USMA Digital Commons (United States Military Academy, West Point)
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Integration of Robotics into Warfare
No full textModern day combat has transformed with the integration of Unmanned Ground Vehicles (UGVs) in small unit operations. To show how UGVs have changed operations and positively impacted U.S. military missions, the Infantry Warrior Simulations (IWARS) is used to develop scenarios involving infantry squads and robots. A base model involving an infantry squad gives the initial data (number of kills, shots fired, mission time). Using the base model, the infantry squad then integrates a UGV that can act as a forward observer and even dispose of IEDs. Currently the U.S. Army Tank Automotive Research, Development and Engineering Center (TARDEC) is designing capabilities for a robotic mule to deploy a small IED robot to conduct reconnaissance. To model TARDEC’s mission, the IWARS model replicates a real-world scenario and determines the effects of modern-day tactics. An analysis between the two models shows the significance of using UGVs in combat and gives proper analysis into modern warfare
A Celebration of West Point Authors, Jan-Jun 2019
Get PDFToday we celebrate the more than 300 works of scholarship produced at the Academy between January and June 2019. This event highlights published and ongoing research into character and character development.https://digitalcommons.usmalibrary.org/books/1021/thumbnail.jp
Correlating Kinetic Output Variables and Ground Reaction Forces from Wireless Sensors and Instrumented Treadmills
No full textPutting a value on the 50x coder
No full textAs an industrial nation transitioning to an information society with digital conflict, we tend to see the technology as the weapon. In the process, we ignore the fact that few humans can have a large-scale operational impact.
But we underestimate the importance of applicable intelligence, the intelligence on how to apply things in the right order. Cyber and card games have one thing in common: the order you play your cards matters. In cyber, the tools are mostly publically available, anyone can download them from the Internet and use them, but the weaponization of the tools occur when they are used by someone who understands how to use the tools in the right order
After a cyberattack, the waiting is the hardest part
No full textWe tend to see vulnerabilities and concerns about cyber threats to critical infrastructure from our own viewpoint. But an adversary will assess where and how a cyberattack on America will benefit the adversary’s strategy. I am not convinced attacks on critical infrastructure, in general, have the payoff that an adversary seeks
Future OE Mission Command and Future OE Decision Cycles
Get PDFEnormous commercial, academic, and governmental resources are being expended to build machines which can autonomously assist humans in a variety of complex tasks (e.g., drive cars, fly aircraft, engage targets, manage distributed operations). This post asserts that the technologies being developed and deployed by these efforts will eventually force future mission command capabilities to include abilities to detect, analyze, and react to man-machine interface deception / surprise events at all echelons of command. The need for these new / improved decision support capabilities will be driven by the challenges of creating accurate Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (ISR) estimates while encountering increased deception / surprise technologies. These deception technologies are appearing at every echelon of mission command and are being driven, in part, by the ongoing commercial integration of the international network of Information Technology (IT) systems and the international network of Operational Technology (OT) systems. A lesson learned from the use of the Stuxnet malware to cause Iranian centrifuges to self-destruct is that malware can be used to achieve tactical surprise of human operators. The centrifuge control man-machine interface was exploited to deceive human operators concerning the true state of the autonomous control system as the machines were being commanded to destroy themselves. The Iranian operators were unaware for a lengthy period that they were being deceived by their monitoring software and they were surprised when they discovered the extent of the damage to the centrifuges. The centrifuge-control, man-machine interface was informing the human operators that everything was proceeding as commanded when in fact the machines were shaking themselves apart. It is apparent from many recent events/results that similar outcomes are now possible at each echelon of command (individual deception outcomes at the “tip of the spear,” as well as tactical surprise outcomes, operational surprise outcomes, and strategic surprise outcomes). This note provides a summary of some results in achieving distributed state estimation and control of complex, networked systems. This post asserts that a wide variety of distributed control systems, including national infrastructure systems and possibly military command and control systems are subject to deliberate and inadvertent cyber and physical anomalies (failure modes) and states the author’s opinions regarding the implications of the ongoing integration of IT and OT for future Mission Command decisions and future Operational Environment (OE) state estimation results
Hip muscle response to a fatiguing run in females with iliotibial band syndrome.
No full textImpaired hip muscle function has often been cited as a contributing factor to the development of iliotibial band syndrome (ITBS), yet our full understanding of this relationship is not well established. The objective of this study was to examine the effect of fatigue on hip abductor muscle function in females with ITBS. Female runners, 20 healthy and 12 with a current diagnosis of ITBS, performed a treadmill run to fatigue. Prior-to and following the run to fatigue, gluteus medius strength and median frequency values (an indicator of fatigue resistance) were measured. Additionally, onset activation timing of the gluteus medius and tensor fascia latae was measured during overground running. Both healthy and injured runners demonstrated decreased gluteus medius strength following the run to fatigue (p = 0.01), but there was no interaction between groups (p = 0.78). EMG onset activation timing did not differ between groups for the gluteus medius (P = 0.19) and tensor fascia latae muscles (P = 0.52). Injured runners demonstrated decreased gluteus medius initial median frequency values suggestive of fatigue (P = 0.01). These findings suggest that the gluteus medius muscle of female runners with ITBS does not demonstrate gross strength impairments but does demonstrate less resistance to fatigue. Clinicians should consider implementation of a gluteus medius endurance training regimen into a runner\u27s rehabilitation program
Dean\u27s Significant Activities Report 05-10-2019
Get PDFThe Dean’s Weekly Significant Activities Report lists all activities conducted within the Departments, Centers & Staff. The Report is provided to the Dean and Directorate personnel for situational awareness.https://digitalcommons.usmalibrary.org/sigact/1002/thumbnail.jp
Scaling of adult human bone and skeletal muscle mass to height in the US population.
No full textOBJECTIVES: The scaling of structural components to body size is well studied in mammals, although comparable human observations in a large and diverse sample are lacking. The current study aimed to fill this gap by examining the scaling relationships between total body (TB) and regional bone and skeletal muscle (SM) mass with body size, as defined by stature, in a nationally representative sample of the US population.
METHODS: Subjects were 17,126 non-Hispanic (NH) white, NH black, and Mexican American men and women, aged ≥18 years, evaluated in the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey who had TB and regional bone mineral (BMin) and lean soft tissue (LST) mass measured by dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry. BMin and appendicular LST served as surrogate bone and SM mass measures, respectively. The allometric model, BMin or LST = α(height)
RESULTS: The findings were similar across all gender and race groups: body mass scaled to height with powers of ~2.0 (mean β ± SE, 1.94 ± 0.08-2.29 ± 0.09) while TB and appendicular BMin and appendicular LST scaled to height with consistently larger powers than those for body mass (eg, all P \u3c .05 in NH white men and women); the largest BMin and LST scaling powers to height were observed in the lower extremities.
CONCLUSIONS: Bone and SM mass, notably those of the lower extremities, increase as proportions of body mass with greater adult height. Metabolic and biomechanical implications emerge from these observations, the first of their kind in a representative adult US population sample