Books For The Troops

Abu Muquama is one of my favorite new blogs - by two people with serious cred in counterinsurgency (I've groveled and begged them to follow Totten and crosspost some of their stuff here, that's how good I think they are). You ought to be reading them.

Along with the Small Wars Journal, they are helping some folks in Afghanistan out - apparently, there is an ad-hoc counterinsurgency academy being run by some wicked smart mid-level Army officers.

They need books.

Amazon has books.

You have money.

Are you getting my drift? Throw down for a book or two and help make more wicked smart U.S. soldiers.

Urban Challenge 2007: Reflections

You can find my earlier reports from the Urban Challenge here:

• Bots With Body Language
• Urban Challenge Rushes
• A Day At The Races

NASCAR For Nerds?

Looking at the crowds at the 2007 Urban Challenge, you'd be forgiven for wondering if DARPA has touched off another of the famous side-effects from its research projects.

The event was open and free to the public. While the teams and DARPA staff were present for the duration, the spectators came and went through the day, making it hard to judge the crowd. But I'd say at least a third and maybe half of the attendees were fans. Some seemed to have found a new kind of southern California entertainment.

In reality, the goals of DARPA and the tastes of race fans are in conflict. Safety and reliability aren't usually compatible with speed and risk. (There could be a future for autonomous bot races on the tube, however. Rumor had it that the presence of Discovery Channel talent indicated a forthcoming special or mini-series on the Urban Challenge.)

The Grand Challenges are like NASCAR in some important respects, however.

Not For Amateurs Anymore

Back in the day, 'stock cars' could be built by shade tree mechanics (and may have spent non-race nights running moonshine). Those days are long gone, and NASCAR is all business with lots of sponsorship money at stake now. That's happening here as well.

Of the teams that reached the finals of the Urban Challenge, only one - UCF - did so without major sponsorship. The other shoestring efforts that were admitted to the competition fell out quickly during the qualifications.

It's a pattern common to technology. When a new area of research or products is broken open, the time and expense required to reach the 'edge' are relatively low. Those who date to the beginning of the microcomputer revolution will remember when anyone with a source of 8008 or 6500 chips and a modicum of funds could knock out a PC wannabe. A software 'product' took a few man-months. What we were actually producing were salable prototypes.

The Urban Challenge vehicles are also prototypes, and most teams will readily admit it. Sensors protrude, need to be cleaned periodically, and flake out from RFI, sun glare and dust. Server room rack mounts or Apple's consumer machines crammed into cargo areas are hardly milspec. The uniformed armed forces attendees on Friday were invariably polite, but I'm sure a number of them later had a good laugh considering how these machines would bear up in the heat, vibration and dirt of the sand box.

Miniaturization, environmental hardening, integration, testing and on and on. All of these are capital intensive, are required before seeing a return on the investment, and are beyond the charter or means of academic researchers and do-it-yourself teams. The barrier to entry is going up rapidly.

read the rest! »

Urban Challenge: Red's Revenge

It's just been announced that the Tartan Racing / CMU team has taken first place in the DARPA Urban Challenge with its 'Boss' autonomous vehicle. Stanford's 'Junior' placed second, in a reversal of the results from the 2005 desert Grand Challenge. Virginia Tech's Odin came third.

From the press conference: MIT came in fourth. The event was in fact decided on adjusted time, as none of the leading teams committed any major violations. It turns out that DARPA had a recon aircraft orbiting the site for the whole day, so the officials were able to replay incidents reported from the field to determine if they were in fact unsafe.

The length of the course averaged 55 miles, but varied by team since the routes weren't explicitly provided, only the target waypoints. Team Tartan's average winning speed was about 14 miles per hour, with Stanford about one mph slower.

I've now got a 400 mile drive on which to reflect on the meaning of the whole thing.

Update: Those reflections can be found here.

Urban Challenge: A Day At The Races

by Tim Oren

I'll start this with a big tip of the hat to DARPA and its director, Dr. Tony Tether (who has one of the world's best jobs). Not only do they push the bleeding edge and come up with clever ways to engage the research community in their endeavors, but they run well-managed events with a flair for showmanship that belies their status as a government and military agency. As an example of the latter, they had arranged for the Urban Challenge webcast and on-site video to be co-hosted by Jamie Hyneman and Grant Imahara of cable's Myth Busters, the current favorite show of the techie crowd.

They also have the guts to invite in the world press and the general public while trying something new to the world: Turning multiple autonomous vehicles loose on city streets at the same time, interspersed with human drivers. As Tether said at the start of the program, "If anyone tells you he knows what's going to happen, he's lying."

Since that test could likely take every bit of a short November day, the teams, staff and press assembled for their briefings at a chilly and dark 0600.

The Robots at Dawn

It was a day for old rivals to face off again. The Carnegie-Mellon 'Red Team' had been narrowly defeated in the 2005 Grand Challenge desert race, and were back as Tartan Racing, with their bot 'Boss'.

The victors of 2005, Stanford Racing, were also back with 'Junior', based on a Volkswagen Passat.

read the rest! »

DARPA Urban Challenge: Rushes

Here's the quick summary:

In a remarkable achievement, six of eleven bots that started finished the entire course.

Stanford's Junior crossed the finish line first, followed by CMU's Boss and Virginia Tech's Odin. That does NOT mean that Stanford is the winner, as the finish times need to be adjusted for staggered starts and stoppage time on the course. Also the total times will be further adjusted for traffic violation 'tickets' issued for moving and other violations on the course. Any of these three teams could be the ultimate winner.

We won't know until 10AM tomorrow who won, and whether DARPA considers the race to have been 'clean' enough to award the big prizes.

'Little Ben', and MIT and Cornell also finished the course, but well out of the running. The day featured bot traffic jams, the world's first bot vs. bot collision between MIT and Cornell, and the attempt of the Terramax robot truck to take out the old air base PX.

More as soon as I get a beer and download the camera.

Bots With Body Language

NB: I haven't been posting to Winds for some time, but Joe and I have agreed that one of the fields I've been tracking - robotics - crosses over between my own tech investing blogging and the audience here. So....

I'm now in Victorville, CA at the site of DARPA's Urban Challenge autonomous vehicle contest. The main event is tomorrow - today (Friday) was practice day. A good thing, too. The objective was to rehearse the 'launch' and 'recovery' procedures that will send the bots onto the test course tomorrow, where they will interact with each other, with several dozen Ford Tauruses manned by stunt drivers, and likely some of the parked junkers that I spied hidden in a side parking lot. Today started with all eleven finalist bots lined up in their chutes, engines running and laser sensors rotating.

read the rest! »

Military Transformation Uplink: September 2007

Militaries around the world are moving to modernize and transform themselves to meet the challenges of the 21st century. Our mission is to deliver a regular cross-section of relevant, on-target stories, news, and analysis that will help experts and interested laypeople alike stay up to speed on key military developments and issues. Stories are broken down by military category and presented as fast bullet points that orient you quickly, with accompanying links if you wish to pursue more in-depth treatments.

Some of This Month's Targets of Opportunity Include: Aging aircraft; F-22; F-35; India's big fighter contest; 2018 bomber; Next-gen gunships; Japan's stealth aircraft; JCA: just confusing; Poseidon down under; Boeing's invisible man; Odd new satellite; unmanned fighters & swarms; Cell phones & Patriots; Huge IT contracts; DARPA's Deep Green; Lots of MRAP; FCS spinouts; Fire Ball; Better body armor; Australia's new fleet; Korea: us too!; Britain's new carriers; US Navy's new bills; Russia's stealthy Stereguschiy; Remote firefighting; Coast Guard cutters; ADVENT of breakthrough jet engines; $1M wearable power prize; Sub-finding 'shark'; UK's Grand Challenge & flying saucers; Boeing's new plane design; DARPA's robot dog; New Russian nukes; Britain's new maintenance concept works; Israel prepares; Counter-insurgency air needs; Export controls and their blowback; CSAR-X: rescue me!; And much, much more...

• Air & Space Sector
• C4SI Dimension
• Land Sector
• Maritime Sector
• R&D: Far Out Concepts
• Strategic Weapons & Missile Defense
• Supply & Support
• Policy & Doctrine

This briefing comes from a team a team that includes professional publications Defense Industry Daily and The Aviation Week Group, with Winds of Change.NET acting as "neutral ground." It covers events over the summer season. To contact us with story tips, email transformation, over @windsofchange dot net.

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Military Transformation Uplink: June 2007

Militaries around the world are moving to modernize and transform themselves to meet the challenges of the 21st century. Our renewed mission is to deliver a monthly cross-section of relevant, on-target stories, news, and analysis that will help experts and interested laypeople alike stay up to speed on key military developments and issues. Stories are broken down by military category and presented as fast bullet points that orient you quickly, with accompanying links if you wish to pursue more in-depth treatments.

Some of This Month's Targets of Opportunity Include: Upgraded A-10s; Orbital Express; Hypersonics; Pod people; nEUROns; AARGMs, Spikes, & MOPs; Project Sandblaster; Compound helicopters; Stealth going mainstream; Routers in space; UAV swarms; Land Warrior RIP, Rifles that don't jam - but you can't have one; Counter-sniper systems; Mine-protected vehicles go big; Trophy ready in Israel - or how about a net instead; Border robots with guns; Non-lethal weapons; UCAVs from carriers; the ASDS fiasco; Firing NEMO; Virginia's new nose; Intercontinental cans of whup-ass; Paying for jets, not parts; EFP land mines - and the response; Inventory outsourcing in US military; Medical research; Bulgarian telemedicine; Privatized air tankers? Afghanistan doctrine; Canada's tank lesson in Afghanistan; 6-Day Satellites; Transformation & Air Power; Lebanon post-mortems; Medals for UAV crews? And much, much more...!

• Air & Space Sector
  
• C4SI Dimension
  
• Land Sector
  
• Maritime Sector
  
• Strategic Weapons & Missile Defense
  
• Supply & Support
  
• Transformation: Policy & Doctrine

This monthly briefing comes from a team a team that includes professional publications Defense Industry Daily and Aviation Week & Space Technology, and covers events over the last couple of months. To contact us with story tips, email transformation, over here @windsofchange dot net.

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The clash of convictions and the remaking of the world of wars

The outcome of modern wars is decided in the mind

Armed combat, of course, is not about to disappear, although it may increasingly take the form of 'asymmetric warfare' as seen in Iraq and Afghanistan. It could also take the shape of proxy war, like the one India is fighting in Jammu & Kashmir and the United States and NATO are fighting in Afghanistan. But days in which armed combat alone decided the fate of wars ended a long time ago: with World War II and perhaps, the India-Pakistan war of 1971.

This is old hat. All out war became unimaginable as soon as the major powers acquired nuclear weapons. Those that didn't have their own usually came under the umbrella of one of those that did. The game of nuclear deterrence--in spite of bizarrely escalating to the level where there were thousands of warheads--kept the peace. The stability/instability paradox argued that while nuclear deterrence ensured stability at the highest (nuclear) level of escalation, it nevertheless created instability at lower (non-nuclear) levels. The United States relied on this to drive the Soviets out of Afghanistan. But the Pakistani general staff realised just how low the ceiling was at Kargil in 1999-2000. They were fine so long as they were only arming and injecting jihadis into Jammu & Kashmir. But when they decided to take a step further and actually try to capture and hold territory, they quickly found out exactly where the buck stopped.

But the outcome of most of these asymmetrical, low-intensity wars can go either way.

read the rest! »

Military Transformation Uplink: May 2006

Militaries around the world are moving to modernize and transform themselves to meet the challenges of the 21st century. Our mission is to deliver a monthly cross-section of relevant, on-target stories, news, and analysis that will help experts and interested laypeople alike stay up to speed on key military developments and issues as we head into the USA's Memorial Day weekend. Stories are broken down by military category and presented as fast bullet points that orient you quickly, with accompanying links if you wish to pursue more in-depth treatments.

Some of This Month's Targets of Opportunity Include: F-22A Raptor; F-35 Joint Strike Fighter; No retirement for U-2; Huge blimps & ISIS; Portable weather balloon for communications; Mini-UAVs at the commando olympics; YOU can train on the US Army's latest weapon; Hybrid lack-of-vigor; 2nd place means no Trophy; Non-lethal anti-vehicle weapons; Troops that don't like the extra armor, Troops that love the extra armor; A preliminary scorecard for the First Information War; Britain's new carriers; Australia's new amphibious ships; Westpac keeps on expressin'; Seabasing?; RFID; Energy - A Conversation About Our National Addiction; Containerized hospitals; New US Air Force unis; MREs that don't suck quite so much; Getting lean; VDH on transformation & war; More procurement power to US combat commanders? And more...!

• Air & Space Sector
  
• C4SI Dimension
  
• Land Sector
  
• Maritime Sector
  
• Strategic Weapons & Missile Defense
  
• Supply & Support
  
• Transformation: Policy & Doctrine

Your editors Murdoc and Joe Katzman present this monthly briefing as part of a team that includes professional publications Defense Industry Daily and Military.com's DefenseTech. To contact us with story tips, email transformation, over here @windsofchange dot net.

read the rest! »

Military Transformation Uplink: April 2006

Militaries around the world are moving to modernize and transform themselves to meet the challenges of the 21st century. Our mission is to deliver a monthly cross-section of relevant, on-target stories, news, and analysis that will help experts and interested laypeople alike stay up to speed on key military developments and issues. Stories are broken down by military category and presented as fast bullet points that orient you quickly, with accompanying links if you wish to pursue more in-depth treatments.

Some of This Month's Targets of Opportunity Include: UAV plans; killer drone swarms; WALRUS mega-blimp extict?; Russian airlift for NATO; Hydras and Hellfire; space challenges; Secret weapon: two-way radios; Nano-sensors; Fighter jets as battlefield surveillance - brilliant or dumb?; money-saving supercarriers?; Littoral Combat Ships; Missile defense updates; Energy conservation now a Pentagon issue.

• Air & Space Sector
  
• C4SI Dimension
  
• Land Sector
  
• Maritime Sector
  
• Strategic Weapons & Missile Defense
  
• Supply & Support
  
• Transformation: Policy & Doctrine

Your editors Murdoc and Joe Katzman present this monthly briefing as part of a team that includes professional publications Defense Industry Daily, Military.com's DefenseTech, and eDefense Online. To contact us with story tips, email transformation, over here @windsofchange dot net.

read the rest! »

Military Transformation Uplink: March 2006

Militaries around the world are moving to modernize and transform themselves to meet the challenges of the 21st century. Our mission is to deliver a monthly cross-section of relevant, on-target stories, news, and analysis that will help experts and interested laypeople alike stay up to speed on key military developments and issues. Stories are broken down by military category and presented as fast bullet points that orient you quickly, with accompanying links if you wish to pursue more in-depth treatments.

Some of This Month's Targets of Opportunity Include: New 'bunker busters' that tunnel through stone; India moving toward more "strategic reach"; Euro UCAVs; Hunter-killer standoffs and Hellfire Jr.; FCS and urban warfare; Exoskeletons; Shooting down RPGs; Secret weapon - green laser pointers; Or how about laser blimps?; Conventional ballistic missiles and ray guns; USAF Smart Operations 21 process improvement; Budget games; QDR 2006 links and reactions; The Pentagon's FY 2007 budget request; The Pentagon's broken accounting system.

• Air & Space Sector
  
• C4SI Dimension
  
• Land Sector
  
• Maritime Sector
  
• Supply & Support
  
• Transformation: Policy & Doctrine

Your editors Murdoc and Joe Katzman present this monthly briefing as part of a team that includes professional publications Defense Industry Daily, Military.com's DefenseTech, and eDefense Online. To contact us with story tips, email transformation @windsofchange dot net.

read the rest! »