Taking Out The Trash

Down the rabbit hole

Fascinated to hear Peter Hennessy talking on the Today programme about the publication of the War Book - the step by step guide on how the government would handle the countdown and initiation of nuclear war.
As part of that plan senior government officials would speed by train from Paddington to Burlington. You won't find Burlington on the map; it's actually a gigantic underground bunker beneath Corsham.
We used to joke about this when I worked at The Bath Chronicle because it was fairly common knowledge. So if we knew, undoubtedly there was a missile sitting somewhere in an icy Russian silo with Corsham tapped into its targeting system.
I wonder if it is still there?
Some years ago me and a colleague did the local rite of passages which is to try and get in to the network of caves and bunkers through one of the many holes that dot the hills.
First stop is a pint at The Quarryman's Arms where you can get a map and a very decent 6X (the pub is actually chained to the hillside trivia fans).
Then is was a hike to find a good-sized rabbit hole and down we went. In six hours of flailing around we came across old mining equipment, a cavern called the Cathedral and not a lot else. When I watched The Descent it brought back memories; without the crazy monsters.
Some have much better luck (or better maps).

Good reports on the War Book story in:
The Guardian
Associated Press
and particularly The Daily Mail which does these type of stories very well and has found some great images to accompany the copy.

And if you want to see the War Book then you'll have to make an appointment to view it at the National Archives.

Rise of the machines

Last summer I reported on a competition organised by the MoD on Salisbury Plain to enourage companies and universities to come up with a robot which could help the army fight urban wars.
My posts on this are here.
Last week the BBC reported on some of the projects the MoD was looking at funding generally and several competition winners had been given extra resources. It shows that the event itself was more than just a PR stunt  but a very serious attempt to rope schools, universities and small companies into defence projects.
Scientists for Global Responsiblity have just published a further piece by me on this.
Other items in their spring newsletter are:
*Dr Stuart Parkinson looks at the potential for a sustainable, low-carbon economy to be created through efforts to tackle the current global economic problems.
*Prof Sandy Halliday traces the evolution of the principles behind sustainable design, and argues for their much wider use.
*Social housing projects could learn from past successes Past collaborative efforts of architects and policy-makers have produced elegant social housing solutions by Kate Macintosh MBE Dip Arch.
*Dr Nick Ritchie outlines the serious flaws in the logic of nuclear deterrence upon which the proposed replacement of Trident is based.
Non-members can et a copy for £3.50 from the SGR.

Grand Challenge ad nauseum

Just filed 2,000 words for Flipside on the MoD's Grand Challenge and about to start on 800 words covering a different angle on the same story for the newsletter of the group Scientists for Global Responsibility.
Which makes it four different outlets on this issue and I think I've would then have had enough of robot urban warfare systems.
Just posted up some images from the event which you can see here.
My SGR piece will consider the implications of involving school in these defence projects. One teacher I spoke to at the event said it did make him think twice about taking part.
His daughter wants to be a forensic scientist because of the CSI crime series - if we could see some programmes featuring engineers (like Robot Wars) then maybe more young people will want to take it up as a career.
Instead defence companies are filling the gap that exists in promoting engineering and technology in schools. As this press release from Thales shows.

Watch the skies

Copehill Down, on Salisbury Plain, is a mock-German town that spends most of its time pretending to be a Middle Eastern village for troop training sessions in urban warfare. But for three days in August it has had robots on patrol.

You can read the rest of my article on how today's defence equipment becomes tomorrow's civil surveillance (which is published today in the New Statesman) here.

Update: Ooooh, The Guardian's been looking and they've printed an extract from a previous post of mine on this topc in today's technology section(well it's easy to find in the print edition). Meanwhile the paper's green technology correspondent Alok Jha's latest podcast also discusses the Grand Challenge.

Trenchcoats R Us

The MoD must be very, very pleased.

Its Grand Challenge, which I've blogged about previously, has won tremendous coverage. (robots, urban warfare, Salisbury Plain - you remember). This piece in today's technology section of The Guardian is very good. Not least because it doesn't go for the obvious let's-talk-to-the-winners angle.
I asked the helpful MoD press officers for a list of who attended the final day (that's not being ironic - without exception the PROs were very helpful and they hadn't just swanned on over for the day like us hacks.)
The list I was given is below. Don't dismiss this as no more than some glorified Robot Wars event:

You were asking for an idea of some of the visitors to the Grand Challenge competition. They included:

- Various MoD, DE&S and Dstl staff inc. Prof Phil Sutton (MoD Director General Science & Technology Strategy), Chris Mace (MoD Director General Science & Technology Operations), Sir Ian Andrews (MoD 2nd Permanent Under Secretary), Paul Stein (MoD Science & Technology Director) and Dr Frances Saunders, Chief Executive Dstl)

Prof John Beddington, Government Chief Scientific Adviser

Tom Killion, US Army Chief Scientist

And reps from:

US Army International Technology Center

US Soldier Battle Lab

US Air Force Research Lab

Various foreign embassy representatives and defence attaches

German Research Institute for Communication, Information Processing and Ergonomics (FGAN-FKIE).

PS: if you want to spot the government scientist at these events look for the trenchcoats. One of the tables at the breakfast beforehand was like a Harry Palmer convention.

Robots on Salisbury Plain

  Spent my second day at Copehill Down where the finalists in the MoD's Grand Challenge faced off.
The ideas was for teams made up mostly of people from small firms and universities to design an autonomous system which the army could use to fight urban wars.
As Major Matt Kelly from the Royal Irish Regiment, and urban warfare specialist, pointed out - more and more people are living in cities so that is where the fighting is lincreasingly taking place.
Ideally a small body of soldiers would be able to deploy the system to gather intelligence on things like snipers and roadside bombs.
There were all sorts of robot cars and wheelbarrows and mini-helicopters and gliders taking part.
The winner announced this afternoon was Team Stella.
(The first pic is Team Stella's entry, the second isn't   Wall-E but Team Thales effort).
Anyhow it's been interesting to cover but I was surprised to see two secondary schools among those in teams. Bruton School for Girls and Royal Grammar Guildford School.
The link between universities and military research is well-established if not well debated. (This report from Scientists for Global Responsibility is worth reading if you're interested). But sixth formers?
Still, as several people pointed out - you've got to get young people interested in science before they take their A levels otherwise it makes it all the more difficult to get them interested engineering at university.
James Randerson over at The Guardian has blogged on this having attended the Grand Challenge event too.
On another tack - any of these spy in the sky gizmos with decent capability will undoubtedly end up being used by civilian police forces and probably in this country. There are civilian spin-offs (mine clearance was one mentioned to me) but security comes first.
Aside from these woolly quibbles there was some remarkable engineering on show which was about as far from male-anoraks-in-the-shed as you can get. If you wanted to get young people interested in engineering (and show them what kind of people are interested) then a few tickets to an open day at the next Grand Challenge would be money well spent. Certainly better spent than that on having the Red Arrows and Typhoon flypasts for the media days.