5 ms·
Misleading title and very long article that boils down to: solo passionate inventor comes up with invention to reduce friendly fire, in one year, after sufferin
by relix 6y ago
Misleading title and very long article that boils down to: solo passionate inventor comes up with invention to reduce friendly fire, in one year, after suffering a friendly fire incident, and tries to get the military to adopt it, but the military does not want his particular solution.
The only testimony about why the military is not interested in his solution comes from the inventor himself. The military meanwhile does invest in different solutions, which the inventor claims are inferior.
> “I gotta give ’em credit for trying,” he said. “They spent about a billion dollars, and the thing wouldn’t work with [individual] soldiers.
To me, it seems more likely that the military has identified certain disadvantages to his proposed solution, than that there is some sort of conspiracy theory against solo inventors or this inventor specifically. I find it hard to believe that this person could come up with a solution in one year, that is superior to anything that professionals have been able to come up with after 30 years and billions of dollars of investment, but that the military dismisses his idea out of hand just because he's a solo inventor and not a big contractor.
The fact that the military has and is investing billions of dollars to try and solve friendly fire events shows they're definitely interested in reducing friendly fire, but the article over and over tries to imply the military isn't that keen on it. The title itself implies that too.
Not once in this 6000 word article is there a definitive reasoning for why his solution was rejected. It's all just conjecture and testimony from the inventor himself. Poor.
- PicassoCTs 6y agoAnything that can reliably identify you in combat, is a homing beacon for any enemy. Even if you have to "light yourself up", that can be done with disposable drones, and then strike at the targets. Thus, you will have to reduce battlefield id systems the more sophisticated a enemies technology becomes.
- thedrbrian 6y agoDoesn’t mention anyway to change the code either. So all the energy has to do is record the good guy IFF and gaffa tape a copy of the device to their guys and they’re good.
- TeMPOraL 6y agoAnd a solution that would require code change isn't nice either, as rekeying equipment and spreading the public keys around is a huge logistics ordeal. These problems are never as easy as "pulse some light with some crypto on top". Hell, the very existence of an active IFF signal is already something that distinguishes you as a military target, so the enemy could just use your IFF as a homing beacon.
- Aeolun 6y agoFrom the article I understand that it’s not an active device. The beacon is passive until it is illuminated by the firing party. Theoretically maybe still a problem if the enemy is waiting for that moment to shoot at you, but to wait for a friendly fire incident seems a bit inefficient.
- h0l0gr4ph1c 6y agoso the firing party has an active homing beacon, aimed at you, just before they are about to fire? hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm yep no problems with that approach at all
- Aeolun 6y agoCan you avoid a hellfire missile if you know it’s coming? Those things use active radar themselves, or alternatively, follow a laser (presumably generally from the firing vehicle). I’m not sure if the temporary radar pulse is going to make much difference.
- TeMPOraL 6y ago> Can you avoid a hellfire missile if you know it’s coming? Not really, but if the aircraft launching that Hellfire announces itself like that prior to firing, just to check who you are, it may give you just enough information to fire at it preemptively, or at least know (or let others know) where to look for it. It's not a problem if the US is fighting a technologically inferior opponent, but apparently (from what I've read on HN the other day), the US military is retooling itself towards competition with China, so they have to consider their technological trickery being used against them.
- tomrod 6y agoIt sounds like the investor doesn't get the SBIR/STTR process and failed to find a Program of Record who could fund a solution, or, having found such funding sources, didn't listen to the customer need.
- BiteCode_dev 6y agoYou can place a bomb that triggers only if a beacon is there to reflect light. It's a hard problem.
- bbarnett 6y agoI agree with what you said as one possible path to "why", but one look at the history of the Bradley Tank shows how meaningless time/money can be in large orgs. Especially political ones. Couple this with big name/external validation, and the fact that the best and brightest techs don't flock to the military (too dogmatic)... The F35 is the new Bradley tank, and how much was spent? Anyhow, you're probably correct, but I take exception to the reasoning being how much the military spent, or how long they worked at it. (note: In times of war, all the political jockeying ends, disappears, and the military becomes lean and efficient. In times of peace, politics exist, including funding games.)
- p_l 6y agoThe difference is that the Bradley was actually a good design - the main source of bad PR about the project is also the person responsible for significant portion of the cost overruns and problems.
- tomatotomato37 6y agoThe Bradley was such an atrocious design for it's intended purpose (an APC) that it managed to invent a new category of vehicle which turned out to be useful as a modern day cavalry.
- p_l 6y agoExcept by the time Bradley design was finalizing towards prototypes, the new category was already defined. It was never supposed to be just another APC, because M113 was already known to be deficient, and the long and tortured process happened because Army didn't know the goal yet - and thus required exploratory work. And then BMP-1 kicked the anthill.
- i80and 6y agoI'm interested in hearing more about this: I greatly enjoyed The Pentagon Wars of course, but I haven't heard a defense of the Bradley's development process yet
- Joker_vD 6y ago> The fact that the military has and is investing billions of dollars to try and solve friendly fire events shows... ...that they're willing to spend billions of dollars and account for them as "investment in prevention of FF". Whether that means they actually want to prevent friendly fire or not is a different matter altogether, because of the way the money-distributing and -spending decisions are made.
- girvo 6y agoYou’re probably right, but military procurement is a slow moving, change and risk adverse nightmare too: that’s probably just as much the reason why he had little success, even if we do take him at his word. Simply, he’s not Raytheon et al. It’s a rare piece of tech that any large military adopts from individual inventors.