Ok, I have to say it. I watched this video at TED and instantly thought–Opensource Military Hardware wiki (OMH). The same concepts these guys applied to farm equipment and the basic tools of a society, can easily be applied to weapons and military equipment manufacture. And in fact, if you watch what is going on in Libya or even Mexico, it is already happening on the world stage.
Honestly speaking, mankind has been doing this since the time of spears. What makes this unique though, is the concept of open source and collaboration. That some engineer in Sweden combined his knowledge with some student in Ethiopia, to help some Peruvian maker shop put together a cost effective armored vehicle that works. And the whole world can access the same open source material via a wiki.
Of course the down side of this type of wiki would be ‘everyone’ could access it. That makes this a dangerous idea. But on the other hand, OMH is going to happen regardless. The internet already provides plenty of resources for folks to check out and use.
The other idea is that OMH could be a closed wiki, only available between partner nations. That way, one nation could give preferred poorer nations a means to protect themselves from neighbors. The thought here is ‘give a man a fish, you feed them for a day’….’but teach them how to fish, and you feed them for life’. To basically give countries a means to create their own defense industries, as opposed to giving them expensive weapons and hardware and expecting them to be able to maintain this costly equipment.
This is also a PMC 2.0 topic. Companies have built homemade armored vehicles in places like Iraq, and often these designs were based on whatever ideas those contractors in the field had come up with. Imagine if a company had access to an OMH, and could cheaply build the equipment they needed in whatever country they were operating in? You could either make an OHH ‘tank’, or go through the risk of open markets and hostile neighbors to purchase such hardware?
Or if your logistics sucks, and you need an armored vehicle yesterday, OMH could come in extremely handy. Lot’s of angles to go with this concept, and definitely check out the video below. –Matt
Edit: 11/29/2011- Check out this wiki. It is called Open Warfare.org. and it is pretty much doing what I was talking about in this post. Making public projects based on open source information and using the feedback of a the crowd. Check it out here.
This is an interesting sub-topic:
>>Of course the down side of this type of wiki would be ‘everyone’ could access it. That makes this a dangerous idea. But on the other hand, OMH is going to happen regardless. The internet already provides plenty of resources for folks to check out and use. <<
While the latter is true, I believe there are many people who would not use things if they are hard to look up. The majority of plans on the internet are wrong and dangerous. The Anarchist's Cookbook for example seems more famous for endangering the readers than the political system.
Analyzing plans for their viability requires skill not too far away from those needed to invent something yourself. A good platform like the proposed OMH would provide this kind of analysis, thereby making plans easier and safer to use.
In my opinion, this empowers the weaker participant in an asymmetric conflict more than the strong one. Since its inception, Open source software has been seen as a great equalizer, so I would presume the same would applies here. This is probably not in the interest of the powers that be, be it the US or Russia. The latter I mention because of the surprisingly reliable home-made Chechen guns used in the asymmetric conflict between Russia and Chechnya, the former because of their spectacular technological advantage compared to their current opponents.
So a full-disclosure OMH might not be a good idea, but a partial project might be interesting: Open source software profitted from open standards. We already have seen a revolution there with military standards like MOLLE and the Picatinny rail (although I lately fabbed some MIL-STD 1913-compatible things and I am dissatisfied with that specification).
A simple documentation of measurements would be very helpful. To use the example given in the article, bomb-proofing a soft armoured vehicle is much easier if the plates can be cut somewhere with big machinery available, without the vehicle needing to be there. Databases help there. I remeber wishing for such a thing when I was sewing pouches for a friend while working on terrible patterns faxed to me, because I did not have the object to be stowed available.
But even this is somewhat risky, because such details might expose weaknesses of designs – a problem that software security scoffs at ("security through obscurity"), but that is because of the bigger risk of obscure details being found out (because automatted probing is way cheaper digitally than in the real world).
Just some thoughts on a topic that I really like.
Side notes:
* Despite what I said about asymmetry, the US military would probably profit a lot from the greater flexibility that comes with those DIY approaches. Though TARDEC is pretty close to this (and a secret here of the MAKE magazine readership, since they have been profiled there), the rest of the DoD isn't. The edgefighter.com blog has a lot of rather horrible examples of a modern company trying to work with the DoD.
* Another real-world example where the openness of information was a problem: See the "Progressive case" about the Teller-Ulam-Design of atomic bombs.
Comment by Tierlieb — Thursday, June 30, 2011 @ 10:26 AM
Very cool and thanks for input. You know what would be a good test case for OMH is to just allow armored vehicles, and not weapons. Just as a proof of concept. That way, NGOs, private security companies, and military groups could all draw from that collaboration in a wiki. Armored vehicles are also more duel purpose and have benefit to many actors within a war zone. Besides, today's armored vehicles are way too expensive. Just like how the store bought tractor in that TED video is way too expensive to obtain and maintain.
The other benefit of OMH is logistics. Not only are you building the equipment you need in country, but you do not have to worry about your neighbors messing with that logistics train. And if a neighbor is an enemy, then it really gets bad. To be self-sufficient in a war, is a good thing.
On a side note, imagine building solar powered electric 4wheel drive mules (Polaris, etc.)? The fuel comes from the sun. The electric motor is silent, compared to the noisy motor of a gas powered engine (good for patrolling). And with OMH, you could make these vehicles based on components found locally (and maybe provide the solar panels) Electric military vehicles could be a category of OMH. And that would also have dual purpose, because that technology could be used for war or during peace.
Comment by Feral Jundi — Thursday, June 30, 2011 @ 11:10 AM