Information Interface

[a_majoor]

The MAV thread in equipment got me thinking about the need to pass information between soldiers, receive information from headquarters and remote devices like the MAV and in general, the idea of sending and processing information across the military.

Right now we have the TCCCS system, which has about the worst user interface ever (although it is based on SCO Unix software, which makes it strong and relatively crashproof), and has fairly limited distribution due to the massive expense. Here is an alternative system which would allow the passage of information in Voice (using Voice over IP or VoIP technology), text and graphics. Even if the final product is twice or three times as expensive as promised, it would still be affordable and available in useful quantities.

http://www.technologyreview.com/articles/05/08/issue/editor.asp?p=0

From the Editor: The Hundred-Dollar Laptop
By Jason Pontin August 2005

In May, at the Wall Street Journal's D3 conference outside San Diego (an event attended by technology princes like Bill Gates and Steve Jobs), I saw the elements of a computer that, if it were built, would wonderfully improve the fortunes of poor children.

Nicholas Negroponte, founder and chairman of MIT's Media Lab, showed attendees the screen of the Hundred-Dollar Laptop, or HDL. Beginning in 2006, he said, he would build 100 million to 200 million HDLs every year--and distribute them to the children of the poor world. Many attendees had read about Negroponte's idea and dismissed it as quixotic. Hearing how an HDL might be built, seeing a part of it, and realizing the scale of the project produced a rustle of delighted interest.

Negroponte recently wrote to me about what he hoped the HDL would do: "Education: one laptop per child. Whatever big problem you can imagine, from world peace to the environment to hunger to poverty, the solution always includes education. We need to depend more on peer-to-peer and self-driven learning. The laptop is one important means of doing that."

Can a $100 computer be built? Maybe. Negroponte does not plan to use three expensive components of conventional laptops: Microsoft Windows, a traditional flat-panel screen, and a hard drive. Instead, the HDL will be loaded with Linux and other open-source software; its display will use either a rear-projection screen or a type of electronic ink invented at the MIT Media Lab; and it will store one gigabyte's worth of files in flash memory. The elimination of crappy software and moving parts would make this very rugged on its own

The HDL has a number of other, intriguing features. Since many villages in the poor world do not have electricity, the machines may be powered by either a crank or "parasitic power"--that is, typing. Once turned on, HDLs will automatically connect to one another using a "mesh network" initially developed at MIT and the Media Lab. In the mesh network each laptop serves as an information-relaying node. Households that have HDLs will be able to communicate with each other by e-mail or voice calls.

Most importantly, Negroponte wants every mesh network to have access to the Internet. The laptops will be loaded with Skype, a communications application that provides free telephone calls. Consider: the most forlorn parts of the globe might become part of the wider world. We would want access to the DWAN, not the Internet, of course

The most vital part of the plan is also, perhaps, the most challenging. Internet access is not cheap in the poor world; infrastructure is fragile and expensive to maintain. When I challenged Negroponte about this "hidden cost," he conceded, "[This is] a very real issue. We are looking at ways to spend less than $1 per month per child." This is where the big expense comes, but we would want and need a different infrastructure than what is being discussed

At first glance, Negroponte's economics seem rational enough. The HDL will not be sold commercially; instead, education ministries and other government agencies will purchase it. Profits will be very limited: merely $10 per machine for equipment manufacturers. Of course, building a laptop for $100 demands what economists call "economies of scale." Negroponte's pilot project requires commitments for at least six million orders. So far, China has expressed an interest in buying two million machines, and Brazil one million. At least at first, the machines would be built in China, where Negroponte has been talking to manufacturers.

Not everyone is convinced. On the record, few are willing to cast doubt on such a worthy project, but some informed people to whom I spoke wondered whether the Chinese were accurately estimating the costs of manufacturing the HDL.

But most people, like D3's attendees, are excited by the prospect of the HDL. Why? Because it represents something of a second chance. Nothing much came of attempts in the late 1990s to address inequities in the distribution of information technologies; bridging the "digital divide" is no longer a fashionable cause. But the divide is real enough for all that. According to the World Bank, the number of Internet users per capita in the poor world is 40 percent that of the rest of the world. The rich world has three times as many computers than the poor. For more than five billion people, the Internet is only a rumor. Inevitably, poor children are the biggest losers: their lives are pathetically circumscribed. While they need clean water, food, and health care, they also need education and more-expansive horizons.

Attempts to bridge the digital divide failed because there was no bridge. Nicholas Negroponte's Hundred-Dollar Laptop could be that bridge. Do you think the HDL can be built? Write and tell me at jason.pontin@technologyreview.com.

The internet infrastructure in a military version of this machine would be raised and maintained by the Signals branch, using portable equipment in CP vans and Command vehicles (i.e. the OC's vehicle and rover would contain these devices), as well as special Signals vehicles (including UAV relays or even satellite systems) to create wider networks using wireless routers and protable servers, as well as long range radio links to "trunk" network information across long distances. (The laptop devices would work fairly well as "Rad B" and "Rad D" on their own). High bandwidth applications such as video transmission would have to be tightly controlled so it doesn't overwhelm the network, and the network itself needs to be highly redundant to ensure reliability and "graceful failure" in the event of battle damage or other adverse events.

 

[a_majoor]

http://www.technologyreview.com/articles/05/09/issue/forward_radio.0.asp

Hardware: Radio Communications
By Erika Jonietz September 2005



Secure wireless-communications systems and sophisticated radar have transformed warfare. But manufacturing them is costly and time consuming: the delicate radio components must be connected manually, increasing the systems' size and decreasing their reliability.

In an effort to make such systems smaller, cheaper, and more dependable--for example, shrinking a TV-size military radio down to walkie-talkie size--military contractors are developing a sort of "circuit board" into which designers could simply plug radio components, much as engineers lay out chips on computers' familiar green motherboards.

Many radar and radio communications systems under development use millimeter-wavelength transmissions; such systems enable long-range communications and image resolution high enough to let soldiers easily discern whether a potential enemy is concealing a gun or bomb.

While some millimeter-wave systems are already in use, they are too bulky and expensive for widespread deployment. "Ideally, you would like to be able to have things like a millimeter-wave radar on every Humvee," says Ezekiel Kruglick, a consultant for the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).

But routing the radio waves between the components of such a system requires custom-built channels or tubes. "Currently, [millimeter-wave] systems often look more like plumbing gone mad than high-tech electronics," says John D. Evans, a program manager for DARPA's Microsystems Technology Office.

As part of a DARPA project, BAE Systems and Rohm and Haas have developed a process that allows them to cheaply produce the radio frequency equivalents of circuit boards. The process uses a unique photoresist, a light-sensitive material similar to those used in semiconductor fabrication but 50 to 100 times as thick, to build the three-dimensional metal structures needed to connect millimeter-wave radio components.

These circuit-board analogues are expected to decrease the size of radio and radar systems to one-twentieth of what they are today. They could also lower the cost of today's multimillion-dollar systems by as much as 99 percent and enable new applications, such as active defense systems that would calculate the trajectories of incoming mortar shells and launch countermeasures to intercept them.

Radio-frequency circuit boards could eventually work their way into a variety of consumer applications as well. They could, say, bring down the cost of active cruise-control systems, which can detect other cars and brake automatically. And the same manufacturing process could also allow the mass production of tiny vacuum electronic devices. These could enable, for instance, satellite-based TV and Internet access for moving vehicles.

BAE is on schedule to build demonstration systems using the new radio-frequency circuit boards by the end of 2007. Before the decade has ended, the technology could yield cutting-edge collision-avoidance radars, as well as high-bandwidth data, voice, and video satellite communications cheap enough for most cars. -- By Erika Jonietz

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