Slashdot Mirror
Nanotech Paints For Military
pmacwill wrote to us with a recent article on Pennet in regards to the U.S. military's proposed use of nanotech paints. Actually, it goes beyond proposal -- and beyond paint, as it would allow vehicles to change camo patterns very easily, and would also repair micro-cracks and fractures without the need for service.
I'd be more interested in the medical uses ... fix cracks and clogs in the ole arteries, etc.
He is on the executive board of this project at Rice University over in the United States.
They're working on similar studies and experiments, and have been doing so since the late 1990s. From what I hear, it's going quite well and the funding is just extraordinary these days now that Republicans are in control of U.S. government policies these days.
Department of Physics and Atmospheric Science, Dalhousie University, Halifax, N.S., Canada, B3H 3J5
Mix this in with fiberoptics or cameras, and you can have your the paint display what is on the opposite side of the vehicle. You will effectively see through the vehicle.
I was in the Army for three years as a mechanized infantryman (grunt). Anyhow, every Monday we were forced to perform 3.5 hours of 'preventative maintenance'. You wouldn't believe how much preventative maintenance actually would caause more harm than good. Good ol' Joe would try and test that fuel line and pull just a bit too hard...you get the picture. As it is now, I don't think the military can afford this expense. Sure, the initial costs can probably be quickly absorbed, but they tend to forget that, like many things, the initial shock of cost is usually outweighed by maintenance. But, I will admit, I am curious....
"This food is problematic."
Having been in the military and ground units on the R&D side of the house, its goes with out saying anything that is of an increased technical difficulty is more prone to failure and less likely to be repaired in a combat environment. Second what to say that this technology couldnt be easily detected over a regular paint job. We're assuming that sensors are dealing with the visible light spectrum, I'm sure these gems would send off thier own display of some sort. Given that maybe this is the answer to friendly fire?
...if this is another case of concept plagiarism. We know of the concept before being stolen from Radix. I get the feeling some R&D guy got stoned and played Metal Gear Solid.
Only in slashdot are posts of solidarity modded at -1 Redundant, while posts of antagonism are modded as -1 Flamebait.
Remember the 1970's custom van craze, with elaborate Frazetta-looking airbrush murals? Now imagine the same kitschy artwork, only animated. Are you having flashbacks? No, the Greatful Dead skeleton on that guy's van really is waving at you.
Or instead of mere bumper stickers, SUVs could now sport political blogs that cover the entire side of the vehicle. Meme warfare on wheels!
Another application: imagine you break the posted speed limit, and not only does your onboard compliance-monitor signal the highway patrol, but your vehicle starts flashing bright ugly blue to let everyone else know what you did...
>;K
>;k
I know, I'll let people upload pictures to the web and have them display as the shell of my car. Because when the cops pull you over you can just flip a switch.
Or better yet....
I'll make a "license plate" that nano-tech changes to whatever I want. Then I can go to a parking lot and "steal" the plates off of some undercover cop car that matches the make and model of mine and never get pulled over!
Or better yet... advertise!
Oh wait... I got it... Bumpersticker of the Month/Day/Hour/Minute !!!!
Turn signals will be obsolete... I'll just flash a portion of my car!
Who needs brake lights? Just turn the whole back of your car into a giant stop sign!
I could go on...
42 - So long and thanks for all the fish.
Another toy for the military to spend millions of dollars on while people remain unemployed, homeless, or just plain poor here.
This message brought to you by the Council of People Who Are Sick of Seeing More People.
Yeah, I'm envisioning some enemy discovering the signal used to tell the paint to change color, then broadcasting a signal to turn all the US tanks hot pink.
:-)
(I mean, it's not like they're going to have frequency-hopping strong crypto in the nano-paint. Right?
* And remember, it's spelled N-e-t-s-c-a-p-e, but it's pronounced "Mozilla."
There have been rumors milling around that during WWII the US military was playing around with under-wing/fuselage lighting to camoflage bombers during daytime. It was considered useless at the time, but recently (I think the 80's?) there was a project that combined lighting with photoreceptors (CCD's maybe) where they were able to make a drone virtually invisible above a certain altitude. Rumor is it was classified after a few tests. Anyone heard anything like this?
At least in military R&D, enough research is done so that fundamental breakthroughs are accomplished. yes, it's true that the weapons systems may not work as promised, but, the important thing is that the fundamental research is done, and we get the benefit of it.
SO that is why I hope the military spending is angled more toward biological weaponry and bio-defenses--the resulting R&D could trigger breakthroughs in biology, which could help all of us live longer. Corporate funding has been aimed to this area as well, but it goes for the low-lying fruit; plus, it never goes far enough to generate breakthroughs; only goes far enough to generate executive bonuses...
Back to the good old days of the cold war, I say.
That will also mean the draft, and more jobs and more money for us old guys....
Sig:
Navy nuke sub lifestyle?
Strange, I thought selling cars for more than it cost to make them is what kept them in the black.
Nope. Car manufacturers are in the business of selling parts. Give away the razor, sell the blades.
Many cars sell for less than what it costs to make them, Cavalier and Sunfire from the GM product line come to mind.
The sci-fi books have little bloodwork nanobots, star-trek-like replicators, and other, well, sci-fi uses. The only Real World application I've heard of before this was arrays of nanomirrors on microscopic rotors, and I don't know if that made it past the prototype stage.
This is real work. The army likes to throw money at a technology problem until it is solved. That probably means a real solution will come of this. And that's why this is News for Nerds, etc, and not just another sci-fi proposal.
John
Prototype by 2005? I doubt that. They admit to not even knowing what types of nanotech "gears and switches" they are going to need, let alone how to hook it all up to make the paint do what they want. How will they address individual pixels? How will they power it? Nanotech isn't magic, folks. As far as the military already having this technology, I doubt that too. Creating a coating with radar absorbing qualities is one thing, creating one that thinks and moves in a combat environment is entirely different.
Sounds like they've been smoking that "gotta spend our increased budget or lose it" crack.
One way to make color changing paint would be to create a grid of fins that could be moved closer together or farther apart. A butterflies wings are colored not with pigments, but with particles that have a gap sized to create interference cancelling out all but a specific wavelength of light. By adjusting the gap, maybe mechanically, maybe electrically, you could adjust the color.
Another way would be balls, with say 6 different spots of color on different sides. Rotate the ball to get different colors.
Another way would be pigment sacks, like a cuttlefish uses.
Now try to think about how to address all the pixels on, say, a tank, with any of those systems. Then think about how you would go about making a system like that self-repairing.
I would bet that by 2005 they have a prototype that looks bad, changes color slowly, fades quickly in sunlight, breaks down often, and doesn't self repair. They may have a working color changing paint by 2009, but I doubt they will get the self repairing bit down that soon.
Just thought about it a bit more. They may develop a self repairing undercoating which could fix small cracks in the metal or undercoating by reacting to oxidation and releasing a sealer or catalyst that would bond paint or metal It's making the color changing bit itself self repairing that sounds hard to me.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
I seem to remember a white paint from a few years back that was being tested on Airliners.
Apparently, if struck by hard objects the paint "BLED". That is, the white paint turned blue under stress.
Tiny little blue dots on an airplane might just indicate that it had run into your average airborne items such as hailstones or birds, but larger blue splotches would be a visual clue that there was an impact to the plane that might warrent some attention.
I never heard if this paint went into full-time service or not, but this was many years ago that I heard about it.
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
Moderation Totals: Wrong=2, Stupid=3, Total=5.
other then the whole camo-stealth thing doesn't it sound like skin? self healing with micro fissures (cuts and bruises anyone) sounds very bio to me. do we need to feed it something other then petroleum products now?
Invisibility cloak? Using nanotech paints, I think this is much further from reality than the article suggests.
The idea, I assume, of "invisibility" would br to paint an object (in this case a tank or a private's helmet - "Aieeee!!! These guys have no heads! Attack of the zombies, run for your lives!!!") the same colour and pattern as the background, thus making it indistinguishible from those objects behind it (similar concept to those noise-cancelling headphones)
The fundamental problem with this is, what perspective do you assume the object is being viewed from? There will be a different background for every different position from which you view the object. You could assume the viewer was a certain distance from the object, making the number of discernable perspectives fewer in number (not even taking into consideration multiple heights at which a viewer could be), but then you still have to conquer the idea of projecting a few (ten, hundred) thousand colours of light from each point on the object (and in many different directions).
I believe it was misleading to state a practical possibility of attaining invisibility with nanotech paint. It sounds very exciting in terms of applying a general camoflage or solid-colour paint (wouldn't mind some for my car - Cops: "crrrrck... um, yeah, we have a black 2002 Volkswagon golf speeding West on the 401... car 41, do you copy? crrrck..." Me: "hmmm, black? I think not. Yellow seems good right about now."
"this is a really good piece of cantoloupe."
First requisition one pint of nanotech paint, splash it on your ream of paper.. then you can program it to display your requisition without needing a printer.
Imagine connecting the nontech-based paint job to the vehicle's speedometer. As the vehicle moves, the camo pattern could scroll at the same speed in the opposite direction. In the proper environment, this could make the vehicle difficult to spot when moving, since the observer's eyes would be presented with data not normally present in nature.
Nothing for 6-digit uids?
And I don't know why.
0 82 2082034.htm
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2000/08/00
Under controlled laboratory conditions, polyaniline prevented rust 10,000 times more effectively than zinc, reported Wessling. In field tests, it proved three to 10 times more effective. Still, says Wessling, that's enough to outlast the usefulness of most products.
This reminds me of the mask used by Rorschach in "Watchmen". It is supposed to be liquid ink between sheets of plastic.
__
Men with no respect for life must never be allowed to control the ultimate instruments of death.
GW Bu
The whole problem with envisioning self replicating nanotech engines is that most people don't realize this self replication would only occur in carefully controlled conditions. That is, conditions not found on earth or anywhere else in the solar system. The goo would only be able to reproduce in special vats where enough energy and the right materials is available, as well as cooling systems to get rid of all the waste heat from thousands of nanotech engines. OTHERWISE, these devices would already exist (actually, they do. Its called the cell, and its a near optimal result for the given conditions. That's why the fear of some magical "grey goo" going wild and eating up everything is unfounded, because that would imply creating a life form far superior to current life and out-competing it)
As for destroying tanks, a far more deadly weapon would be small autonomous robots that swarm in by the hundreds...about the size of a baseball or so. They would be equipped with shaped charges.