DARPA wants soldiers without blood

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From http://www.defensetech.org/archives/000866.html

Darpa, the Pentagon's research arm, has already started to investigate ways for soldiers to fight without sleep or food. Now the agency wants to see if G.I.s can carry on without most of their blood.

"The vision for the Surviving Blood Loss (SBL) Program is to develop novel strategies that delay the onset of irreversible shock and allow an injured warfighter to survive with significantly reduced oxygen delivery for extended periods of time," a Darpa solicitation reads.

It's all part of a larger effort to shore up what the agency sees as the "weak link" in the military's chain: the fragile human being.

If all goes according to plan, phase one of the SBL effort will crescendo with a group of rats being able to live with 60% of their blood removed for three hours. Darpa wants to see a survival rate of 75%. Proposals are due by next February.

― Elvis Telecom (Chris Barrus), Friday, 16 April 2004 21:42 (twenty-two years ago)

To the other gamers: am I the only one who thought this thread would be Metal Gear Solid related?

― Leee O'Gaddy (Leee), Friday, 16 April 2004 21:50 (twenty-two years ago)

what's the idea? hyper-oxygenate the blood with some sort of poly-fluoro something??

― vahid (vahid), Friday, 16 April 2004 21:58 (twenty-two years ago)

oh, i thought they actually had some idea of how they were going to do this. this is junk science - free DARPA money for people with vague proposals.

― vahid (vahid), Friday, 16 April 2004 22:01 (twenty-two years ago)

i just want to know how vampires fit into this.

― s1ocki (slutsky), Friday, 16 April 2004 22:31 (twenty-two years ago)

oh, i thought they actually had some idea of how they were going to do this.

This is how DARPA funding typically works. Look for proposals on some crazy idea that is way beyond current state-of-the-art, seed money if anything halfway reasonable comes in, and then hope for the best. Much more so than any other large research body (in the US at least).

There was a DARPA program manager quoted a few years ago in the MIT Tech Review saying they try not to have a greater than 15% overall success rate on DARPA funded projects...any more and they are not dealing with hard enough problems.

― Silas Beauford (Silas Beauford), Saturday, 17 April 2004 00:42 (twenty-two years ago)

one month passes...

Sergeant Salamander report for duty!

― Elvis Telecom (Chris Barrus), Friday, 21 May 2004 18:42 (twenty-two years ago)

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