despots–there seems to be no REAL reason to do this drastic action that weakens our country and puts our technology, commerce, critical infrastructure, and national security at risk!

Rather than defend the Internet that the USA invented (specifically DARPA), here we go again in fear and weakness going in the wrong direction–surrendering and giving up control of the web.

If you love the Internet and recognize how important this asset is to us, then like an FCC Commissioner said this week, you should be worried about what the h*ck we are doing to the freedom (vice censorship) of the Internet and to ourselves . 😉

(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)

Information Where We Look

I like this short video on advances in Augmented Reality by Applied Research Associates (ARA).

ARA supports DARPA’s Urban Leader Tactical Response Awareness and Visualization (ULTRA-Vis) program–to develop Augmented Reality (AR) for our soldiers.

Augmented Reality is “Virtual icons, avatars, and messages overlaid accurately on the real world.”

The purpose is to know”where you are and where objects are around you” and to “access information simply by looking at them.”

The interface is a heads-up wearable display, rather than an smartphone or tablet.

The AR integrates GPS, terrain information, commercial data, and sensors.

Further, you and others using this technology will be able to tag and share data in what I would call Social Reality (a mixture of social computing and augmented reality).

Here your world of information is augmented by other’s AR views shared with you.

AR offers an enormous opportunity to make our world far richer with information everywhere we look, rather than just when we look it up.

For it to be ultimately successful, the display will need to be worked in as an embed or overlay on our actual eyes (like a contact lens), rather than worn like Google Glass.

For the non-soldier, not every open field needs augmented reality–in fact, it would sort of spoil the natural beauty of it–but it sure won’t hurt to be able to turn it on, at will, to see which flowers are blooming and perhaps, whether there just might be a snake out there too. 😉

A Seeing Eye

This video from NOVA is an amazing display of the surveillance capabilities we have at our disposal.

ARGUS-IS Stands for Automated Real-Time Ground Ubiquitous Surveillance Imaging System.

Like a “Persistent Stare,” ARGUS provides continuous monitoring and tracking over a entire city, but also it has the ability to simply click on an area (or multilple areas–up to 65 at a time) to zoom in and see cars, people, and even in detail what individuals are wearing or see them even waving their arms!

Created by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), ARGUS uses 368 imaging chips and provides a streaming video of 1.8 gigapixels (that is 1.8 billion pixels) of resolution and attaches to the belly of a unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) drone.

ARGUS captures 1 million terabytes of a data a day, which is 5,000 hours of high-definition footage that can be stored and returned to as needed for searching events or people.

The Atlantic (1 February 2013) points out how using this over an American city could on one hand, be an amazing law enforcement tool for catching criminals, but on the other hand raise serious privacy concerns like when used by government to collect data on individuals or by corporations to market and sell to consumers.

What is amazing to me is not just the bird’s eye view that this technology provides from the skies above, but that like little ants, we are all part of the mosaic of life on Earth. We all play a part in the theater of the loving, the funny, the witty, and sometimes the insane.

My Oma used to say in German that G-d see everything, but now people are seeing virtually everything…our actions for good or for shame are visible, archived, and searchable. 😉

This Tape Will Self Destruct In Five Seconds

Ever since the 1960’s airing of Mission Impossible, where each episode started with the instructions for a dangerous mission on a tape recording, which ended with “This tape will self-destruct in five seconds,” have we all recognized the need for self-destructing devices to safeguard information.

This message has been honed over the last three decades with compromising security incidents:

1979: Iranian demonstrators stormed the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and according to UMBC “the incinerator broke” as personnel tried to destroy sensitive documents and they had to revert to shredding.

2001: A Chinese J-8 fighter aircraft collided with a EP-3 U.S. Intel aircraft which according to CNN was “likely equipped with highly sensitive equipment” and landed on the Chinese island of Hainan providing China the opportunity to board, disassemble, and study the equipment before it was returned three months later.

2011: Iran captured an RQ-170 Sentinel Drone and USA Todayreported on Iran’s claims that “all files and boards of the drone were copied and used to improve Iran’s unmanned aircraft.” Also in 2011 in the assault on Osama Bin Laden, a secret stealth helicopter that took a hard-landing had to be destroyed before special forces pulled out–however according to the New York Times, “a surviving tail section reveal modifications to muffle noise and reduce the chances of detection by radar” was left behind providing others the opportunity to learn about our sensitive technologies.

Additionally, as ever more advanced technology continues to enter the battlefield the threat of its capture and exploitation becomes increasingly concerning.
In this context, Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) announced the start up of a new program on 28 January 2013 called Vanishing Programmable Resources (VAPR).

VAPR is intent on developing technologies for “transient electronics…capable of dissolving into the environment around them.”

The goal is that “once triggered to dissolve, the electronics would be useless to any enemy that comes across them.”

According to Armed Forces International, along with the destruction of the electronics would be “taking classified data with it.” Thereby preventing the enemy from using captured information to develop countermeasures or reverse engineer their finds.

Transient electronics are intended to be rugged on the battlefield but able to be destroyed on command, perhaps by biomedical implants that release “a few droplets of [a self-destruct] liquid” or other means.

Whether self-destructing in five seconds or slightly more, the need to preserve our sensitive battlefield technologies and the intelligence they contain has never been more vital. 😉

(Source Photo: here with attribution to Mike Licht)

Repair Robots In Space

This is a cool video by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) on project Phoenix–which is a robot that can repair satellites in space and re-use components from retired satellites around it.

Phoenix can intercept, scavenge, and rebuild satellites in space–while orbiting above the Earth at 22,000 miles!

In the corner of the video, you can see progress being made in the lab, and in the main video frame you can see an animated version of how this would actually be put to use.

Machines working on, building, and repairing machines!

Like the fulfillment of a Terminator-like society, where machines can function with autonomy, eventually learning, self-healing, and even propagating.

I would imagine that these machines can help not only repurpose and recycle material in space to good use and fix things, but also they can clean up the space junk in orbit–similar to street sweeper trucks in Manhattan!

Eventually, these robots will travel to distance worlds–first Mars–to build human colonies and maintain them in inhospitable environments.

In mythology, Phoenix is a bird that regenerates and is reborn–in this case, this may be the beginning of the rebirth of human civilization throughout the galaxy. 😉

Under The Beautiful Sea

The Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (DARPA) is looking for a place to stash some new military capabilities.

In a DARPA news release (11 January 2013) it states they are looking to support the navy by placing hibernated deep-sea capsules with payloads at under water locations and at the seafloor strategically around the globe–“almost half of the world’s oceans are more than four kilometers deep” providing “cheap stealth”.

The capsules with carry non-lethal payloads for “operational support and situational awareness”–such as command, control, communication, computers, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (C4ISR). 

Examples of pre-deployed payloads could be unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and probably, unmanned underwater vehicles (UUVs). The release specifically states that this is “not a weapons program,” but you could imagine future evolutions of this.

The initial capabilities sought are for “situational awareness, disruption, deception, networking, rescue, or any mission that benefits from being pre-distributed and hidden.” 

The deep-sea capsules will need to survive under extreme pressure and be able to communicate at vast ocean depths to be remotely awoken and recalled when needed. 

Having capabilities available when and where needed–from the bottom of the sea to forward deployment–potentially mitigating some use of costly and non-stealth land bases.

I think this is an exciting idea especially since China was able to demonstrate its anti-satellite missiles in January 2007 in shooting down its own satellite, and I would think that these new underwater pods being sought may be able to provide some alternatives for sensing and communicating in conflicts where satellites are destroyed or disabled and/or other military muscle in not readily available. 

(Source Photo: here with attribution to Rakel SdPC)

Federal Leadership Is A Journey

There were three news articles in Federal Times this week (17 December 2012) that highlighted some disappointments for the time being, but that offer hope for the future:

–   Conflicts of Interest at DARPA: The previous director of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is investigated by the Defense Department Inspector General for conflicts of interest related to the award of “hundreds of thousands of dollars in contracts to a company she co-founded and partially owned.” The hope for the future—the new DARPA director has “sent a full list of her financial assets to all of the agency’s employees.”

–   Missed opportunity for use of mobile devices, BYOD in the Federal workforce: The CIO Council’s report on “Government Use of Mobile Technology: Barriers, Opportunities, and Gap Analysis” was required by the Federal Digital Strategy (May 2012); however, while there is clarity of the need for greater mobility in the workforce, instead of a clear architecture forward, the report calls for more guidance from the administration on “how to handle the tricky legal, privacy, and financial implications.” The hope—the report looks toward  a government-wide or agency policy and guidance to support more flexible use of mobile devices and a cross-functional team to evaluate Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) for the future.

–   NASA doubts commitment of getting to an asteroid: NASA, which has been criticized by some for not having a clear direction, has been charged with “sending astronauts to an asteroid by 2025,” yet there is not consensus that this is “the next step on the way to Mars.” The hope—NASA can restructure, engage in cost-sharing partnerships, or otherwise increase budget or decrease scope to right-align and achieve clear focus on the next great goals for outer space.

Lesson learned: leadership does not have all the answers nor do they always do everything right, but leadership is a journey. So while today, we may not always be making the best acquisitions for advanced research, achieving clarity of a mobile strategy, or landing people on Mars—we are on the way—through one small step for leadership, one giant leap for the rest of us.

(Source Photo: here with attribution to NASA)

Robots: More Than A Technical Challenge

This is the DARPA Pet-Proto Robot (a predecessor to the Atlas model) showing some pretty cool initial operating capabilities for navigating around obstacles.

– Climbing over a wall
– Straddling a pit
– Going up a staircase
– Walking a plank

These things may seem simple to you and I, but for these robots, we are talking about their autonomously sensing what’s around them, identifying and evaluating alternatives to overcome them, deciding on what to actually do, and then successfully executing on it.

Not bad for a machine (even if we are spoiled by the the great science fiction writers and special effects of Hollywood)!

We will be seeing a lot more progress in this area in the 27 months in response to the DARPA Robotics Challenge (DRC), where robots are being looked to “execute complex tasks” for “humanitarian, disaster relief, and related activities” in potentially “dangerous and degraded, and human-engineered” environments.

I’d say only another 15-20 more years and the robots will walking among us–but are we prepared for the significant shift about to occur.

Think about it–these robots will be able to do a lot more of the physical work (construction, manufacturing, service, care-taking, even warfighting, and more), and while we will benefit from the help, jobs are going to continue to get a lot tougher to find if you are not in fields such as engineering, science, technology, design, and so on.

This is going to lead to continued, significant social, educational, and economic disruptions.

What is now a robotics challenge to meet certain performance benchmarks, may in the future become a human challenge to shift from a human-dominated world to one which is instead shared or commingled with machines.

This means that we need to define the boundaries between man and machine–will we be working and playing side-by-side, how about loving or fighting each other, and is there the possibility that the machine will some day transcend the inventor altogether.

I believe that we need significant more study and research into how robotics are going to transform the way we live, work, and interact, and how humanity will adapt and survive this new monumental opportunity, but also looming threat.

What is just an obstacle to overcome in a simulation chamber may one day become an urban battlefield where humans are not necessarily the clear winners.

While I love robotics and where it can take us, this cannot be a field limited to the study of hardware and software alone.

Cyberwar, You’re On

There was significant news this week about the U.S. and Israel making major inroads with cyberwar capabilities.

First, the New York Times today (1 June 2011) writes about alleged Bush and Obama administrations’ “increasingly sophisticated [cyber] attacks on the computer systems that run Iran’s main nuclear enrichment facilities”–sabotaging as many as a 1000 centrifuges, delaying their deadly program by as much as 2 years, as well as conducting cyber espionage to strengthen our negotiating hand.

The cyber offensive program code-named Olympic Games allegedly involved cyber weapons codeveloped by the United States’ National Security Agency and Israel’s advanced cyber corps, Unit 8200.

The malware included such programs such as Stuxnet, Duqu, and The Flame and according to Bloomberg BusinessWeek (30 May 2012) may date as far back to 2007.

These cyber attacks have been viewed as the best hope of slowing the Iranian’s sinister nuclear program while economic sanctions have a chance to bite.

Additionally cyber attacks were viewed preferentially over using traditional kinetic military options and potentially causing a regional war in the Middle-east.

At the same time, the use of cyber weapons is a double-edged sword–if we use it on others, this may encourage cyber proliferation and it’s eventual use on us–and as the NYT writes, “no country’s infrastructure is more dependent on computer systems and thus, more vulnerable to attack than the United States.”

Therefore, it was good to see in The Washington Post yesterday (30 May 2012) that the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is pursuing Plan X–“ambitious efforts to develop technologies to improve its cyberwarfare capabilities, launch effective attacks, and withstand likely retaliation.”

“If they achieve it, they’re talking about being able to dominate the digital battlefield just like they do the traditional battlefield.”
The “five-year $110 million research program” is seeking to accomplish three major goals in arming U.S. Cyber Command at Fort Meade for cyber war:

1) Mapping Cyberspace–create realtime mapping of the entire cyberspace and all its devices for commanders to use in identifying targets and disabling them and seeing enemy attacks.

2) Building A Survivable O/S–Just like DARPA invented the Internet as a survivable messaging and communication system, so too, they want to develop a battle-ready operating system for our computers (like a tank) “capable of launching attacks and surviving counterattacks.”

3) Develop (Semi-)Autonomous Cyber Weapons–so cyber commanders can engage in “speed-of-light attacks and counterattacks using preplanned scenarios that do not involve human operators manually typing in code.”

Just to be clear, with cyber warfare, we are not just talking about computers taking out other computers–and end there, but rather this is where computers take out computers that are controlling critical infrastructure such as the power grid, transportation systems, financial systems, supply chain, command, control, and communications, weapons systems, and more.

“Cyberwar could be more humane than pulverizing [targets]…with bombs,” but I doubt it will be.

Imagine, virtually everything you know coming to a complete halt–utter disruption and pandemonium–as well as the physical effects of that which would ensue–that’s what cyber war is all about–and it is already on the way.

So as, Richard M. George, a former NSA cyberdefense official stated: “Other countries are preparing for a cyberwar. If we’re not pushing the envelope in cyber, somebody else will.”

It is good to see us getting out in front of this cyber security monster–let’s hope, pray, and do everything we can to stay on top as the cyberspace superpower.

(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal taken of mural at National Defense University, Washington D.C.)