Department of Defense Gadget Show

blackp writes "DefenseLINK has an article about Force Protection Equipment Demonstration IV. This year they had over 2,600 gadget and equipment for defense and government agencies. The list includes kevlar suits, body heat camo, a RoBoCop Suit, even biometric identification. Some pictures are available, although somewhat limited. This show seems perfect for the geek with a big budget." Or the government with a big budget. Still, some neat things on display.

Comments

without enough polyglots, soldiers are in trouble

[js7a]

I am been completely disappointed with DARPA's neglect of language learning lately. And people ask why we don't get better intelligence.

This year's one day seminar on Integrating Speech Technology in Language Learning has been cancelled. The InSTIL seminar was all that had been left of what was once a funded U.S. research program to use speech recognition to help people learn to read. However, over the past few years the budget of the Interagency Educational Research Initiative has been slashed and the Learning Anytime Anywhere Partnership program has been ZEROED. The IERI and LAAP programs were created to deal with DARPA funding deficencies, but DARPA has not taken up the slack for speech recognition in language instruction. Fewer U.S. polyglots will have a far greater impact on intelligence-gathering efforts than bandaids like Project Babylon or any of the DARPA advanced speech recognition programs can possibly provide. Please join me in asking John Poindexter and his advisory board and NIST to help get this vital funding back in the budget.

Also, the Linguistic Data Consortium sent their catalog update out yesterday. As usual, there are no new corpi of people attempting to read a language as they are acquiring it, at any age.

Was there

[Darth Maul]

My company was there this year and a couple years ago (we do risk management software). The show is quite interesting because it's a good mix of technologies, from Jersey barriers to bullet-proof glass to software. It's also not just a cheesy trade show, but some serious display by both commercial companies and Gov't agencies. The site for the show is here.

The coolest technology was a compressed-air powered bullet for training. Police and military can use their service weapons to basically play paintball. It's nice because the feel of the weapon is exactly what it would be in real-life situations instead of them having to use a fake training weapon with different characteristics.