Developages - Development and Technology Blog

holy_calamity writes “New Scientist reports on a neat DARPA idea that uses the shimmer of heat haze to allow binoculars to see further. It works by exploiting the fact that some distortions from heat haze actually magnify objects behind them. The binoculars collect a series of frames when that is occurring to boost magnification by 3 times. The design goal is to be able to present one image a second, and to enable facial recognition at 90% accuracy at a distance of 1 km. The scopes could be on the battlefield inside of 3 years.”

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Original post by kdawson

Anti-Globalism sends this except from the Guardian: “In a report commissioned by the Defense Intelligence Agency, leading scientists were asked to examine how a greater understanding of the brain over the next 20 years is likely to drive the development of new medicines and technologies. They found several areas in which progress could have a profound impact, including behaviour-altering drugs, scanners that can interpret a person’s state of mind and devices capable of boosting senses such as hearing and vision. …The report highlights one electronic technique, called transcranial direct current stimulation, which involves using electrical pulses to interfere with the firing of neurons in the brain and has been shown to delay a person’s ability to tell a lie.”

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Original post by Soulskill

Filed under: Transportation

It’s about time Boeing went and shot that frickin’ laser. The Boeing Advanced Tactical Laser C-130H aircraft has completed its first ground test, shooting a high-energy chemical laser through a beam-control system. The gun successfully acquired a ground target and shot the darn thing on August 7, paving the way for an in-air test later this year, hopefully from that bad-ass 747 they’ve been touting. Boeing promises that the ATL will “destroy, damage or disable targets with little to no collateral damage.” Yay for surgical strikes? Maybe some popcorn?

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Original post by Joshua Fruhlinger

AFCyber writes “The Air Force on Monday suspended all efforts related to development of a program to become the dominant service in cyberspace, according to knowledgeable sources. Top Air Force officials put a halt to all activities related to the establishment of the Cyber Command, a provisional unit that is currently part of the 8th Air Force at Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana, sources told Nextgov. An internal Air Force e-mail obtained by Nextgov said, ‘Transfers of manpower and resources, including activation and re-assignment of units, shall be halted.’ Establishment of the Cyber Command will be delayed until new senior Air Force leaders, including Chief of Staff Norton Schwartz, sworn in today, have time to make a final decision on the scope and mission of the command.”

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Original post by CmdrTaco

coondoggie writes “Bigger, better, faster, more are the driving themes behind the advanced network monitoring technology BBN Technologies is building for the military. The high-tech firm got a $.4.4 million contract today from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to develop novel, scalable attack detection algorithms; a flexible and expandable architecture for implementing and deploying the algorithms; and an execution environment for traffic inspection and algorithm execution.The network monitoring systems is being developed under DARPA’s Scalable Network Monitoring program which seeks to bolt down network security in the face of cyber attacks that have grown more subtle and sophisticated.”

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Original post by CmdrTaco

Filed under: Digital Cameras, Misc. Gadgets

As the military industrial complex surges forward, so do advances in technology for the public sector. At least that’s how the cold-war wisdom goes. Case in point: QinetiQ is developing a lens-less, mirror-less, battlefield imaging system with some help from your DARPA’s deep pockets. The LACOSTE project (Large Area Coverage Optical Search while Track and Engage) aims to set aloft high-altitude (about 20km) drones and air-ships fitted with a special, thousand-strong microscopic sensor array (a “first of their kind,” according to QinetiQ), a “mask,” and image processor to decode the scene and extract an image of the quickly changing conditions on the battlefield or, you guessed it, city streets. The resulting lightweight and highly-durable system should feature a “super resolution” mode with the ability to “detect and simultaneously track large numbers of moving vehicles in dense urban areas with a high degree of accuracy, 24-hours a day.” And here you thought CCTV was intrusive.

[Via BBC]

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Original post by Thomas Ricker

bfwebster writes “Strategy Page reports that the United States Air Force has announced its first air wing that will consist entirely of unmanned craft. The 174th Fighter Wing has flown its last manned combat sorties; its F-16s will be entirely replaced by MQ-9 Reapers. Reasons cited include costs (maintenance and fuel) and the drone’s ability to stay in the air up to 14 hours, waiting for a target to show itself.”

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Original post by ScuttleMonkey

Aviran was one of many readers to submit news of a just-announced development in the ongoing quest to develop a working invisibility cloak, writing: “Scientists say they are a step closer to developing materials that could render people and objects invisible. Researchers have demonstrated for the first time they were able to cloak three-dimensional objects using artificially engineered materials that redirect light around the objects. Previously, they only have been able to cloak very thin two-dimensional objects” Reader bensafrickingenius adds a link to coverage at the Times Online, and notes that “the world’s two leading scientific journals, Science and Nature, are expected to report the results this week.” Tjeerd adds a link to Reuters story carried by Scientific American.

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Original post by timothy

Filed under: Misc. Gadgets, Wearables

We’re only at the nano scale folks so you’ll have to keep those high school fantasies of an invisibility-cloaked romp through the girls’ locker room tucked away for now. Still, two teams of US government funded researchers under the direction of Xian Zhanga at UC Berkeley say that they’ve developed a material which can bend visible light around 3D objects, effectively making them disappear. While similar to the negative refractive properties of materials developed back in 2006, UCB’s so-called meta-material is easier to work with and absorbs far less light than those earlier products. As such, the material could scale to the size of invisibility cloaks to hide objects such as tanks or mischievous boy-wizards. However, that day is a long ways off. In the short term, the meta-material will most likely find use in the far less interesting (to consumers, anyway) application of building better microscopes. Hey, Xian, picture of your invisible material or it didn’t happen… oh, wait.

[Via BBC News]

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Original post by Thomas Ricker

An anonymous reader writes “Flying drones from halfway-across the world used to be considered a cushy military job. But the Iraq and Afghanistan wars have become so dependent on the robo-planes that the Air Force has called in chaplains and psychiatrists to help these remote-control warriors cope. ‘In a fighter jet, “when you come in at 500-600 miles per hour, drop a 500-pound bomb and then fly away, you don’t see what happens,” said Colonel Albert K. Aimar, who is commander of the 163d Reconnaissance Wing here and has a bachelor’s degree in psychology. But when a Predator fires a missile, “you watch it all the way to impact, and I mean it’s very vivid, it’s right there and personal. So it does stay in people’s minds for a long time.”‘”

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Original post by ScuttleMonkey

eldavojohn recommends coverage at Ars on a Byzantine case just thrown out by an appeals court. The US Air Force cracked the code that would expire a piece of software. For this they were sued under the DMCA in Blueport v. United States. The Court of Federal Claims heard it and threw it out. “The reasoning behind the decisions focuses on the US government’s sovereign immunity, which the court describes thusly: ‘The United States, as [a] sovereign, “is immune from suit save as it consents to be sued… and the terms of its consent to be sued in any court define that court’s jurisdiction to entertain the suit.”‘ … ‘The DMCA itself contains no express waiver of sovereign immunity,’ the judge wrote, ‘Indeed, the substantive prohibitions of the DMCA refer to individual persons, not the Government.’”

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Original post by kdawson

Filed under: Misc. Gadgets, Transportation

Aw man, and we had such high hopes that the third time really would be a charm. SpaceX’s third attempt to launch a payload rocket into outer space failed this weekend, with launch control confirming an “anomaly” just five minutes after liftoff. Elon Musk, SpaceX chairman and CEO, did admit that it was “obviously a big disappointment not to reach orbit on this Flight 3 of the Falcon 1,” but he has assured the world that his firm won’t be wasting any time feeling sorry for itself. The Falcon 1 was carrying a minuscule satellite dubbed Trailblazer for the Pentagon’s Operationally Responsive Space Office, though we’ve no idea how costly the loss was. Thankfully, we can all look forward to SpaceX trying again sometime in the future, but unless the tables turn in a hurry, we’d say the odds are still stacked against it.

[Via Wired]

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Original post by Darren Murph

An anonymous reader writes “Not only is the US readying its first 100% military spaceplane for a November launch, but it’s going to push NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter mission til 2009: ‘The USAF and Boeing will launch the X-38B — the first military orbital space plane if you discount the secret military shuttle — on top of an Atlas V rocket in November. They want to test its flying features in space and during atmospheric reentry. And probably its anti-matter rays and nuclear bays and hyperspace engines too (but of course, they are never going to tell you that). However, there seems to be a conflict with the civilian space program which may push one of the Moon exploration missions to 2009.’ Screw the moon. We have to defend ourselves against all those alien extremists from Mars!”

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Original post by samzenpus

slugo writes “This wired.com article has probably the coolest laser destruction video you have ever seen. The video shows the Israeli and US Air Force working on laser defense systems. The US Air Force is starting to look for ways to laser-proof its bombs and missiles with spray-on coatings, no less. They think everyone is going to figure this laser thing out sometime and need a defense against what they are already very good at — shooting things out of the sky with a laser.”

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Original post by samzenpus

Filed under: Transportation

We’re beginning to think the US government is playing tricks with our head. Let’s see, in late 2004, a Boeing anti-missile airborne laser achieved first light; in October of 2006, a laser-equipped 747-400F was deemed ready for testing; in January of 2007, an MD-10 with Northrop Grumman’s Guardian anti-missile system took off; now, we’re back to the testing stage? Something doesn’t add up. Whatever the case, we’re being fed information that leads us to think that the US Air Force’s Airborne Laser has moved on to some “other” stage of testing. More specifically, engineers are making sure its “sequencing and control” functions are operating normally. Unsurprisingly, we’re left in the dark as to when this thing will see action (again?), but consider our interest piqued for a reason The Man didn’t intend.

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Original post by Darren Murph