The Pentagon's Ultimate Home Theater 242
Steve Silberman writes "I was the first reporter to see the inside of a new battle-simulation system designed by the Institute for Creative Technologies, a 'military-entertainment' think tank sponsored by the Defense Department. Starting in September, Marines, infantrymen, and Air Force pilots will train for war in Matrix-like rooms in Oklahoma simulating urban and desert environments, with surround sound and photorealistic rendering of bombing runs and other scenarios. It may or may not be the future of military training, but it's certainly the future of home gaming. My article, 'The War Room,' will appear in the September issue of Wired."
"Battle Simulation" (Score:5, Funny)
Re:"Battle Simulation" (Score:2)
It probably is, too. I remember reading in Wired back in '97 or so about a unit that was training Marines using a Doom 2 mod they'd written. They've probably moved over to UT in the mean time, but I think they might consider moving back...
Wait (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Wait (Score:5, Insightful)
But it's a good point.
Simulations can be designed to train soldiers to take unneccessary or life-threatening risks so long as they involve a high amount of simulated payout and little or no punishment for simulated failure.
I seriously wouldn't be surprised if this is the way simulators are used to train soldiers.
I'm not trying to say that the Military has no regard for human life, but it's no secret that military operations are often valued in terms of numbers of soldiers killed per objective gained. Convincing young kids that they're supposed to risk their life for any intermediate goal is difficult, but not impossible (note that it's now "the country" young men risk their lives for, not "securing the powerplant" or "capturing person X". No one wants to be told that they're giving their life for a small piece of the puzzle.).
Making it easier to convince these soldiers by pre-simulating rewarding scenarios based on risk-taking may make soldiers more compliant.
Re:Wait (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Wait (Score:2, Interesting)
And, all too often, against his buddies. About [cbsnews.com] half the persian gulf [aol.com] war casualties were friendly fire, not even counting murders and self-inflicted casualties. And sometimes they buddies you're fighting against are high on speed [go.com]
Back on topic -- training soldiers in a video game will just make them that much more careless in this regard. You lose somethin
Are you high? (Score:5, Insightful)
I also think that, especially in today's environments, that the military has a healthy respect for human life outside of its own. How one achieves an objective is rapidly becoming just as important as accomplishing it. US policy is being judged on how well a soldier responds to a shoot/don't shoot scenerio or how much collateral damage is inflicted in an operation. Especially now that media organizations around the world can publicise every incident in near real-time.
Yes, as a profession of war, the military must accept a doctrine of kill or be killed when in combat but it is simplistic in the extreme to imply that means the military has no regard for human life.
Re:Are you high? (Score:2)
Enemies are people too.
Re:Are you high? (Score:2)
Ignorant american's are a dime a dozen.
(Well $.50 an hour if you are the army but I think they are just trying to be generous)
Re:Wait (Score:2)
You shouldn't shoot people in the face. It makes it difficult to harvest the retinas.
First Person Shooter (Score:3, Funny)
Re:First Person Shooter (Score:2)
Re: Home Theatre (Score:5, Funny)
Gentlemen this is the war room, you can't fight in here
Well now ... (Score:2, Funny)
Realistic (Score:5, Funny)
Yeah, that's nice and all... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Yeah, that's nice and all... (Score:2)
Future solders (Score:5, Funny)
Bunny hopping their way to victory!
Re:Future solders (Score:2, Informative)
Bunny Hopping is a movement technique that appeared when players found out that they could use a design flaw in the Quake/QuakeWorld physics engine to increase their movement speed, by continiously jumping and strafing from side to side, while adjusting the view accordingly.
Players continued bunny hopping in Quake II and III, even though the physics engines were modified t
How long (Score:3, Interesting)
Or will these leave millitary use and get sold to private companies to have people pay to play in them?
Re:How long (Score:2)
Replacing training with intution.... (Score:5, Interesting)
Intution is of no use when there are snipers hidden in a street to kill you and you panic. That is the army tries to replace intution with training.
As a man under fire, my friend used to say how many times training and automatic reflex saved his life instead of intution. if pentagon thinks they can replace training with intution they are building a bad army.
Re:Replacing training with intution.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Replacing training with intution.... (Score:2, Interesting)
I remember one particular scenario that showed a group of shadowy figures running toward the user's position through the forest. Gunshots are heard from the forest and many riflemen will open fire before they properly identify the target... which is a group of women and children running from their
I've seen it once or twice (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:I've seen it once or twice (Score:2, Informative)
Re:I've seen it once or twice (Score:2)
Re:I've seen it once or twice (Score:2)
Re:I've seen it once or twice (Score:2)
Training for what?! (Score:3, Informative)
Jesus christ, this is the sort of training they get?!
Limited Lethality my arse. Nothing dropped from a fighter-bomber can be considered "limited lethality" - Kinetic energy alone does a good job of eroding that particular definition
Re:Training for what?! (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Training for what?! (Score:3, Funny)
Actually, everything dropped from a fighter-bomber is "limited lethality", otherwise the first bombing run would have destroyed the universe.
Or to put it another way, limited != small.
Re:Training for what?! (Score:2)
Where's that dang Peace Simulation? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Where's that dang Peace Simulation? (Score:2)
Take a look at games now. It looks to me that the biggest genres are 1) first person shooters 2) some variation on military or war and 3) the remainder make up only 10% of the market, it seems.
Re:Where's that dang Peace Simulation? (Score:2)
Re:Where's that dang Peace Simulation? (Score:3, Funny)
What's the use of a Peace Simulation? (Score:2)
Re:Where's that dang Peace Simulation? (Score:3, Insightful)
But seriously, the point of all this high-tech military wankery is to figure out how to inflict very brief and intense moments of horrific violence with the obje
Re:Where's that dang Peace Simulation? (Score:2)
Yeah, it's called playing the pacifist in a Civilization game. You do end up fighting, because people will attack you, although it's amazing what you can accomplish with foresight and diplomacy. I'm no master of the game but I've managed to win the game on the third difficulty level or so without ever attacking anyone but barbarians.
Granted that's not as peaceful as one could be in a perfect world, and in the real world those "barbarians" are people with their own ways of life. However in Civ the Barbar
4 Years too early!! (Score:4, Interesting)
I guess I was just 4 years early... those skills are in very high demand, now.
Conventional War (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously. The leadership failures that allowed (or even encouraged) the US military atrocities at Abu Ghraib have cost us far more than any VR simulation, and will continue to cost us as a nation for decades, in both world respect and in the recruitment of America-hating terrorists.
Perhaps the miltary should shelve some of this gee-whiz "VR-tainment" favor of simple classrooms with wooden benches and a blackboard and high-ranking instructors who state unequivocally that torture is un-American, repugnant to our values, and will not be tolerated at all in the US military.
Paraphrasing the Christian Bible, Mark 8:36,for what shall it profit an army, if it shall defeat the whole world, and lose its own soul?
Re:Conventional War (Score:3, Insightful)
The ethics debate about interrogation is very high level and complex. When I was on vacation last week I think there was an article in US News and World Report which discussed the differences in interrogation methodologies used by the FBI and CIA. They are about as 180 degress from each other as you can get. The FBI goes for a hearts and minds stategy and the article made note th
Re:Conventional War (Score:5, Insightful)
I am a military policeman for the Air Force. (For the record, in the USAF, we're called Security Forces.)
Troops are briefed on the Geneva conventions every time we mobilize to deploy. We're briefed everytime we get to a foreign nation. We're briefed every time we simulate deployment. Practically any time someone mentiones mobilization... the briefing comes. Further, every year we are required to take tests verifying our understanding of the conventions. In simulated exercises, we have to abide by the rules. In every briefing, we're told what we can and cannot do and we're told what the consequences are for breaking the rules.
Those soldiers at Abu Ghraid knew the rules. This wasn't a case of ignorance of the law. Further, they knew quite well that only lawful orders are to be followed. So the "My commander made me do it!" excuse is laughable.
More training isn't needed. And as we're seeing from the many investigations and courts martial, Geneva Convention rule violations are not tolerated.
The prison abuses aren't an institutional problem, they're a humanity problem. They're a byproduct of war, and nothing will change that reality. As members of the armed forces, we strive to be better than that; in the overwhelming majority of cases, we are. But, unfortunately, we'll see the darkness of man again when the next conflict breaks out.
War is ugly, and it brings out the worst in humanity.
Pomme de Terre!
Re:Conventional War (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Conventional War (Score:2)
Yes, they do help recruitment IMHO. I know a good number of Americans were inspired to enlist by the 9/11 attacks, and it wouldn't surprise me if other anti-American atrocities have a similar effect.
But I'm sick and tired of some of these types that will jump on us and accuse us of violating Geneva Conventions, while spouting off "but we have to understand their reasons" about 9/11
Re:Conventional War (Score:4, Insightful)
I'd like to add one thing: as a medic, I took the Geneva Conventions pretty damn seriously. Most of the wounded I treated in Desert Storm were Iraqis who, in some cases, had been trying to kill me a little while before, and I gave them the exact same level of care I gave wounded Americans. Part of the reason for upholding this standard is entirely pragmatic: enemy soldiers are much more likely to surrender, rather than fight to the death, if they know they'll be treated well. (E.g., Germans toward the end of WW2 were much more likely to surrender to US and UK forces than they were to the Soviets.) The other part of it is moral: it simply does not matter if those we fight are evil, whether in their treatment of prisoners or in any other aspect; we have to be better than that, or we risk losing everything we have sworn to defend.
Re:Conventional War (Score:2)
As for the world, I don't think those videos would ever really play into getting people on our side. Taking a very simplistic and jaded view to it, the extemists would just take it as proof that they can meaningfully stand up to the West. Moderates and liberals will probably be mortified and distance the
Re:Conventional War (Score:2)
The soldiers their are fighting an enemy that can't be defeated with out really going after them, the results of which would be a serious PR nightmare and a country and world dead set against
Re:Conventional War (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Conventional War (Score:2)
You also talk of fighting 'fair'. Which part of invading an innocent sovereign nation on false pretenses, with faked 'evidence' of guilt is fair? You seem to forget who started the whole thing with their 'shock and awe' campaign. Was that fair to the civilians who died?
You talk of freedom. What makes you the sole-giver-of-freedom? What makes you think Moqtada is not also interested in freedom? I think he is - just a different kind of freedom: his peo
Re:Conventional War (Score:2)
The number of Iraq civilian casualties reported in the media is at least 11619.
What the ratio of Reported In the Media to total actual casualties might be is an open question.
Re:Conventional War (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Conventional War (Score:2)
My facts can be easily verified by the use of a good recent encyclopedia and various news sources for the past two years. If I am an idiot, so are they.
BTW, see shlaf's posting for justification of my disclaimer.
shlaf:
By your argument there would be no American (USA) people. Being an American (USA), I beg to differ.
Some Palestinian Arabs (to differentiate them from Israeli Arabs who are citizens of Israel) kill innocent civilians with suicide bombs. The Israeli government kills innocent civilians wi
Re:Conventional War (Score:2)
Oh, you say we have to clean our own house first? If we don't win this, cleanly or otherwise, we won't have a house left. Osama, Moqtada, and the mullahs in Iran would love nothing more than to see freedom fall.
IMHO, it's better to "fall" as what you are than it is to fall as what you are not. If freedom vanishes from the face of the earth, let it be because it was freedom to the bitter end. Better to die free than to live on with the blood of repression and the stain of hypocrisy on your hands.
Re:Conventional War (Score:2)
The only counter-point I would make to it is this: Tolerance is, by necessity, intolerant of intolerance.
Who knows, your point and mine may be very reconcilable. I hope they are.
Re:Conventional War (Score:5, Insightful)
Better Col. Dubois than Chickenhawk Cheney or Wolfowitz.
I just recenty re-read Starship Troopers (for the, what, 10th time? I'm a big Heinlein fan); for those unfamiliar with the novel it is perhaps Heinlein's most controversial novel (it's often maligned as "fascist") because the society Heinlein approvingly depicted in the novel limits the franchise (that is, the right to vote) to persons who have voluntarily completed a term of "Federal Service", which (essentially) means military service.
Heinlein was not necessarily advocating this form of goverment (any more than the constitutional monarchy in Double Star, the world government in Stranger in a Strange Land, or the Howard Family gerontocracy on Secundus in Time Enough for Love), nor did he claim that such a government would be wiser than another form (indeed, he has that government specifically teach that that form is not necessarily wiser).
But Heinlein was making the argument that those who voluntarily place themselves at risk to defend their country are demonstrating that they consider their country's survival more important than their own, and that thus they can be better trusted to put the national interest ahead of their particular interests when voting or otherwise exercising power (but also see Heinlein's possible rebuttal to himself in his much later The Cat Who Walked Through Walls).
Heinlein's argument seems particularly timely when a President who managed to avoid Vietnam by getting a heavily sought after post in the Air Guard defending Alabama from the Viet Cong and a Vice President who "had other priorities" during Vietnam (enough other priortities to get five draft deferments!) have sent 970 American men and women to die in what increasingly appears to be an unecessary and ultimately pointless war -- and are questioning the patriotism of an opponent who actually volunteered for dangerous duty in Vietnam, got shot at, saved the lives of his men, and won numerous decorations for that.
For Paul Wolfowitz, the Iraq war is pieces on a game board (and in testimony to Congress he even forgot about 200 dead American soldiers), for Dick Cheney, numbers on a Haliburton balance sheet, for George W. Bush, the chance to pose for re-election ads in a flight suit on the deck of an aircraft carrier. But for 970 American soldiers, Iraq has been a place to die; and for countless others a place to leave arms and legs and youth -- or at Abu Ghraib, honor -- behind.
Maybe Heinlein had a good idea. We can do better by our soldiers and by our country than the Boy President.
Re:Conventional War (Score:2)
Two alternative translations:
"After all, what good does it do for a person to acquire the who world, and pay for it with life?" -- Scholars Version
"For what does it profit a man ti gain the whole world, and pay for it with his life." --Revised Standard Version
Re:Conventional War (corrections) (Score:2)
"For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?" implies that is is foolish to risk corruption and immorality for the sake of worldly glory.
but
"For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole w
Re:Conventional War (corrections) (Score:2)
Contextually - you know, that pesky thing scholars like to ignore too often - "soul" still makes more sense.
Mark 8:34-36 (KJV):
34 And when he had called the people unto him with his disciples also, he said unto them, Whosoever will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me. 35 For whosoever will save his life shall lose it; but whosoever shall lose his life for my sake and the gospel's, the same shall save it. 36 For wha
Re:Conventional War (corrections) (Score:2)
This interpretation may be in line with theological tradition-- but new translations are frequently commissioned with the intent of realigning ones faith with the "original" sources.
The Revised Standard Version is not exactly a radical translation-- in fact, it was adopted by many American Protestant and,
they need that much hardware to (Score:2, Interesting)
Why do they still need pilots in the planes? (Score:2, Interesting)
Why are the machines of war still designed to carry meat-sacks around inside them?!
Re:Why do they still need pilots in the planes? (Score:2)
You ever seen "Darkstar"?
Re:Why do they still need pilots in the planes? (Score:4, Insightful)
So that the pilot, upon seeing the target is not quite as imagined, can abort the mission
So that you can have an accurate, in person, assessment of the actual scene. There are quite a few videos floating around from Iraq that show last minute targeting changes only possible by an onscene human.
program the plane with a target, press the big red "Go Bomb" button
We have those now. They're called cruise missiles. Or in the ultimate sense, ICBM's.
But they're working on mutiple types of UCAV's. I expect we'll see a scenario whereby a few of these are slaved to a piloted control A/C (F-22 or AC-130 maybe). Give the UCAV's a simple AI for the flight to the target area ("Stay next to Mother"), and then the human aircrew can designate one or more targets to each. ("#1, these coordinates, #2, that truck, #3 circle until further notice)
Finally, it is MUCH harder to hack or jam the control system of a human piloted vehicle. You really don't want your unmanned vehicle to be captured in flight and turned against you.
Re:Why do they still need pilots in the planes? (Score:2)
A pilot controlling the aircraft via a VR link could do all the same things a pilot in the craft could do, no? It's not like these guys are hanging out the top of an open cockpit, gritted teeth and faces blackened by exhaust fumes any more - it's HUDs and laser guidance. They have no more of
Re:Why do they still need pilots in the planes? (Score:2)
From what I've heard, flying a Predator is significantly harder than flying a real jet. You don't have the same feel, or vision out the cockpit. Flying straight and level is OK, but trying to jink around a
Re:Why do they still need pilots in the planes? (Score:2)
Re:Why do they still need pilots in the planes? (Score:5, Insightful)
There are lots of reasons, but two which you should be intimately familiar with as a computer professional are:
Latency and DoS attacks.
Even if the soldier is within 10 miles of the UAV, even if they use hardware instead of software, even if they reduce latency to the absolute minimum possible with today's technology, the soldier is still milliseconds behind in the actual action on site, and the equipment is milliseconds behind the soldier's reaction time.
Secondly, even with super secure communications, spread spectrum, frequency hopping, multiple parallel channels, etc there still exists a significant possibility that someone else could adversely affect the operation of the UAV with a fairly simple and cheap electronic circuit. Even if it only increased the latency by a few mS as the systems try to cope, employed at the right time in a battle, it could easily give the opposing force the window they need to disable the UAV. It wouldn't be easy to track down and bomb like the GPS jammers Iraq used in the beginning of the war since it would only need to be on for a few seconds at a time and could be carried.
-Adam
Re:Why do they still need pilots in the planes? (Score:2)
The technology doesn't exist to remotely control them yet. At least not safely.
Don't you remember the unmanned drones used in Afghanistan?
Warning! (Score:5, Informative)
The last paragraph of the article gives the main surprise away of one of the best science-fiction books on Earth: "Ender's Game"
I recommend Ender's Game, easy to read and great, and recommend against reading the last paragraph of the article if you haven't already.
Re:Warning! (Score:2)
Actually, that wasn't that big of spoiler. I know this because I recently read the book and figured out what the spoiler gave away halfway into it. When I got to the reveal, I was like "uh yeah, figured". Fortunately, I think the author anticipated this and provided more to the ending unrelated to what the article mentioned that was far more interesting.
My point?
That good huh? (Score:5, Funny)
Toys for Boys (Score:5, Insightful)
I am tired of the miliporn covered on /., its getting to be like Popular Science. Not one of these billion dollar toys could prevent twenty halfwits armed with boxcutters pulling the US economy down to its knees and dragging the entire nation into a paranoid delusion that is likely to last decades.
Re:Toys for Boys (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Toys for Boys (Score:2)
That's a good, cheap, cost-effective strategy. Much too cost-effective, in fact. If we didn't have enemies, how could we convince the American taxpayers to give $500,000,000 of their money to our military every year? Defense contractors gotta eat too, ya know.
If we ever did run out of enemies, we'd have to create some more, just to keep the machine fed...
Re:Toys for Boys (Score:2)
Re:Toys for Boys (Score:2)
Wow. (Score:3, Insightful)
How does that make you feel? Knowing that you are playing the same games that are used for training for soldier's in the army?
Am I the only one that is scared by that thought?
Is our nation a nation of war and destruction? Are our future young children going to grow up being trained to kill?
I know it's a bit of a stretch to say that playing one of these games makes you suitable to the army. But it's still kind of frightening. Aren't we as civilians supposed to be spending our time actually building our country? Does anyone else think that we should be thinking about this?
I value the future of our country; and I do not want us mentally to be become hardened killers... I honestly hope I am not alone in this.
By the way, did anyone else think of Bradbury's short story "The Veldt" [veddma.com] when this article came up?
P.S. Strange that this short story is available on the web... Hmm, google is great, what can I say... Buy one of Bradbury's books if you haven't, he's a great read.
Re:Wow. (Score:2)
Am I the only one that is scared by that thought?
Is our nation a nation of war and destruction? Are our future young children going to grow up being trained to kill?
I feel about like I would if my son were into martial arts. In teaching self-defense, they usually teach you how to break bones, shatter knees and elbows, and often how to kill. My kid would be safe from bullies, and
Re:America's Army (Score:2)
NYT Article... (Score:2, Informative)
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/22/magazine/22GAME
Re:NYT Article... (Score:2, Informative)
I didn't know that the Times was also working on a story until about three days ago -- the kind of "coincidence" that gives journalists heart attacks. In his fine piece for the Times, however, Clive Thompson focused on the console videogame as
The Penguin's Ultimate Home Theater (Score:2)
and half a dozen Windows and Linux boxes down the hall
Reading the article showed me it was not an all Linux shop.
Makes me wonder what the Windows boxes are for, to inject some realistic unpredictability or the DRM?
Somehow I doubt that... (Score:2)
"Matrix-like" WTF? (Score:2)
Right. They'll have sockets embedded in their heads to jack in, and if they get killed in the sim, they really die. And the whole system is powered by their bodily heat.
Probably "Holodeck" is what he's thinking of.
At least he was honest (Score:2, Insightful)
Actually there's a better reason (Score:2)
Re:Oh great... (Score:2)
Way to lead by example.
Re:Oh great... (Score:2)
So the educated come to visit us and use language that most of us wouldn't use in a public forum?
On the one hand, we have his use of 'dumbfuck'. And on the other, we have your email moniker 'sexwithanimals'. Hoist on your own petard, my friend!
Re:Oh great... (Score:2)
Oh spare me. (Score:2)
The sims described are in many ways like the "Shoot/Don't Shoot" sims police go through to determine when to pull their gun. What? You don't remember the stor
Re:Oh spare me. (Score:2)
Re:Oh spare me. (Score:2)
If the system over time proves cost effective then those savings could be rolled into other programs. Maybe happen, maybe n
Re:Oh spare me. (Score:2)
Re:Oh great... (Score:2, Insightful)
he dumbfucks whose ways to kill saved your ass in WWII, if memory serves correct.
A few years late, IIRC. Britain entered the war from the start, because they had promised to help protect Poland. The USA only entered the war because Pearl Harbour forced them to; until then, they couldn't care less that the Nazis were taking over the world.
Oh, and if any country could claim credit for winning WWII, it would have to be the Soviet Union.
We ALL won (Score:2)
And if any country (besides Germany) could claim credit for starting WWII, it might be Russia. Stalin signing a pact with Hitler probably enboldened him to start the thing in the first place.
Several years ago, I came across a history book on WWII, encapsulating WWII from the 4 allies' perspective. It was basically the French, British, Russian, and US high school syllabus.
All 4 sections were strikingly simi
Re:Oh great... (Score:2, Interesting)
That's only a half truth, really. Yes, the majority of the public was against the war, mainly because of the previous war, which was needless, but FDR knew war in Europe was necessary.
And yes, the soviets did most of the killing, but the US' lend lease arguably
Re:I wonder... (Score:2)
Re:When is the September issue supposed to be out? (Score:2)