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Peter Cochrane's Hard Drive 1998 A light rein on friendly fire FRIENDLY fire is a military euphemism for being shot by your own side. In any armed conflict there are self-inflicted casualties through genuine mistakes, accidents and panic. And worse, there is a high risk that civilians or innocent bystanders will be unintentionally hurt. Looking at the theatre of modern conflicts and the capabilities of modern weapons, it is amazing that friendly fire does not account for an even higher proportion of the casualties. While playing an energetic combat game with some children recently, it occurred to me that we had in the making a cure for friendly fire. The laser pistols and head mounted target detectors now used in games could translate to a miniature laser unit mounted on a pistol, rifle, or other weapon. As the weapon is aimed, a uniquely coded burst of identifying photons could be launched at the target. A receiver unit could then decode the photon message to respond with a unique friendly reply. Light travels at 300 million m/s, but the pulses in our nervous system are vastly slower and reaction time is generally over a tenth of a second. So the reply message could disable the weapon before the trigger finger can fire it. Since the Second World War military aircraft have been fitted with IFF (Identification Friend or Foe) so radar systems can remotely identify them. Today IFF is essential for all military and commercial aircraft. But it is radio-based, relatively unfocused, and responds to radar pulses by returning a unique identifier signal. Of most importance to you and me, today's IFF systems allow for the efficient and safe management of air travel - in short, they prevent accidents. Knowing what type of aircraft, who owns it, how fast and high it is travelling, is vital in this arena. No amount of people-training by armies and police forces, or indeed intelligence information, will eradicate the risk of friendly fire. But people, equipment and weapons with highly localised optical IFF systems could have a significant impact on the problem at very low cost, relative to the trauma and loss of human life. The question now arises; what about civilians, innocents, and unnecessary collateral damage? Beyond fitting everyone and everything with some neutral IFF system, which is open to abuse by combatants, there seems to be little that can be done. But at least on the military front we might expect that all sides in a conflict, and all manufacturers of armaments, would find it advantageous to adopt such technology. Those opting out would be at a serious disadvantage, and anyone stealing weapons from the opposing side would find them electronically locked and useless. At this point a further development would obviously follow: the remotely operated robotic camera gun. Why put yourself in the line of fire at all when a machine can take all the risks? Somehow it feels as though RoboCop has just come a step closer to reality. Peter Cochrane holds the Collier Chair for the Public Understanding of Science & Technology at the University of Bristol. His home page is: |
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