The impact of science and technology on warfare is one of the more frequently discussed issues in the Laboratory. Specifically, the community seems interested in technology granting individual soldiers abilities beyond that of the average man. However, responses like these give me the impression that most of you are unhappy with our governments’ recent proposals:
Rizla Year Zero
Sounds like some 12 year old video game fanatic's government sponsored wank-fest to me.
invisible_al
Nope my problem is spending this sort of STUPID money on tech toys when they could be spending the money on something else. Even something military, I'm not fussy.
Gray Area
Conjures up the amusing mental image of a bunch of soldiers huddled up under fire, one clutching a mobile phone and telling the others he's still on hold with Microsoft's technical help hotline.
Lurid Archive
You've go to to take all this with a pinch of salt. Arms firms and the US government love to talk up their R&D. It's actually a scam to give lots of money to our friends in the private sector while at the same time making politicians look tough.
Nick
This looks like another load of fair-weather crap. Sure, it'll provide an edge some of the time. But it's a long way from Steel's armour or anything like that.
Apparently, a lot of you think these proposals are a waste of time and resources. Perhaps you even believe that you could do a better job at this than our massively funded military organizations, staffed by a group of people that know an awful lot about warfare.
Well, maybe you can. I propose that we design our own super-soldiers, the Legion of Barbelith, if you will. Here are the rules of the game. Pretty much any type of augmentation is up for use. You can use drugs, AI, mental techniques, hormones, wearable computers, surgery, robotics, genetic engineering, or any number of other methods. However, it has to be the sort of technology that will be available in the next five to ten years. I’ll start:
Genetic engineering has recently created a super mouse with increased strength. A promoter for the gene that creates insulin-like growth hormone (Igf1) leads to a minimum of a 40% increase in muscle mass. This technology was originally developed for people with muscular dystrophy, and officials are now beginning to worry about it’s use in sports events. While there do seem to be an awful lot of places on the internet selling Igf1 in pill form, the impression I get from the articles is that you need to have the cells expressing it. So, the best approach for this method would probably be gene therapy. The negative aspect of this augmentation is that the mice using it apparently die from abnormal enlargement of the heart. Luckily, the variant mIgf1 seems to avoid this problem.
I think an augmented ability to use oxygen would complement our soldier’s strength nicely. Fortunately, we can accomplish this without the difficult, and sometimes dangerous, use of gene therapy. The protein Erythropoietin has been used in sports recently to increase red blood cell counts. The downside of this technique is that it increases blood viscosity. This means that the soldier will be more likely to get a stroke or heart attack. However, I would point out that this also means our soldier is less likely to bleed to death. The risks of using Erythropoietin mean that the protein would have to be administered by medical professionals, which might not be financially workable.
Let’s give our soldier increased visual acuity too. Current eye surgery can correct visual problems, but a group of researchers is also working on a way to use this method to give people better than 20/20 vision. The upper limit to this surgery will probably be 20/10, but subjects will apparently have an enhanced ability to see at night as well. The only downside is that laser eye surgery does make mistakes occasionally.
I have one more modification proposal, which I suggest with some reservation. Science has had the ability to surgically remove the human body’s ability to feel pain for some time now. In extreme cases, such as a very painful cancer, doctors have severed portions of the spinal cord. This method isn’t in very wide use, but combined with new methods of surgery, and work on spinal cord regeneration, it might be doable. The best case scenario would be a slight cut followed by moderate spinal cord re-growth, leading to nerves that could still feel pain, but at a significantly diminished capacity. This wouldn’t alter the head’s ability to feel pain, but if you catch a bullet in the face, pain isn’t too much of an issue anyway.
The question you’re probably asking right now is, “Who the hell are we going to do this to anyway”. It is my understanding that the special forces frequently reject applicants based on visual problems. So, for starters, we can place anyone who wants into an elite fighting unit, but does not meet the vision requirements, into a difficult training program. Those who make it through would be given corrective eye surgery, mIgf1 gene therapy, and administered EPO blood doping before missions and maybe before training exercises. Spinal cord surgery would be optional.
Participation in the soldier augmentation project would also be optional, and anyone involved would be fully informed of the risks involved. Especially the headcases who want their spinal cord placed under the knife.
Overall this seems like a pretty expensive operation, considering that they aren’t dodging bullets or lifting cars. But, I’m sure you’ll be able to help out.
So, what are your ideas, and what are the advantages and disadvantages on a biological, social, financial, and ethical level? |
