"Kill Proof," Animal-Esque Soldiers: DARPA Goal

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The new effort to make “kill-proof soldiers” was announced at this week’s DARPATech conference in Anaheim, California. Project manager Michael Callahan described the goal as “Inner Armor” that will “enable soldiers to work better in extremes—high altitudes, brutal heat, and undersea depths” as animals often do.

For instance, Callahan told the Danger Room reporter he’d “like to increase oxygen flow to Navy divers by 30 to 40 percent. But instead of just giving ‘em more O2, Callahan would like to “do what a sea lion does–redirect oxygen demand.” Similarly, sea lions have a particularly strong “dive reflex”– an ability to slow their heart rates and steer blood flow towards their cores. Callahan would like to see a “push-button dive reflex,” so military divers can do the same, automatically.” Don’t ask me how. He didn’t say.

Callahan also wants to make soldiers more resistant to chemical and radiation poisoning and pump them full of “pre-positioned universal immune cells” (whatever those are) to protect them from pathogens. And I believe he’d also like them to bark like dogs and cluck like chickens, although those plans were not announced at the conference.

Once you’ve engineered your sea-lion solider, what will he wear? DARPA’s Mitchell Zakin made short work of the fashion quandry with his big idea: Programmable Matter.

Zakin explained it to Ares writer Bill Sweetman as “‘infochemistry,’ building structures out of smart, versatile mesoparticles that can bond themselves together on demand.” The mesoparticle materials will instantly change shape or automatically adjust to body temperature. Basically, a superhero suit, though I expect, without the cape.

That’s not to say that DARPA is letting members of the animal kingdom entirely off the hook. They are currently hard at work turning moths into spies. Again, thanks to Aviation Week’s Ares Blog: “The cyborg effort is part of Darpa’s Hybrid Insect Microelectromechanical Systems (HI-MEMS) program and involves injecting computer chips into cocoons. The flesh then grows around the chip, enabling warfighters to control the moth’s nervous system remotely. Darpa says because the flesh grows after the chip has been implanted, the tissue heals, creating a ‘reliable tissue-machine interface. The moths could be flown over suspected terrorist camps to get video and data, presumably without arousing much suspicion.”

“This is going to happen,” a DARPA program manager told the reporter. “It’s not science like developing the nuclear bomb, which costs billions of dollars. It can be done relatively cheaply.”