Military technology used to filter down to consumers. Now it’s going the other way
THE EARLIEST COMPUTERS were used to crack codes and simulate nuclear explosions. The internet grew out of a military research project. In-car navigation systems rely on satellites that were put into orbit to guide ships, troops and missiles. The Boeing 747, with its raised cockpit, was designed as a military transporter. In each case a technology created for military use has gone on to become widely used by civilians. That this happens so often is not surprising: the military is, after all, a deep-pocketed customer prepared to fund the development of expensive new technologies. As gizmos become smaller and cheaper – and they invariably do – they are then able to percolate from the soldier on the battlefield to the man in the street.
But lately some kinds of technology have been moving in the other direction, too. In early December 2009, the United States Air Force placed an order for 2,200 Sony PlayStation 3 video-game consoles, which will be the building-blocks of a supercomputer. Soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan are using Apple iPods and iPhones to run translation software and calculate bullet trajectories. Xbox video-game controllers have been modified to control reconnaissance robots and drone aircraft. Graphics chips that power PC video-cards are being used by defence firms to run simulations.
What has caused this shift? Global defence spending, at about $1.5 trillion a year, far exceeds sales of consumer-electronics, at around $700 billion a year. But only a small fraction of defence spending is devoted to developing electronics. The consumer-electronics industry can therefore outspend the military in research and development, and spread out those costs over a far larger market: more than a billion mobile phones are sold every year, for example. Electronics firms also move much faster than the slow, multi-year grind of military procurement programmes, with few products remaining on the market for more than a year before being replaced by something better or cheaper. And the emergence of open standards and open-source software makes it easier to repurpose off-the-shelf technologies or combine them in novel ways. (All those PlayStation 3s will have a customised version of Linux, an open-source operating system, installed on them and will be wired up using Gigabit Ethernet, the networking technology commonly used in offices.)
All this is to be applauded. Where consumer technology can be used, it is much cheaper and quicker to do so. The air force’s new supercomputer will cost around one-tenth as much as a conventional supercomputer of equivalent power. Using an iPod to run translation software in Iraq makes much more sense than designing and building a dedicated device. America’s armed forces are also using commercially available green technologies to reduce their demand for fuel. Of course, there are limits to this off-the-shelf approach: it is no way to procure tanks, helicopters or missile systems. But the selective use of existing technology allows military planners to focus their spending on the development of new technologies, rather than reinventing the wheel. The consumer-electronics industry has been taking advantage of military innovations for years. It seems only fitting that it should now return the favour.
This article was first published in The Economist in December 2009.
Consumer products and video-gaming technology are boosting the performance and reducing the price of military equipment
VIDEO GAMES have become increasingly realistic, especially those involving armed combat. America’s armed forces have even used video games as recruitment and training tools. But the desire to play games is not the reason why in early December 2009 the United States Air Force issued a procurement request for 2,200 Sony PlayStation 3 (PS3) video-game consoles. It intends to link them up to build a supercomputer that will run Linux, a free, open-source operating system. It will be used for research, including the development of high-definition imaging systems for radar, and will cost around one-tenth as much as a conventional supercomputer. The air force has already built a smaller computer from a cluster of 336 PS3s.
This is merely the latest example of an unusual trend. There is a long tradition of technology developed for military use filtering through to consumer markets: satellite-navigation systems designed to guide missiles can also help hikers find their way, and head-up displays have moved from jet fighters to family cars. But technology is increasingly moving in the other direction, too, as consumer products are appropriated for military use.
Traditionally the military has preferred to develop and control its own technology, not just for tactical advantage but also to ensure that equipment was tough and reliable enough for those whose lives would depend on it. That began to change after the cold war as defence budgets became constrained and the development of sophisticated industrial and consumer products accelerated. As some of these technologies have become commoditised products which are available to everyone – friend and foe alike – there seems less reason not to buy them and use the savings for more critical equipment that needs to be built-to-order. And consumer products can often be tweaked to make them more rugged or secure when necessary.
A new piece of military kit can take years to specify, test and acquire using a traditional procurement process, only to arrive already outdated. So, where possible, it is quicker and cheaper to buy commercial off-the-shelf items. These range from industry-standard components, like processor chips incorporated into military equipment, to products that consumers would recognise. Sometimes these are made more rugged, like Panasonic Toughbook computers, or converted for other uses, like Xbox 360 video-game controllers adapted to operate small robotic ground vehicles used for reconnaissance.
Apple’s iPod and iPhone are among the latest additions to a soldier’s kit. American forces in Afghanistan and Iraq are using them for translation and to view intelligence information, such as pictures transmitted from unmanned reconnaissance drones. An iPhone app called Bullet Flight enables snipers to calculate range and trajectory for their shots, and built-in satellite-positioning allows local weather conditions to be taken into account. The basic version costs $3.99 and the full military one – which even calculates how the Coriolis effect from the rotation of the Earth will influence a bullet’s flight – costs $29.99.
In the fast-moving consumer-electronics industry, where some products are lucky to have a shelf life of more than a year, companies can spread their research-and-development costs across a global mass market. Defence contractors, however, usually supply only a limited amount of equipment designed to meet the specific requirements of a particular customer. Exports can help spread costs, but different countries demand different specifications, which pushes costs back up. Consumer-electronics companies also adopt aggressive pricing strategies to grab market share. The PS3, which now costs $300 in America, was initially sold at a loss by Sony in order to boost its popularity. (The company hopes to recoup its losses by taking a cut from the sale of each game for the console.)
In many cases it is probably now impossible for companies outside the consumer-electronics industry to match the price and performance of mass-market components. BAE Systems, a British aerospace and defence contractor, has calculated that a £300 ($500) video card from NVIDiA, a Californian company which is a leader in gaming graphics, can replace £30,000 worth of other computing equipment used for engineering simulation.
What has changed in the past two years, says David Standingford, group leader of electromagnetic modelling at BAE, is that products such as the PS3 and NVIDiA graphics cards have become immensely powerful computers in their own right. He adds that the emergence of new industry standards and a leap in power from the use of multi-core processors, which contain several number-crunching engines working in parallel, has made it easier to incorporate and link up such devices to tackle much bigger tasks.
In 2008 an IBM supercomputer called Roadrunner, based at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, established a new record by operating at more than one petaflop (1,000 trillion calculations a second). Roadrunner is the world’s first “hybrid” supercomputer, having been assembled in part from off-the-shelf equipment, including 12,960 Cell processor chips like those found inside the PS3. It will be used to simulate the behaviour of nuclear weapons.
In Britain, BAE Systems, Airbus, Rolls-Royce, Williams (a Formula 1 racing team) and others have set up a not-for-profit laboratory based in Bristol called CFMS to evaluate consumer products and components that could reduce the cost of engineering simulations. Jamil Appa of BAE, who is involved in the project, says one aim is to see how easily the internal architecture of video-games consoles can handle the complex algorithms used in simulations. The lab will provide feedback to consumer-product suppliers, he adds.
NVIDIA already recognises that it is not just gamers who are interested in its products. In September 2009, when Jen-Hsun Huang, NVIDIA’s CEO, unveiled the company’s latest graphics technology, he described it as the “soul of a supercomputer” with applications beyond gaming.
Nor is it just the military that is keen to employ consumer technology in sophisticated applications. The Swedish police are already using a virtual autopsy system based on gaming technology to help solve crimes. And Siemens, a German electronics and engineering giant, launched an ultrasound scanner in early December 2009 which allows expectant mothers to see their unborn child in 3-D. It uses an NVIDIA graphics card and 3-D glasses devised for gaming. Soldiers have also been spotted wearing 3-D glasses, which will add another dimension to modern warfare.
This article was first published in The Economist in December 2009.
Military service makes Israeli techies tougher
MANY ISRAELI START-UPS should pay royalties to the army, says Edouard Cukierman, a venture capitalist in Tel Aviv. He is only half joking. Despite the recession, Israel’s technology exports grew by more than 5% in 2009. Mr Cukierman thinks military service deserves some of the credit. Israel’s army does not just train soldiers, he says; it nurtures entrepreneurs.
Teenagers conscripted into high-tech units gain experience “akin to a bachelor’s degree in computer science”, says Ruvi Kitov, co-founder and chief executive of Tufin Technologies, an Israeli software firm. Almost all of Tufin’s employees in the country are, like Mr Kitov himself, veterans of the Israel Defence Forces (IDF). One of the firm’s cash cows is software that finds spam servers and blocks their transmissions. It is based on IDF cyberwarfare technologies that developers first used as soldiers.
Traditional armies drill unquestioning obedience into their grunts. Israel’s encourages creativity. An IDF spokesman says it is “highly acceptable” for soldiers to point out problems and pitch ideas to superiors. That is why veterans are snapped up by start-ups, says Alan Baker, president of the Israel-Canada Chamber of Commerce in Tel Aviv. They also do well raising money, he says, because investors assume the IDF has already weeded out the dishonest and irresponsible. In other countries, employers rely on the college-entry obstacle course to select the brightest and best. In Israel, thanks to conscription, most job applicants have tackled real obstacle courses.
Like Americans, Israelis are quick to challenge authority, says Shlomo Maital, the author of “Global Risk/Global Opportunity”, a management book published in 2010. In the IDF, which he served as a reservist for nearly a quarter of a century, soldiers are encouraged to improvise, lest they lose the initiative in the fog of battle. This culture helps ex-army entrepreneurs solve civilian problems, Mr Maital says. He points to Check Point, a large developer of internet-security software. Its founders used to build firewalls to protect systems run by Israeli intelligence.
Optibase, a company based in Herzliya in greater Tel Aviv, sells video technology. Its founders cut their teeth tinkering with video technologies used in the IDF’s intelligence and weapons systems. The firm might not exist without the IDF, says Eli Garten, a vice-president (who commanded 34 soldiers in an air-force intelligence agency when he was 20). Ironically, tech companies such as Optibase are now poaching talent from the IDF with higher salaries.
This article was first published in The Economist in August 2010.