The Pentagon’s way-out researchers don’t just want to build an Internet simulator, to test out cyberwar tactics.  They want the range’s operators to "realistically replicate human behavior and frailties," too.

Congress has ordered the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or Darpa, to put together a National Cyber Range, as part of a massive (and massively secret) $30 billion, government-wide effort better prep for battle online. The project is now considered a top priority for the Agency.  And to make sure the facility is as true-to-life as possible, Darpa wants the contractors running the Range to be able to "replicate realistic human behavior on nodes," a request for proposals, released today, reveals.

Specifically, the Agency wants to have its contractors:

•    Provide robust technologies to emulate human behavior on all nodes of the range for testing all aspects of range behavior.
•    Replicants will produce realistic chain of events between many users without explicit scripting behavior.
•    Replicants must be capable of implementing multiple user roles similar to roles found on operational networks.
•    Replicant behavior will change as the network environment changes, as the replicated “outside environment” (i.e. DoD DefCon, InfoCon, execution of war plans, etc) changes, and as network activity changes (detected attacks, degradation of services, etc).
•    Replicants will simulate physical interaction with device peripherals, such as keyboard and mice.
•    Replicants will drive all common applications on a desktop environments.
•    Replicants will interact with authenticate systems, including but not limited to DoD authentication systems (common access cards – CAC), identity tokens.

These mock people have to be able to "demonstrate human-level behavior on 80 percent of all events," the Agency adds. And mimicking us flesh-and-blood types is only one of a wide array of tasks Darpa wants to see operators of the National Cyber Range, or NCR, pull off.