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Hacker puts a video cam on an RC truck and saves the lives of 6 soldiers

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Re: Hacker puts a video cam on an RC truck and saves the lives of 6 soldiers

#81

Post by RomP »

samhoice wrote: post #72
RomP wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some of the things you're listing are must-haves (secure channel), but most are not. If increasing reliability and versatility makes the drone last 10 times longer and costs 10 times more -- it's not worth it in the long run: it's goal to trigger the first IED it can find, anyway. Even if it's not, it still would be cheaper and easier to buy 10 drones or make them modular enough so anybody with some X-Box experience…

Having lessened reliability is ok until the 2 that fail are the 2 you had in your truck as you're driving down a hostile road. Or if they won't work in the rain, that's ok until you have to go on patrol in the rain. Or if they won't work in harsh desert conditions... oh, wait.

It's similar to saying that having expendable bullets and grenades is OK until you use the last one while still on patrol. Solution: preparing for it by taking more. Knowing that they're designed to fail/be repaired easily changes the approach. The argument I'm trying to make is that it would be cheaper/lighter/more_versatile to get many expandable droids than to get one robust and universal.

Also, highly-adapted droid != highly-adaptable droid. There is no need for an amphibious droid in Afghanistan, just like one doesn't use the same apparel in all climate zones. As long as interface/principles are the same (like a PC), various versions of it can be used in (almost) any environment without extensive re-training.

Re: Hacker puts a video cam on an RC truck and saves the lives of 6 soldiers

#82

Post by jarin »

erydo wrote: post #29
illumin8 wrote: post #5

The funny thing is that if the DoD contracted out to build these, they would end up costing over $1 million each. There are a lot of unique opportunities for startups that are willing to use off the shelf technology and package it in unique ways. Provided, of course, you don't have any ethical qualms about selling technology that might be used for good or evil.

They'd sell for a high price not necessarily due to price gouging, but because it costs a lot to sell to the military. The overhead of quality control, support, and all of the bureaucracy involved in dealing with a military customer would dwarf the actual per-unit cost.

The DoD is the ultimate Waterfall Method practitioner.

Re: Hacker puts a video cam on an RC truck and saves the lives of 6 soldiers

#84

Post by rokhayakebe »

sequoia wrote: post #75
rokhayakebe wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems like the truck used in this example costs around 300 usd. If I were a soldier, I think I would not wait for the government to commission a million dollar truck. I would get 3 of these for now.

That toy truck cost 300 fucking dollars??

On the low end it seems.

Re: Hacker puts a video cam on an RC truck and saves the lives of 6 soldiers

#85

Post by saraid216 »

dctoedt wrote: post #52
RomP wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some of the things you're listing are must-haves (secure channel), but most are not. If increasing reliability and versatility makes the drone last 10 times longer and costs 10 times more -- it's not worth it in the long run: it's goal to trigger the first IED it can find, anyway. Even if it's not, it still would be cheaper and easier to buy 10 drones or make them modular enough so anybody with some X-Box experience…

> If increasing reliability and versatility makes the drone last 10 times longer and costs 10 times more -- it's not worth it in the long run: it's goal to trigger the first IED it can find, anyway. Google's approach to building server farms was likewise to buy hardware that was ultra-cheap because it had failed to meet manufacturing specs. Google expected a certain percentage of hard disks, etc., to fail, and simply…

While this is a legit perspective, there is a meaningful difference in that Google can throw out their failed hardware without any real risk of having it return to haunt them, but broken toy trucks means either handing materiel to the enemy or having extra useless weight to carry around.

You might be able to tweak specifics to account for this, but you also might not.

Re: Hacker puts a video cam on an RC truck and saves the lives of 6 soldiers

#86

Post by spitfire »

etruong42 wrote: post #69
JackWebbHeller wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember reading an article in the UK edition of Wired about IEDs. Soldiers soon realised that roadside bombs were heat-detecting - as soon as the heat being given off from a truck driving past was detected, these IEDs would launch straight into the truck, killing soldiers on several occasions. One morning a soldier had a brainwave and took a long metal pole and gaffer-taped it to the front of the truck. On the fro…

These two anecdotes suggest that we should teach a hacker mentality to soldiers. Or have a hacker (or a group of hackers) with each unit where they identify problems, experiment, and implement solutions. Hopefully the military would place more value on the intelligence and creativity of the common soldier and invest more in order to nurture it.

It's already being taught. It's called maneuver warfare and the marines practice it. Read MCDP-1.

Further reading is a guy named John Boyd who developed this stuff (along with the f15, f16, f18, a10 and first iraq invasion) from the 60's through the 90's.

People, ideas, hardware. In that order.

Re: Hacker puts a video cam on an RC truck and saves the lives of 6 soldiers

#87

Post by saraid216 »

etruong42 wrote: post #69
JackWebbHeller wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember reading an article in the UK edition of Wired about IEDs. Soldiers soon realised that roadside bombs were heat-detecting - as soon as the heat being given off from a truck driving past was detected, these IEDs would launch straight into the truck, killing soldiers on several occasions. One morning a soldier had a brainwave and took a long metal pole and gaffer-taped it to the front of the truck. On the fro…

These two anecdotes suggest that we should teach a hacker mentality to soldiers. Or have a hacker (or a group of hackers) with each unit where they identify problems, experiment, and implement solutions. Hopefully the military would place more value on the intelligence and creativity of the common soldier and invest more in order to nurture it.

We should teach the hacker mentality to everyone.

Re: Hacker puts a video cam on an RC truck and saves the lives of 6 soldiers

#88

Post by DannoHung »

saraid216 wrote: post #85
dctoedt wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If increasing reliability and versatility makes the drone last 10 times longer and costs 10 times more -- it's not worth it in the long run: it's goal to trigger the first IED it can find, anyway. Google's approach to building server farms was likewise to buy hardware that was ultra-cheap because it had failed to meet manufacturing specs. Google expected a certain percentage of hard disks, etc., to fail, and simply…

While this is a legit perspective, there is a meaningful difference in that Google can throw out their failed hardware without any real risk of having it return to haunt them, but broken toy trucks means either handing materiel to the enemy or having extra useless weight to carry around. You might be able to tweak specifics to account for this, but you also might not.

The solution is to have force redundancy and to make each individual element completely disposable (and detonatable).

Re: Hacker puts a video cam on an RC truck and saves the lives of 6 soldiers

#89

Post by dhughes »

stcredzero wrote: post #80
dhughes wrote: post #30

I'm surprised the reveres isn't true that small RC planes or land vehicles are not being used as unmanned bomb delivery devices by the Taliban. If this were to happen I'd guess Libyan rebels would do it since I see a lot of fabrication of weapons by them.

I'm surprised the reveres isn't true that small RC planes or land vehicles... I just had an image of Paul Revere warning the Massachusetts countryside the British are Coming with an RC 4x4 with a speaker stuck on it.

Ha! I deserve that, typos bug me.

Re: Hacker puts a video cam on an RC truck and saves the lives of 6 soldiers

#90

Post by MiguelHudnandez »

blhack wrote: post #70
MiguelHudnandez wrote: post #66

So, I am excited about this, but there is a major problem with thinking that this could be scaled up without increasing the cost. What happens when we have hundreds of these things out there, and insurgents wise up to them? I can imagine the conversation: "Hey, check it out. Now we can get an X11 receiver and we can watch the video feed from all the nearby US troops' scout drones. Now we just wait for a drone to come…

So...what. The enemy can see where they placed their own bombs? This thing is going to be 100 meters or so (at most) away from a humvee with people in it. That was the same argument, by the way, for why it didn't matter that the drone feeds were non-encrypted. The enemy already knows where they are, they already know that the drone is there, the video feed gets them nothing.

The aerial drones are not immediately near ground troops. A little RC truck would never be very far from them. Therefore, by picking up video signals from the cheap recon device, combatants could know where the ground troops are going to be very soon and from what direction they're coming.

Furthermore, picking up the source of the RC controller would mean combatants could tell exactly where the troops are. In the case of an aerial drone, piloting happens from an air conditioned trailer, often across the globe. So that's less of an issue.

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