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Ploughshares into swords

Last night, as I was toiling away on my SAA project, a penny dropped.

While chasing an annoying software bug I realised that by the simple inversion of a couple of mathematical functions, this Sense And Avoid system, designed to enhance air-safety, could easily be converted to a "Collision Assurance" or targeting system.

Even though the goal of this system is to ensure that no two aircraft (manned or unmanned) can continue on an intersecting course without the impending crash being reported, it also becomes a system that can guide an aircraft directly towards another aircraft as if it were a guided missile.

Obviously, that is not a good thing -- unless you're in the arms industry, which I'm not.

So the ploughshare that is SAA could be beaten into the type of sword that a targeting system represents.

Does this pose a dilemma for someone who is simply looking to make people safer, not create new risks?

No, not really -- at least I don't think so.

Everyone manufacturer of knives must realise that sooner or later, the odds are that one of their products will be used to take a human life -- or at least inflict wicked injuries.

Likewise, guns that are sold for sporting purposes can be mis-used to take human lives.

Even a roll of cling film can be used to keep your food fresh or suffocate someone.

So does it really matter that a complex piece of technology *could* be modified to act as the guidance system for an unmanned craft laden with explosives and designed to target something like an airliner filled with innocent people?

Well it would be nice if that wasn't the case -- but we have to be realistic and say that there is the potential for such things to happen. However, in many places around the world it would just be a whole lot easier for any terrorist to use an RPG or a shoulder-launched heat-seeking missile to do the same. What's more, the RPG and missile are probably a whole lot more readily obtainable than someone with the necessary skills, knowledge and equipment to build their own targeting system based on a patent I might file or open-source project I might publish.

Fortunately, the SAA I'm developing would be a poor choice for any type of ballistic device -- since it has a relatively low refresh rate which means that a very fast-flying missile would have awful accuracy.

However, if it were applied to some slower flying craft then it does have the advantage that it is totally autonomous, not reliant on GPS or any other external signal that might be blocked or switched off. Having said that, electronic countermeasures would be trivial to implement -- *if* you were anticipating its use.

So given the very obvious good that the ploughshare which is the SAA represents, I'm happy that any sword which might be forged from it would be more of a letter-opener than a sabre. Never the less, the potential must be acknowledged.

I carefully considered whether I ought to publish this column today. Clearly, when a guy who has the wherewithal to build a DIY cruise missile admits that he's also building the type of technology that could be repurposed by others into becoming an aerial targeting system then who knows what will happen?

Initially I though that perhaps I'd be a little pretentious to think that now I might, once again, become a high-priority target for electronic surveillance by not only our own "secret squirrels" but also those of the USA -- and then I realised that just about *everything* that *everybody* does is already subject to such surveillance so perhaps not.

If I were really plotting to develop a clever bit of hi-tech targeting to add to my LCCM design I'd hardly have published this column now, would I?

I've been told that only those with something to hide have anything to fear -- hence today's column.

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