DARPA Offers No Food for Thought 458
frank249 writes "Wired News has an article outlining the US Defense Advanced Research Projects agency's (DARPA) research into ways to keep soldiers fighting for up to 5 days without food. The DARPA project, called 'Metabolic Dominance' or 'peak soldier performance' is part of a wider, future-facing Pentagon research push to develop grunts who are pretty much immune to normal human demands. Perhaps they should call this the Universal Soldier project?"
Pssst. Oh yeah, that's the stuff. (Score:5, Funny)
LOL, sorry I now have Starcraft marines running through my head. Stimpacks and all.
Nothing scarier than a mob of stimmed marines with range and strength enhancements.
Actually, I'm lying. A similar sized mob of zealots. *shivers*
*run away*
LOL (Score:2, Insightful)
"SCV good to go, Sir!"
How is this offtopic? (Score:2, Insightful)
Woe is ye who lose your humanity.
You laugh but the scary thing is... (Score:5, Informative)
New Science for National Security: Defense Sciences Office Overview [darpa.mil]
Page 6 -
Brain Machine Interfaces - Beyond acting on thoughts to having thoughts act.
Enhanced Human Performance - Beyond frailties of life to super physiological performance.
Go zerg
Re:My life for Aiur (Score:2)
Think of the uses! (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Think of the uses! (Score:3, Funny)
C'mon kids, Lets get drafted and take Speed!
Re:Think of the uses! (Score:5, Interesting)
I wonder if they also had a walkman with some heavy trance running...
Re:Think of the uses! (Score:3, Interesting)
And one of them bombed Canadian soldiers (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:And one of them bombed Canadian soldiers (Score:3, Informative)
They were the first Canadian soldiers to die in combat since Korea, and it had to be through friendly fire. Makes me wonder if hopping soldiers up on these things won't increase the likelyhood of more friendly fire incidents. I guess we'll find out when the U.S. pilot goes on trial for this next month.
Re:And one of them bombed Canadian soldiers (Score:4, Interesting)
Quite the opposite. He was told to hold fire, and that permission to fire was denied. He was ordered to leave the area. He refused and dropped his load anyway.
That's why he's facing charges of disobeying a direct order, as well as manslaughter. All you gotta do is research something before trying to bait me.
Not many (Score:3, Interesting)
For instance, pilots are authorized to take amphetamines for going "across the pond" (transatlantic flights), or for very long missions... they're not given routinely to anyone/everyone.
The worst of the negative effects that have been attributed to amphetamines are often dose and duration dependent. Paranoia, hallucinations, tremors, emotional instability... most of those come in people who have been using large
Re:Think of the uses! (Score:3, Interesting)
Long before the days of the South African government, Zulu warriors took a substance that had a very similar effect to the "bloodlust" spell in WarCraft. It would make the warriors literally "see red" and want to kill everything in sight. I saw it on an episode of the PBS show "Secrets of the Dead". They have a web page [pbs.org] about it, but it doesn't make any reference to the bloodlust effects of the drug (I believe it is the Bushman Poison Bulb that has
Re:Think of the uses! (Score:3, Interesting)
First off, they sparred au naturale. They were pretty close in ability, with guy A maybe having a slight advantage over B. Then they did a brief series of physical and mental tests to measure reactions, co-ordination, even logic and short-term memory. Once again, their results were pretty close.
They then both drank "p
Drugs, Raving Lunatics & Fighting (Score:4, Informative)
Up until a few hundred years ago, war was mostly large groups of men pushing, shoving, chopping and trying to shish-kebab eachother. if you were rich you could also run their arses over with your horse. There are two major groups of reasons why these drugs could be seriously helpful.
Killing someone with hand tools has got to be a lot of hard work. An armored knight of any era was an awesome thing, yet he still had to kill one at a time, maybe two or three at time with luck. A modern tanker could reasonably expect to off four or five people at a time, more depending on a target, with no more effort than shooting one person. An archer is pretty much the same. One arrow might equal one dead person if they are up close and about ready to kill you. Otherwise it is just getting lucky (or unlucky if you get shot). A modern artillery guy has to be working pretty hard to hump all those shells around, I don't think it is the same thing. My point is that a drug that could give short bursts of strength would be good for an old school warrior, and not as good and maybe not worth the downside to a modern guy.
In war done by hand, might made right. In single combat or when things have opened up, and most other things being equal, the most vicious, fearless guy is gonna win. Look at the beserkers. Getting nekked and charging a bunch of guys with sharp sticks isn't my idea of a good time! Yet those guys were a threat. I think that they may have been liquored & drugged up, and that the nudity may have had some religious signifigance. Just the way we use the word "beserk" today is a testament to what one guy that is amped up and thinks he is invincible can do. I'm mostly guessing here, but a tanker or an machine gunner that strips and thinks he is gonna kill them all is just going to die faster. I'm not a vet, and history is kinda thin here, so help me out!
Basically, in old school war, getting hopped up and thinking your are invincible matter, modern war, maybe not so much.
In anybody's book, having the guy next to you puss out and run is bad, right? It opens up a hole that the enemy can go thru and then tear stuff up. That has not changed. The difference is in the old way the guy next to you was right next to you. In some cases you would have been touching and maybe your shield was covering the right half of his body. The effectiveness of your unit largely depended on how tight were and how much they moved as one body.
Look at King Leonidas & Friends vs. The Persians at Thermopylae, for an example. Three hundred were able to hold up tens of thousands because they got in a tight line and didn't puss out.
Ok, so the Spartans were barely literate killers that had done nothing but train for war and had to steal to get their food as kids. It's also important to notice how they were equipped.
A hoplite typically had shin guards, a big round shield & a helmet, sometimes some smaller pieces of armor here and there. The main weapons were a spear and a short sword.
Notice how all the armor is up front? To get an easy kill one one of these guys you are gonna have to stick him in they eye holes of his helmet, knock him over and then stab him, or sneak under a bunch of spears and start hacking away. Doing these things to a supurb athlete that doesn't want you to isn't going to be easy.
In contrast, a hoplite was almost completely bare in the back. Even a group of witless peasants could win if a group of hoplites turned or if they were flanked. When fighting as a group, facing forward and not stepping out of line were maybe the most important things. Almost any drug that gave a person the nerve to do this would be worth giving up a little dexterity & judgement.
I haven't heard a lot of evidence to indicate that the Greeks were big on hallucinogens and pain killers while i
Re:Drugs, Raving Lunatics & Fighting (Score:3, Interesting)
Indeed correct. A certain amount of...errr..enthusiasm is encouraged in the military, but outright teeth-gnashing fury is frowned upon everywhere except maybe the infantry. Even then, only when appropriate and control is emphasized.
There's a good reason that MREs come with Tobasco sauce
I thought it was because the crap they had in MREs tasted bland as all hell so as not to offend o
Burnout (Score:4, Informative)
The human body really requires sleep to function adequately, and you can only accumulate a sleep deficit for a relatively short period of time before serious performace degredation occurs... The military has found that you can operate on 3-4 hours of sleep in a 24 hour period... but only for a few days in a row (4-5 max), and no amount of training will cancel out the performance deficit that results. Believe me... the military has tried all kinds of things to get around this.
When you are running a serious sleep deficit, you get slow, stupid, confused easily, you can't remember things, you suck at complex tasks... some people even hallucinate.
If you want a good example, you should check out somebody who's crashing after being on a methamphetamine run for a couple of days... part of it is simple physical exhaustion and neurotransmitter depletion from the drug... but a big part of it is simple sleep deprivation; they take days to recover.
The same thing happens to troops in the field, or troops in training (ask anyone who's ever been through Ranger camp how much sleep they got, and how numbed and stupid your mind gets after a couple of days).
Most modern special operators are pretty bright folks, who's jobs require a working brain... just being tough isn't enough. They need multitasking ability, and that's one of the first things you lose when you're really tired.
Re:Think of the uses! (Score:2, Funny)
I'd call it Meth (Score:5, Funny)
Keed Spills! (Score:2, Funny)
Kernel developers (Score:4, Funny)
Best quote (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Lead poisoning? (Score:4, Funny)
Jaysyn
Re:Lead poisoning? (Score:3, Funny)
Bar: Acute lead poisioning = Getting shot.
Moderation: +4
50% Funny
50% Informative
This is definitely an argument for another new moderation option: +1, Explaining the Joke. Although you could make an argument for -1, It's Not Funny Anymore If You Have To Explain It.
Myself, I'm still trying to figure out why I now get M2 twice a day, but haven't had M1 in months...
Re:Lead poisoning? (Score:2)
Millitary app? (Score:5, Funny)
Sounds like my job requirements.
What a Waste (Score:4, Interesting)
I wish there were a militarily strategic reason to find a cure to cancer, stroke, or diabetes, because they'd all be cured by now just by the amount of money and focus thrown at them.
I also wish there were a law in the U.S. that for every dollar spent on the military, a dollar had to be spent on education.
Re:What a Waste (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:What a Waste (Score:2)
Re:What a Waste (Score:3, Interesting)
" A new university-based homeland security research center program for Texas A&M, avoiding an open and competitive award process. This was pushed by Republican Whip, Tom DeLay, whose district includes Texas A&M.
$2 million so the Smithsonian can start a 108,000-square-foot building in Maryland to house its collection of fish, frogs, bugs, birds and other animals preserve
Re:What a Waste (Score:2)
Then all the soldiers would have very large brains and be incredibly intelligent with telekinetic and telepathic powers that would dominate the world by "thinking" brainshread of their opponents within 500 yards.
[insert smiley here]
Re:What a Waste (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:What a Waste (Score:5, Insightful)
It is possible that this research could lead to the development of a drug that controls diabetes and heart disease. Imagine if they found a substance that turned out to be a safe and effective weightloss drug--being overweight is the leading cause of numerous health issues. Americans are fat and it's costing us billions in health care, increased mortality, and lost productivity.
Also, the DoD is currently funding a project at my university to help detect landmines in the soil to protect foot soldiers-- which ultimately will have a major impact on humanitarian work.
Re:What a Waste (Score:3, Insightful)
What a concept.
Americans are fat because they take in far too many calories that they never work off. Very little work done in this country involves manual labor, and yet we consume, as a nation, insane amounts of fast food, loaded with fat, salt, and high-glucose carbohydrates that never...get...used. We always drive places; walking, cycling, and running are 'recreational' a
Re:What a Waste (Score:3, Funny)
Your concern for the rest of us would likely be more effective if you didn't come off like lunatic...
Re:What a Waste (Score:3, Informative)
In 1998, estimated education spending at ALL levels was about $618 billion dollars. That value has increased each year since.
Defense spending is about $350 billion.
Source:
gov/us/fed/congress/record/2000/nov/03/2000CRE207 9
[Congressional Record: November 3, 2000 (Extensions)]
[Page E2079]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]
[DOCID:cr03no00-23]
Re:What a Waste (Score:4, Informative)
"By far, the greatest part of education revenues came from nonfederal sources (state, intermediate, and local governments), which together provided about $346 billion, or 92.7 percent of all revenues. The federal government contribution to education revenues made up the remaining $27 billion."
Re:What a Waste (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:What a Waste (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:What a Waste (Score:4, Interesting)
Beta testers ready!!! (Score:5, Funny)
MDA (Score:4, Funny)
New fad diet? (Score:4, Funny)
HEROIN (Score:5, Informative)
Re:HEROIN (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:HEROIN (Score:3, Informative)
Re:HEROIN (Score:4, Informative)
Re:HEROIN (Score:5, Informative)
It's still in use today, many of the "blue on blue" incidents in the recent conquests were blamed on drugged-out aviators. [channel4.com]
Quote:
Drugs and U.S. bombing of allies in Afghanistan ? (Score:3, Informative)
In the early days after the accident, it w
Re:HEROIN (Score:3, Interesting)
Nor was heroin deve
we have the means gentlemen (Score:4, Funny)
Re:we have the means gentlemen (Score:3, Interesting)
Their efforts resulted in a drug which is being re-synthesized after nearly 30 years, called yaba [drugs-info.co.uk]. Yaba will easily keep you up for 2-3 days; stronger addicts may be able to keep going for the better part of a month. Did I mention that this stuff is several times more addictive than heroin?
I'm not suggesting that this is what DA
Nutrient Cocktail? Absolut-ly (Score:5, Funny)
I predict military enrollment numbers will soar.
--
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(COBOL, Fotran, PL/I, Assembler to COBOL,C, C++, C#, Java, etc.)
Check out Datatek, Inc. [datatek-net.com]
beef jerky (Score:4, Funny)
no food (Score:5, Funny)
Um, experimental treatments to deny military personnel their basic needs would not be a good recruiting tool.
Instead, they should spend their research money building these. [198.144.2.125]
THAT would make me want to join the army!
Re:no food (Score:5, Funny)
Except they would make you polish every bit of it to a shine and take it completly apart for servicing every 10 days. No thanks, btdt.
Scary idea (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Scary idea (Score:4, Funny)
As Seen on TV (Score:2, Funny)
As an ex 11B (Score:5, Interesting)
And I wouldn't exactly call MRE's 'food' anyways, although some of them weren't bad as long as you had hot sauce.
Re:As an ex 11B (Score:3, Funny)
(lifted shamelessly from Tom Clancy's "Clear and Present Danger")
Re:As an ex 11B (Score:3, Interesting)
They are also known, a bit less affectionately, to us ex-19-series (Armor) soldiers as "track grease".
Well.. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Well.. (Score:2)
Civilian benefits (Score:5, Insightful)
* "But [burning fat] for extended periods can produce toxins and can dial down the amount of energy the brain receives. Darpa wants to see if there are ways to burn fats without the side effects."
There's a mega-million-dollar industry in burning off fat, mostly by ingesting snake oil products. Obvious spinoffs here.
* "Mitochondria supplies energy to the cells; the agency would like to see if the powerhouses could be temporarily increased."
Again, weight loss... but beyond that, aren't there metabolism-related illnesses that this would help cure?
* "Increased body heat can boost the production of certain proteins, and these can trigger apoptosis -- programmed cellular death. Darpa wants to find a way to control these proteins..."
Programmed cellular death is the two-edged sword of middle and old age. If it doesn't happen at all, you can get cancer. But if it happens faster than cellular reproduction, you get aging. Any research into this topic will help on both counts.
* "...anaerobic metabolism produces lactic acid -- which is why you feel your biceps burn after lifting dumbbells. Scientists wonder if production of the acid can be slowed or dissipated quicker."
This sort of advance would be snapped up by athletes, but you can also imagine the benefits for others who exert themselves regularly -- from firefighters to construction workers. And exercise is another way to lose weight... though it's laziness, not muscle pain, that keeps *me* from working on my spare tire.
* "And the agency is looking at nutraceuticals, natural products and traditional nutritional supplements to give the body what it requires when there's no food around."
Well, that sounds like the meal-in-a-pill that's been bounced around for a hundred years, from the World's Fair to Willy Wonka. I hear they still have problems with the blueberry dessert [yesnet.yk.ca].
And speaking of dessert...
* "...$900,000 grant to examine the effects of echinacea and other plants. He believes extracts from the herb can be added to rations -- and that should give soldiers an extra oomph."
Be careful with those herbs... the military wants to eliminate the need for food, but some herbs are known to cause the opposite effect [straightdope.com]!
Grant takes Richmond with a Hoagie (Score:5, Funny)
Great, now our military goes to war with a sandwich strapped to their buttocks. Where is the dignity in that?
Bah. (Score:2, Insightful)
These guys want to do anything they want without paying repercussions for their actions. Sorry, buds, the universe doesn't quite work that way (until we can figure out AI good enough for the jobs soldiers have to do, i.e. policework, peacemaking etc...) Very often these days, it's the airplanes with the bombs that are the ones who take out the major targets; troops are mainly just to cont
Future lawsuit(s) waiting to happen? (Score:3, Insightful)
Better way to spend a dollar (Score:4, Funny)
There are more pressing needs first (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously, if the US had more civil protection training, Iraq would be a safer place.
This isn't a rant against anyone in the US armed forces - they don't get to choose their training, and I'm certain no-one in the US forces would tell them their troops are so poorly trained in those areas.
Spending billions on finding ways to stop soldiers pooing and getting hungry isn't going to stop people suicide-bombing checkpoints next month. Decent training for the job at hand will, however.
You can't solve problems by throwing money at them.
(ps. posting AC as you can never tell how USans react when discussing their armed forces - no offense)
Up and Down (Score:5, Interesting)
Happy Trails!
Erick
So much for *that* plan. (Score:3, Funny)
"In addition to the required original and 5 copies of the proposal, proposers are required to submit an electronic copy of the proposal on a ZIP disk."
click click click damn [google.com]
McSoldier (Score:2)
Related events at the Vatican (Score:2, Funny)
Obvious non-military applications (Score:5, Insightful)
Even more importantly, this could be useful in disaster relief situations, especially where the transportation infrastructure is damaged or there's still a dangerous condition that limits the number or type of vehicles that can get in to the affected area. A helicopter or a HMMWV or an armored vehicle could be used to carry emergency supplies to the victims of a disaster, or to beseiged civilians in a war zone.
Re:Obvious non-military applications (Score:3, Informative)
Oh Great.... (Score:5, Funny)
Based on my experience (Score:4, Insightful)
How about thinning down the non-combat support types in the military and focusing on training the hell out of what we have left? Longer enlistments, better pay, and you're out if you don't meet physical training standards. Plus skip all of the extra duty billets that take away from your fighting ability/training like recruiting and drill instructor duty
Re:Based on my experience (Score:3, Interesting)
I've always thought there should be no such thing as "rear-echelon" or "non-combat" troops- well, maybe chaplins. The idea of a front line pretty much ended on v.j. day; korea, vietnam, gulf I & II, somalia and all the others have been against scattered insurgents. I think the enlistment contract needs to be rewritten to say "YOU MAY BE SHOT AT! Accept this or leave quietly now" If nothing else, this should have been painfully obv
Scientists At Play? (Score:3, Insightful)
To quote the article, "What this seems to be asking for is fantastic in every sense of the word," said Marion Nestle, the former chair of NYU's department of nutrition, food studies and public health in an e-mail message. "Calories are calories, laws of thermodynamics still operate, and humans are still human.
Simply put, they are trying to push the body beyond its natural limitations for days on end. Even from an evolutionary point of view (the God factor thus put aside), these biochemical processes have evolved over millions of years to their current state. Now, its true that evolution is a mindless force and that we cannot argue that its end products are most efficient - but we should take into consideration why the efficiency of these processes is as it is.
"Mitochondria supplies energy to the cells; the agency would like to see if the powerhouses could be temporarily increased."
Again, the mitochondrion is a very sophisticated structure. I think it likely that even if we were to "overclock" the mitochondria, eventually the practice would catch up to us in a horrible way. The human body is programmed to run at a very narrow functional range. Taking it out of that range and pushing it beyond its extreme limitations is reckless considering how little knowledge we have about it.
The main problem I see are future side effects. Military scientists aren't of the patient breed - they aren't going to wait 15 or 20 years to see the effects of their little "stimpacks." Once they have what they want (with reasonable success rate) they aren't interested in any further research in the area. Only through civilian research can we safely approach such an issue - and the product has no civilian application.
I just don't think this is worth the risks.
We've solved this problem... (Score:2)
Need for fatter soldiers? (Score:5, Insightful)
This means a soldiers needs between 10,000 and 25,000 of energy reserves for a 5-day stint. This means that these soldiers wil need 3 to 7 pounds of excess body fat (more if the soldiers is expected to last several rounds of 5-day food deprivation). Without excess body fat, the body will start mateabolizing muscle tissue and that won't be very good for military readiness.
Maybe all those overweight American kids might make good soldiers after all.
Coming soon... (Score:2)
Two things (Score:2)
2 - This reminds me of Soviet military doctrine. They wanted to plug a motor rifle company into the line and supply it with ammo only for five days, then unplug it, plug another one in, move the first unit to the rear, burn their uniforms, issue them new weapons and give them five days of eating and sleeping before plugging them back in.
This DARPA thing sounds like that.
Plants hold the key (Score:3, Interesting)
If someone collect a reasonable set of genes necessary to impliment this metabolic short cut, and then devise a method to insert these genes into the genome (probably of the mitochondria). then we could have soldiers who would rarely have to eat. You would just charge the grunts up with tons of pizza, donuts, and crisco before sending them out to battle. They may be a little fat and out of shape when the step on the battle field, but as they fight they will burn it all off by starving themselves.
I see this project as only taking about 50 years, maybe 100 if things don't go too smoothly.
A slightly more realistic goal may be to have soldiers wear beltpacks filled with a glucose solution and a needle inserted into a convenient vein. probably wouldn't last 5 days, and you'd have to worry about infection and carrying all the liquid weight, but it might be worth it to have an unholy army that could march relentlessly for days on end and then fight without tiring for extended periods of time once the got there.
Friendly fire in Afghanistan (Score:4, Insightful)
But it certainly raises questions. Soliders may be able to go 5 days without food and still operate, but there will always be side effects, subtle or obvious, to messing with human biology. I would NOT trust someone to drive a tank, or man a patriot missle battery, who hadn't eaten, and that applies even more if he's been on drugs for that purpose!
Keep it simple. Spend money on peace-keeper training and foreign-aid, not super-soldiers. As always, just because we can, doesn't mean we should.
Defense Tech has more... (Score:3, Informative)
Not too amaizing (Score:5, Informative)
Do any of you remember spirulina? In I think the mid 80s it was marketed as a food replacement, said to contain all the nutrients the body needed to survive in just a few tablets a day. I only heard about from the ultralight backpacking perspective, but for a while there were some backpackers who would go out into the woods for a week at a time with nothing more to eat than about eight spirulina pills per day. They claimed to have all sorts of energy on these expidition. This worked well untill the same backpackers just tried going out and fasting during their backpacking trips, and what do you know, they reported again having all sorts of energy.
The moral is that humans are capable of functioning at fairly normal levels for a few days without food already.
Making Soldiers go 5 days w/o food (Score:3, Funny)
They already give them amphetamines (Score:4, Interesting)
It came out during the investigation into why the USAF bombed a body of Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan. It turned out that one of the reasons the USAF's pilots disobeyed orders was that their judgement was impaired because they were high on "speed" [wired.com]. These amphetamines were issued to enhance the pilots alertness on long missions.
The trouble was they were so alert they were trigger-happy.
Can't say I'm surprised (Score:3, Interesting)
But it's easy to see why some people could find this a little disturbing, or even hypocritical. You see, from my point of view, I understand that Australia's drug prohibition laws are a direct result of pressure from the US government. When I go out to a rave to have a good night ( or 2 ), and take a very soft drug that gives me a little energy ( and God forbid, makes me happy ) my government reserves the right to arrest and gaol me for 'breaking the law'. But when the US military use drugs regularly to increase their 'effectiveness as killing machines', that's the best thing since sliced bread.
Of course creating drug-fucked killing machines that go on the rampage for 5 days straight has no affect on the families of said soldiers when they return home from the killing fields. In fact they promptly return to what is wildly recognised as normal behaviour for US citizens, and everyone lives happily ever after
Fuck the US.
Re:Bad news (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Bad news (Score:5, Interesting)
to elaborate (Score:3, Interesting)
Their Methamphetamine prodution method lives on to this very day, in illicit clandestine drug labs... so-called "Nazi Dope" labs... named after the production method the Germans used for meth manufacture.
Most of the labs that law enforcement agencies clean up, particularly in the midwest, are Nazi Dope labs, primarily due to the easy availability of one of that production method's reagents (anhydrous ammonia).
Shishihakoudan. (Score:5, Funny)
Oi, I can't believe I'm talking about anime in a
I need to go get a life.
Viagra for the whole body?? (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Bad news (Score:3, Interesting)
and if your a soldier, not willing to die for your country, your not a very
Re:Ghee... old [flamebait or food for thought?] (Score:4, Funny)
Wow. I guess you can blame anything on the US if you try hard enough...
--RJ
Re:Ghee... old [flamebait or food for thought?] (Score:3, Informative)
But to blame the US for them? Give me a break. Those wars STARTED in Europe. The British claim that we showed up late and took credit - now the original poster is insinuating that we started them. The US just can't do anything to please Europe, can it?
--RJ