14 DAY TRIAL // The computer scientists and engineers from DARPA (The Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency), the Pentagon's technological and scientific organization has struck again (remember when they came up with the Internet concept?). It seems that the Pentagon decided to rain some cash over them in an attempt to build a battle computer system with decision making responsibilities that should at least in theory maximize efficiency on the battlefield.
Perhaps impressed by the famous "Deep Blue" and its victories over mere human brains in the mock combat of chess, DARPA's name for its general-in-a-box tech is "Deep Green". The color may allude to the fact that the main role in the near future of such a computer system would be to help U.S. light colonels deploy their forces more effectively. Maybe if they ever get to make a specialized version for the navy it will be named "Actually Deep Blue".
According to DARPA and cited by The Register, the "Deep Green" battle computer will include extensive tactical and strategic knowledge and several technologies called Sketch to Plan and Sketch to Decide", "Crystal Ball", "Automated Course of Action Generation" and "Blitzkrieg". The idea, for starters, is that DARPA will be able to run wargames between the traditional human headquarters staff and a Deep Green equipped one that will use only a quarter of the staff officers and other personnel of a normal command structure. Performance will be judged by neutral observers that will not be informed if a particular team is Deep Green equipped or not.
"Leaders from the field generally do not want machine-generated courses of action," admits DARPA, plainly disappointed after being shouted at by some cigar-chewing US colonels. Deep Green is to be "a commander-driven battle command technology". "The long-term vision of Deep Green is for options to be generated by both the commander and the computer... so that some options are generated by humans and others are generated by machines. Initially, DARPA expects the machine generation of options to be centered on making clever mutations of the human-generated options..."