Global Guerrillas: TINKERING NETWORKS AND DIY ROCKETS

http://globalguerrillas.typepad.com/globalguerrillas/2008/04/rockets-and-ied.html

Link: Global Guerrillas: TINKERING NETWORKS AND DIY ROCKETS.

"The history of the dominant technologies of 21st Century warfare won't spend much time on the complex and expensive systems developed by US defense contractors. Instead, the focus will be on the innovations that are derived from open tinkering networks of amateur inventors. The reasons for this include:

Higher levels novelty production....

(((Y'know, I write for MAKE magazine and know a lot of open-source guys, so I can think of about fifty reasons why backyard rockets made by amateurs are not the future of defense contracting. It's rather like alleging that home-spun, home-tailored uniforms are the future of military couture.)))

(((Nevertheless:)))

"We can expect these DIY efforts to get steadily better as new amateur tech (tinkering networks) adds increasing levels of sophistication (from range to accuracy). Here's a great example of low cost design software from RocketSim. Basic avionics. Here's a nice system that adds telemetry and inertial/GPS measurement. The last step, a control system connected to servo based vanes is all that is needed to enable it to hit specific buildings. That's hard, but well within the capabilities we see emerging in the tinkering space....