Look to science fiction and you'll find plenty of pathways to create super soldiers. There's cloning or genetic engineering. If that fails, you could try in-utero enhancements, or maybe some cybernetic augmentation. DARPA has a different idea for the real world: inject 'em up with super blood.

Last week, the Pentagon's research arm posted a special notice for what it's calling the Smart-Red Blood Cells (Smart-RBC) program. Designed to generate interest among researchers, this release precedes a formal request for proposals, which the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) told us may come in the next few weeks.

There are good reasons for the secrecy, as a read of the special notice makes the program goals pretty clear - and pretty shocking given how these sorts of experiments

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