Unconventional Warfighters
Abstract
The Unconventional Warfighters program will create information technologies that enable new classes of participants to contribute to defense missions. One such class includes futurists, inventors, hobbyists, and tinkerers who approach military problems from an unconventional perspective. This latent source of creativity has been successfully tapped in the commercial sector through crowd-sourcing Internet marketplaces that bring human intelligence to bear on tasks for which computers are poorly suited. Information extraction and integration techniques will enable the solutions proposed by individuals to be correlated and fused into meta-solutions for further iterative development. Another class of potential participants is military Veterans, including disabled Veterans, who have deep knowledge of the missions and the operational environment. Machine learning tools will enable individuals with similar interests and complementary capabilities to find each other while advanced collaboration tools will amplify the synergies of diverse dynamic groups. Animals are another class of potential contributors. This is not a new idea, as animals possessing special abilities such as dogs and dolphins have been used before to perform military tasks such as mine detection. The new aspect to be examined under Unconventional Warfighters is the potential for creating new sensor, processing, communication and actuator systems specially adapted to enable animals to execute tasks beyond their natural capabilities.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Accomplishment
- Publication Date
- Oct 01, 2012
- Source ID
- 448d2450a2aa45eff7dae27a51ed7220