Ryan Greene: Military Technology

I just woke up from a nap for this one.

Tue, 24 Sep 2002 21:20:32 GMT

A New Breed of Wired Warriors [Business Week: Technology]

The military is planning to have their own smart mobs, who will will roll in, deploy their tech, and then be able to communicate wirelessly, via radio, secure WiFi, cell, whatever means needed. Peace dividend? In tne years expect to see commercial verisons of this tech available to the public, including unmanned vehicles patroling over cities providing broadband and cellular via wireless drones.

Mon, 08 Jul 2002 16:50:54 GMT

The Economist. Dirt cheap organic solar cells about to take off. This is one more step towards a hydrogen economy. Excess energy from solar cells on the roof of a home could be stored as hydrogen through simple electrolysis (as an adjunct to hydrogen extraction from natural gas). This eliminates the need for expensive and bulky batteries. Additionally, this hydrogen could then be used to power power-plant fuel cells for use in the home or cars. Refuel your car at home! Good-bye OPEC. Hello decentralized energy. [John Robb's Radio Weblog]

Given that there are home power generation systems out there that run on either hydrogen or propane, Imagine if you used captured rainwater and or greywater. Now you have a constant supply of power, locally generated, and hopefully fairly easy to maintain. Again, do this in a rural area for a small co-op and you've got local power, off the grid. Either vent or bottle the leftover O2.

The trick to this is building cheap, reliable systems that are small enough to be easily transported, and reliable enough to handle harsh environments. Let's forget about the home for a moment. Imagine being able to fly in a town center wherever you wanted it. Power generation, communications, a health care center, mess hall, etc. Now instead of going to war, drop these units in place and use them as central distribution points for food and medical care. Have servers set up to show people how to recognize mines and other ordinance that is left behind, how to care for injuries, and who to contact for help in removing the ordinance.

That would generate some serious good will.

Wed, 19 Jun 2002 16:01:16 GMT

T-ray cameras see through clothes, comets. New terahertz "T-ray" cameras will allow us to see into space and under each others' clothes.

One camera, already built by a company called QinetiQ and working in so-called millimetric waves, has demonstrated the ability to eerily peer through clothes and reveal a concealed weapon -- as well as much of a person's body. The image shows far more detail than an infrared camera, which detects heat.
Terahertz radiation is similar to but more revealing than what the QinetiQ camera detects. Scientists say T-rays are emitted by pretty much everything. They come from "the human hand, an envelope, someone with clothes on or a comet," says Geoff McBride, who works on Star Tiger, the British project. It is supported by the European Space Agency.

Link Discuss (Thanks, Jay!) [Boing Boing Blog]

T rays also see through smoke and clouds, which sould make for an interesting set of optics for artillery as well as an HMD for soldiers in the field. The T rays are similar to millimeter wave radar, only running at a much higher frequency.

Thought: Just walk through the scanner in the airport, and get checked for weapons etc that way. No more strip searches, no more metal detectors. Like out of the movie Total Recall.

Thu, 13 Jun 2002 14:25:10 GMT

SpaceDaily. Soldier of the future. I particularly like the use of the RPV.

>>>Already developed is a reinforced helmet built of kevlar-type material that integrates night-vision goggles, cameras, infra-red targeting, biological and chemical alarms, a Global Positioning System, an electronic method to distinguish between friends and foes, and of course radio communications.

But in the future, US infantrymen could be going into combat aboard a 250-kilo (550 pound) robotic "mule." Soldiers could travel up to 80 kilometers (50 miles) per hour aboard this wheeled machine, also designed to follow them at a distance carrying heavy equipment when the soldiers travel on foot. The vehicle, equipped with a silent hybrid electric-fuel engine, will also serve as a power generator and water generator and purifier, and come equipped with a cannon or a white phosphorus smoke launcher. The top-line "mules" will even come with a mini-drone, a small pilotless plane that will enable soldiers to view their environment from the sky, De Gay said.<<< [John Robb's Radio Weblog]

I hope that they harden the suits against EMP pulses, as well as the RPV's, otherwise you are a sitting duck in a fancy suit. I also hope that the hemet can be opened up in some manner (unlike the motorcycle helmet they are displaying now) so that the soldiers can rely on their own hearing when entering/clearing structures.

Tue, 11 Jun 2002 14:40:02 GMT

How Bad Can a 'Dirty Bomb' Be?. Some predict the detonation of a radiological weapon would make huge sections of a city uninhabitable for decades, while others' assessments aren't as dire. By Noah Shachtman. [Wired News]

Reality Check.

Tue, 04 Jun 2002 15:19:55 GMT

Fire Scout UAV gets another $3 mill. Fire Scout project studied by Northrop Grumman Corporation gets another $3 million award from DARPA for the study of unmanned combat armed rotorcraft (UCAR). Fire Scout is manufactured by Schweizer Aircraft Company. Fire Scout is an unmanned copter UAV with vertical take off and landing and will provide enhanced reconnaissance and attack capabilities for U.S. Army aviation.

Here's some other interesting sites for Fire Scout and other UAV info, and here , and here. [Meerkat: An Open Wire Service]

UAV's are the next big thing, the same way that armor changed the role of the cavalry in the past, UAV's are going to change the way that recon and artillery are used in future.

Civillian roles: Traffic enforcement, hunting for fugitives, searching for lost campers/missing persons in large parks/rural areas.

Fri, 31 May 2002 01:52:35 GMT

Computing gets bulletproof guarantee. Sure, your fancy new laptop has the latest multimedia doodads. But can it stop a bullet? The latest in high-tech body armor promises to do just that. [CNET News.com: Personal Technology]

Having a bullet pass through your battery and then into you would be a horrible outcome, as the wound would be splattered with whatever type of battery you are running. This also serves to armor portion of the user without adding too much additional weight.

Mon, 13 May 2002 14:41:18 GMT

World: Water pistol 'safer way to find and destroy landmines'. 08:28 ET - Ananova [NewsBlip.com]

OK, so far today we have bees that can detect explosives, as well as water pistols to find and destroy mines. Next up, if we can use either horseshoes or lawn darts to destroy the mines that we have targeted, we'll have a triumverate of summer picnic items that have been converted to mine removal.

Seriously though, use a potato gun mounted on a Jeep it to target the mines that the bees find. A cheap, low tech solution to the problem. Wrap the barrel of the gun in gauze and rubber cement to minimize the chance of injuring the shooter, and you have a cheap, disposable weapon system for dealing with mines.

Mon, 13 May 2002 13:28:46 GMT

NYT. Bees on my bomb. [John Robb's Radio Weblog]

Details: Researchers train bees to go after the scent of exlposives instead of pollen.

A kinder, gentler hand grenade

Sat, 20 Apr 2002 17:03:01 GMT

A Stunning New Flash-Bang. Stun grenades that temporarily disorient bad guys can backfire. The company that designed one of the most popular types claims their new model is just as effective and less dangerous. By Louise Knapp. [Wired News]

No more trying to put the pin back in, this new flash bang grenade is a mini fuel-air bomb.

Military Robots

Wed, 10 Apr 2002 14:19:58 GMT

Bots: The New Mobile Infantry. Who was that guy in camouflage running around with grad students and robots at Ground Zero in the days following the terrorist attacks? It was a former Army lieutenant colonel, using the new mechanical dogs of war. By Michael Behar of Wired magazine. [Wired News]

There is a wealth of information in here for anyone that is interested in the state of robot technology.

Counterpoints:

...An onboard sensor tracks the HMTM's heading and wheel rotation. If the network fails, the robot can play back its movements in reverse, retracing its steps until communication is reestablished. "This will save the robot if the communication link with the operator drops out or is jammed," says Larsen. "It could spell the difference between mission success and failure."

Or, a sufficiently advanced enemy can send out a jamming signal that pulses every five minutes or so, so the robot keeps doing the cha cha, making it easier to isolate and destroy.

...There are plenty of critics who doubt that software solutions like ATAC will match the decisionmaking power of the human brain anytime soon. "Autonomous robotic weapons won't demonstrate human intelligence until machines pass the Turing test," says Ray Kurzweil, author of The Age of Spiritual Machines.

Thrown in a modified version of the creature AI from Black and White, and you have your solution. Get a hundred of them out int he field and running, and "breed" the 80th percentile and ina few generations, you'll have a pretty smart 'bot tearing around. Given that it can be reproduced (just copy the code base) you'll have a ready supply of robot intelligences. Something like the semi autonomous tanks from Ghost In The Shell.

Modern Armor, Or: The start of Starship Troopers

Thu, 14 Mar 2002 13:44:36 GMT

US Army seeks nanotech suits. A new MIT institute aims to produce fabrics with morphing camouflage, that can also store energy to increase the wearer's strength [New Scientist]

Cool! While there is whole lot of "could" in this article, I think it's great that someone is finally starting to work on these technologies for the military. This means that about 10-12 years from the time that it is first deployed for the military, we'll see something similar for civillians. Probably for police and rescue workers first, with "inflatable" nanotube casts for immediate isolation of limbs that may be broken.

I seem to recall reading somewhere that armor in the middle ages was made to weigh no more than 47 pounds, as that was the most weight that someone could carry all day and still be able to get up in the morning and do it all over again. Britannica seems to differ, putting the weight of plate mail around 60 lbs. According to the above article, soldiers today are carrying somewhere in the neighborhood of 140 lbs into battle. Land Warrior [PDF] is going to add to that quite a bit. having some type of self powered armor would be great, as long as when it fails, it does not inhibit the ability of the soldier wearing to to move.

Sat, 09 Mar 2002 15:50:07 GMT

Military palmtop to cut collateral damage. The super-palmtop is called JEDI and combines laser rangefinding, GPS satellite positioning, a satellite phone and text messaging [New Scientist]

"JEDI is a lot more robust, he says. To test quite how much the gadget can take, the Army had a game of football using a JEDI as the ball - and it worked just fine afterwards."

Now THAT is product testing. it is good to know that they developing tech to help keep our soldiers alive, though I wonder what safeguards there are against it falling into enemy hands.

Battlefield technology has been an interest of mine since I read Firefight 2000 (Hmm, new cover has it as Firefight Y2K) back in high school. This UberPDA should be a big boost, as long as it's transmissions are secure, and untraceable. I'd hate to see someone getting shelled because an enemy can triangulate their location by pinging their PDA.