The TAPSS system [Tenacious Automatic Precision Shooting System] is much more accurate than a traditional human sniper team for both the first and second shots fired … for a range of 1500m. A traditional sniper weapon’s maximum range is typically limited to 600-800 m. Kills have been recorded at longer ranges than this, but it is typically considered to be a “lucky shot”. The TAPSS automated firing system pushes the useful range of the sniper weapon out to 1500 m.
Each 50- caliber ammunition round will likely cost from $4 to $8, as opposed to a cost of $60,000 for each AGM-114 Hellfire missile. UAV sniper will also have a relatively large number of stowed kills; about 100 50-caliber rounds versus 2-4 Hellfire missiles for other UCAVs.
John sees this and similar technology as elements of the inevitable development of ‘cloud airpower’. You can certainly ditch the pastoral euphemism here - this is further ‘Death from the Sky’. As David Axe wrote in response to Matt Armstrong’s original piece on the problems of unmanned systems:
Problem is, much of the world already associates U.S. military robots with death, thanks to the use of Predator drones as aerial assassins in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia — and the military has no plans to scale back these sneaky, lethal attacks.
It would seem so. Perhaps it should scale up its consideration of the potential psychological and strategic effects of the technology first.
Judging by this video (”Marines under attack, crying for their lives”) it’s not just civilians who react badly when under fire from an unseen assailant. The comments on this video are as puerile and unhelpful as they usually are on YouTube, but at least everyone recognises the fear. This mostly manifests as ‘kill all f***ng cowardly ragheads’ - what passes for standard YouTube debate - but the power to elicit strong fright responses is undeniable, no matter which foot the boot is on:
And I thought General Ripper was dead. This is bonkers …
The world has abandoned a fortress mentality in the real world, and we need to move beyond it in cyberspace. America needs a network that can project power by building an af.mil robot network (botnet) that can direct such massive amounts of traffic to target computers that they can no longer communicate and become no more useful to our adversaries than hunks of metal and plastic. America needs the ability to carpet bomb in cyberspace to create the deterrent we lack.
Carpet bombing as a deterrent?Infowar with a 3GW mentality? That’s USAF Col. Charles W. Williamson III in Armed Forces Journal.
Updated: Kevin Poulsen at Threat Level is equally unimpressed:
Basically, Col. Williamson has noticed that there are bad guys in the swimming pool, and his solution is to piss in their general direction. That’s the kind of behavior that rightly gets you kicked out of the pool and sent home for the summer.
Updated: Jon Stokes at Ars Technica has rather more time for the idea, albeit with reservations, and adds the following:
So while the article presents the military botnet idea mainly as a proposal for something that the Air Force should consider, one gets the feeling on reading it that this is more of a “speak now, or forever hold your peace” type moment for anyone in the public who objects to the idea…
“The biggest challenge will be political,” writes Williamson. “How does the US explain to its best friends that we had to shut down their computers? The best remedy for this is prevention. The US and its allies need to engage in a robust joint endeavor to improve net defense and intelligence to minimize this risk.”
Well, absolutely. Fighting DDoS with DDoS sounds a bit Old Testament to me. Let’s hope Williamson and his colleagues at AFCYBER can come up with schemes more sophisticated than require further analogies of the carpet-bombing variety. We really don’t need Napalm Pilots, for example.
