DARPA, the Pentagon's way-out science arm, wants to make soldiers stronger, faster, and generally "kill proof." The key, the agency believes: Getting humans to act more like animals.
For years, DARPA has been pushing to boost soldier performance. Today, at the opening of DARPATech, the agency's bi-annual conference, program manager Michael Callahan just announced a new effort to take that research even further. He calls it "Inner Armor."
The project has two main thrusts. The first is to enable soldiers to work better in extremes -- high altitudes, brutal heat, and undersea depths. In each of these conditions, Callahan notes, there are animals that handle these environments well. The bar-headed goose, for instance, can fly for days at Himalayan heights without taking a break. Certain microorganisms thrive in steam vents, despite the Venutian conditions. Then there's the sea lion, which redirects blood flow and slows its heart rate, to stay underwater for hours.
Callahan wants soldiers to pull off some of the same tricks. 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.
Callahan's second make thrust is to make soldiers, in his words, "kill proof." Chemical and radiological dumps sites, he notes, are actually "teeming with life" -- filled with organisms that resist what's toxic to most. Callahan wants to "mimic" that, by creating a set of "synthetic vitamins" that "forestal the onset of chemical and radiation" poisoning.
But that's the easy part. The military today only protects against "7 of 44 highly dangerous pathogens." Callahan wants to be better that ratio, through "pre-position[ed] universal immune cells" that protect against all kinds of diseases, not just one. He also wants his researchers to figure out "predic[t] pathogen evolution" to "preempt pathogens' emergence with preventive vaccine." If they can pull that off, Callahan figures he can develop "3 million doses of any vaccine or therapeutic in 12 weeks, at just pennies a dose." And he thinks he can do it, with no animal testing. We do have so much to learn from the critters, after all.
