Monday, June 09, 2014

Modest Proposal. RFID Chips for personnel in war zones....


The Bergdahl incident has hit full force and its fall out has shown one thing.

Force Protection has become essential due to expanding threats against our troops.

One solution?

WHEN IN THE WAR ZONE we need to tag our Marines and Soldiers with RFID Chips.  It will be controversial, but it would only be done in combat situations and it would help facilitate rescue/recovery if they are taken, captured or lost.

Yeah, its big brother, but its also something that must be considered in light of the Bergdahl case and the threat being issued by terrorist that they will seek to capture our personnel.  Additionally the idea that we still have individuals that are missing years after conflicts have ended can be rectified with this new tech.

Lastly, this could even apply to Sailors at sea.  Personnel that fall overboard could more easily be recovered with these devices.

For particular situations, in particular locations, RFID chips for our servicemembers make sense.

9 comments :

  1. There is aboslutely no friggin way ANYONE will ever put an RFID chip in me or my family! You want to make a case for personal privacy? There will never be ANY with a chip that can be "pinged" whenever Big Brother decides to check on your "well being".

    The moment they try something like that, that will be my Waco moment.

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    1. i understand the sentiment...thats why i said only in a war zone. stateside or training then no. although i think the case can be made that it makes sense for personnel aboard ship in case they fall overboard.

      but my modest proposal is just for warzones. think about the missing in Vietnam. think about the missing from the first gulf war.

      if we used this tech ONLY for combat then we would have closure on those situations. then consider the threat to people training in Africa and the Middle East. the threat of capture by the enemy has been raised due to the Bergdahl incident.

      yes this is distasteful, but we live in a distasteful world.

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  2. as far, as i know, rfid chips, aren't homing beacons, there way too low power for that.

    you could have a very powerfull transmitter, but no way, it could respond, so unless your blind, and 2 feet away or so, i dont think it be much use.

    just too be clear we're talking about the passive, implantable variant, that work at best a few feet away.

    there are powered variant that can work 100 metres away, not so implantable tho.

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    1. we use similar devices to track migratory birds. i don't know the tech behind them but if a bird can be tracked then so can a person that's lost in Afghanistan or the jungles of Zambia.

      more importantly if the Taliban and AQ are serious we need to prepare for the capture of our personnel.

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    2. They track birds by catching them in nets and scanning their necks for RFID chips and implanting them in the birds that don't have one. The system relies on them catching some of the birds more than once in different locations.

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  3. RFID Chips aren't going to work for tracking people, at best you can only pick up a powered chip from a few hundred meters away over open ground, if the tag is inside a building then it would probably be impossible to pick it up from outside.

    You could embed some sort of GPS chip with a transmitter but it'd need to be charged regularly, since it's embedded you'd need to either tattoo an inductive charging loop into soldier's arms so they could charge it every few days or do something stupid like using an atomic battery.

    Even if you could embed something that could track soldiers you'd run the risk of your enemy picking up the signals, even if they couldn't decipher their contents they would know that they were there and be able to work out the general location of transmission, and any captor would just disable them before taking them away anyway.

    Personally I'd go for some sort of wrist mounted biotelemetry unit with GPS and a transmitter that can be activated in an emergency. Since it's not embedded charging wouldn't be too difficult and could be taken off by any captor without having to cut the captured man open.

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    1. Indeed the idea is not bad, constant tracking of soldiers give you a wide range of possibilities. But as you said, there is that danger that enemy can intercept the signal, decrypt it and start to track your own men.

      Hand can be cut without problem and victim can still live. Maybe put it in to torso?

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    2. Implants are really not an option, if they knew there was a tracker then they would probably still cut them open or deactivate it in another way. No matter where you put them they'll find a way of deactivating it. And that's assuming that you can find a way of recharging it inside the body or even practically implant what would be a fairly large GPS receiver and a powerful transmitter.

      I'd go for a device to monitor heart rate, blood pressure, body temperature and other information and broadcasts it back to HQ. In theory that would allow doctors to treat patients in the field using a corpsman as their hands so to speak. If you wanted to make it even more advanced you could also set it up to automatically inject stuff in an emergency. or tighten electronic tourniquets to stop casualties from bleeding out until help arrives.

      It would be fairly easy to fit a GPS tracker to that device that medical device with a button to send a distress call which would also be set off if it was removed forcefully.

      http://www.cenews.in/smart-bracelet-for-workers-protection-in-danger-areas-over-the-world/ <----You might find this interesting

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    3. If a captor didn't know that there was a tracker in the medical thing then they may keep it on to show the American government that their hostage was still alive, leading you right to their front door.

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