"One of the biggest threats in Iraq is [a commercial walkie-talkie] radio," a defense contractor tells Aviation Week. "It's a tiny thing that
costs about $100. They've got a 10-mi. range and operate between 40-50 MHz. That's what the terrorists are using. It's hard to monitor. They give a
guy a radio, put him on top of a hill, and [he and a string of others] will relay communications for hundreds of miles."
So how does the Pentagon plan on fighting this $100 threat? With a set of cheap, coffee-can-sized transmitters of its own. Except, in this case, cheap
means $10,000 a pop. And the little buggers "can listen to enemy radars and communications, analyze an opponent's network and movement of systems
and jam emitters or infiltrate enemy computers with packages of algorithms," according to the magazine. An early-phase test of the system, known as
"Wolfpack," is scheduled for next week.
No one "Wolf" is particularly powerful. But, collectively, they can be used to triangulate enemy signals -- like those walkie-talkie conversations
-- and monitor hostile networks. The idea is to "litter the battlefield with these small objects," Preston Marshall, WolfPack's program manager at
Darpa, explained last year.
He'd like to see the Wolves tough enough to be chucked out of helicopters, dropped by drones, or places on rooftops by soldiers. "Once a cylinder
hits the ground, it checks itself out. If everything is working properly, the fins will erect and make the device stand up, Marshall said. "An
inflatable antenna goes up and it generates a radio signal. They form a network. Wolf networks find other wolf networks and eventually find a path
back to the command center."
"A WolfPack typically would have at least five wolves," Aviation Week adds. "They are designed to be identical, so each of them can take another's
role, including subpack leader, to gather information, and pack leader to send it into the larger battlefield network."
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EDIT : Title
[edit on 27-10-2004 by mad scientist]
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I thought the US could monitor all communications etc with awacs and drones.
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 Originally posted by ufo3
I thought the US could monitor all communications etc with awacs and drones. 
They can to a limited degree, but are also very expensive to keep operational. Besides they can't fly for days on end over a target.
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Could you sum it up for us mad scientist?
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