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Military Device Will Sense Through Concrete Walls
Juha-Matti Laurio writes "DefenseLINK News is reporting that 'troops conducting urban operations soon will have the capabilities of superheroes, being able to sense through 12 inches of concrete to determine if someone is inside a building.' By simply holding the portable, handheld device named a "Radar Scope" up to a wall, users will be able to detect movements as small as breathing. The Radar Scope hopes to eventually give troops the ability to see up to 50 feet beyond a concrete wall to decrease losses in urban combat."
... as the beeps get nearer and nearer... then THEY should be in to room... look UP to the false ceiling!!!!
More old news. CES is happening and the best we can do is recycled news stories?
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
Forget military use (killing), how would this work as a survivor searching tool (saving lives) after earthquakes and such? I bet DARPA won't let us "private secor" folk make it useful though. You know: "because people could use it for terror and someone might be killed by that terrorist. Save lives wih a weapon - stupid liberals"
US Democracy:The best person for the job (among These pre-selected choices...)
duh...i watch the discovery channel too.............
how does it work? HOW?
For anyone interested, do a google on Terahertz Imaging.
Once the transmission technology comes down in price it's going to be great for the 'metal detecting' hobbyists. No more digging up rubbish. You'll be able to see the object. This is one technology that I cant wait for!
Open Source Drum Kit, LPLC deve board - mjhdesigns.com
oh my god america is tottally wallhacking, kickban them from the server
*kicked from international conflict*
... but can it see through my tin foiled walls?
My other comment is funny
(someone had to say it)
US Democracy:The best person for the job (among These pre-selected choices...)
Bah, what does saving lives matter compared to being able to watch your neighbors knock boots from your couch?
Violence is like duct tape. If it doesn't solve the problem, you didn't use enough.
Keep in mind, the eggheads at DARPA (they paid me once, too) would love nothing better than to actually tell their families what they do for a living.
Imagine something like the quakes in Turkey or Iran, and they could find survivors from under the concrete slabs. Kids could point to the TV and say "my daddy made that!"
Don't confuse politicians with individuals.
Nintendo proved Radarscope was a failure more than 20 years ago...I don't see what they think they're going to accomplish.
"Troops conducting urban operations soon will have the capabilities of superheroes, being able to sense through 12 inches of concrete to determine if someone is inside a building....by simply holding the portable, handheld device named a "Radar Scope" up to a wall" When they can leap tall buildings in a single bound, get back to me.
This is hardly innovative. It's one of the first things you can research in X-Com, and that game came out in like 1992!
Slashdot: providing anti-social weirdos a soapbox, since 1997.
I'm practicing giving my walls the finger right now.
meh according to metal gear solid 3 they had those during the cold war
What this technology really does.
This spells the end for revolutions, for insurgents, freedom fighters whatever you want to call them.
This is the final nail in the coffin of home made firearms against your government.
Oppressive governments rejoice!
now we can make sure we kill everyone before moving along.
I'll get the popcorn...
can we use it to see 1/8 inch beneath that tight sweater?
It would also be a good publicity tool, and the military is perfectly capable of using those (and, I might add, comprised of much better people than the grandparent apparently believes). Look at the thousands of lives they saved with relief efforts in the wake of the South Asian tsunami, among any number of similar incidents. Much of the technology used for that operation was developed with military purposes in mind, too (ships capable of creating water onboard, worldwide logistics systems which are "fault tolerant" when the fault involves literally wiping entire cities off the map, helicopter airlift of supplies and medevac, the best first responder medical teams in the world, etc).
Help poke pirates in the eyepatch, arr.
I would like to know if the testing environments included many animals in the buildings. In many places in this world, people keeps poultry and other livestock inside their homes. As they are so sensitive, will these devices be fooled by rats inside the building? Or even flies? This thing could give so many false positives in real use as to be almost useless.
Seeing it from the point of view of a guerrilla fighter, now you would have an easy way of luring troops into your traps by simply putting a dog in the building. When the troops come, the booby trap explodes. Or better than a dog, use a man, seeing how low the own human life is regarded by some of the latests fighters-against-freedom groups.
It's perhaps just me but I'm a bit tired of this way of presenting technology as the key that will solve the problems of the military in guerrilla environments. Organization, training and motivation are in my humble point of view, much more important. But you cannot show them off so easily in a presentation, I suppose.
Rome taught me patience and assiduous application to detail. Virtues which temper the boldness of great, general views.
So it detects breathing...
It will prove useless to us when the robots rise up against us. And I'm sure they'll have them built in.
Damn skynet.
Al Qaida could use the target practice.
In Soviet Russia, concrete walls sense through you!
Applicable countermeasures:-
cat
dog
pendulum
lava lamp
furby
This is an ultrawideband through-wall imaging system, and is an old technology that has been around for many years. Two of the many manufacturers are Time Domain [Flash!] and Camero.
Note that, while military radio emissions are regulated in the U.S. by the NTIA, U.S. civilian use of ultrawideband through-wall imaging systems is controlled by the FCC (by regulations established in April 2002 [pdf!]). 47 U.S.C. 15.510(5)(e) [pdf!] states that
Basically, and as defined by rules elsewhere, it's illegal even to possess one in the U.S. if you're not a first-responder type.No, fuck you, you piece of shit armchair patriot. I served in the Marine Corps, so don't tell me about taking care of our troops. I scavenged parts from the trash to make working equipment, because working equipment wasn't in the budget. Wanna talk about extreme case modding? I saw guys design and build electronic test equipment inside old suitcases because we couldn't get real stuff. Our aircraft were so old that the parts to maintain them simply weren't made anymore. Yet those same aircraft are still flying in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Using this terahertz stuff, soldiers could limit themselves to destroying only the buildings that have living creatures (or moving machines) inside them. No longer will they need to level entire towns and villages. Think of the savings!
I am sure that there are many other solipsists out there.
This should help me find that winning slurm can.
Funny. The Americans always think there's some sort of magical technical solution to something they have always been extremely crap at - guerilla warfare. You only need to look back to Somalia and Vietnam and all of those silly films which turn those total military disasters into some sort of victory as to how much of a problem they have.
Whether it's something about the American psyche I don't know, but guerilla warfare is a skill that involves using your brain. Inevitably you also come into contact with ordinary civilians in an urban environment as well, and you have to have at least some idea of what to do and to be able to get along with them. Suppose that blip on your new radar is a bunch of civilians or allies? You're not going to have a completely deserted city where anything that moves is the enemy to be blown away, but that describes the US military's tactics thus far.
The US military just don't seem to have those essential skills, and have continually looked to technical solutions to get around them. I would suggest training their troops an awful lot better than they do and giving their soldiers something every soldier should have - soldiering skills! That's why a lot of American soldiers are dying in Iraq. Unlike, especially their British, counterparts they just haven't got it in that kind of environment. Pure and simple. It's a people thing.
OMG WALLHACK!!
Didn't you see the story from last week. A drone plane saw suspected insurgents planting a bomb, watched them go into a building, so they simply drop a guided bomb into the building. It was the wrong building they hit, but even if it was the right one, it must have killed lots of other people too.
...In Turkey a bird cull was underway to prevent the spread of bird flu, meanwhile in lighter news, a mother and her children were killed today as part of a cull of suspected insurgents...
It's like a poultry cull to the army, better to kill too many in case of missing one. If this was Texas and the DEA blew up a house to get at suspects it would be shocking news, but the US networks report it like its just an Iraq poultry cull.
If it's any comfort to you the British have also encountered the same thing. Military procurement is just shite everywhere. It's a bit of a shock to hear the US military has those problems as well though. Goodness. Makes you wonder what all our troops are getting killed there for. We're certainly not fighting any 'war on terror' or any war that needs to be fought.
Who's Al Qaida? ;-)
This product has so many better uses that military, but if it is proved effective I bet no one else will ever see it. Why is it that some of the best inventions for saving lives end up being used to to take them, I guess that is just human nature, what a shame.
Business Voyeur
.. The enemy havent brought their Kryptonite...
-AlexC
"Someone is hiding in there. Let's kill it, just to be save."
Whoever moded that as a troll has also had a humour bypass.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
There is not an entry team in the world that would deny the chance to get one of these babies. Gone would be the days of mirroring down hallways and entering a room dynamically not knowing whos where. There is a ton of military use for this.
SUITCASES??? YOU LUCKY BASTARD!! We only had rucksacks! I had to scavenge parts from the sewer to get it working, because working equipment wasn't in the budget, and our equipment was a 486 and a gumball machine. Our aircraft were mainly comprised of half a stolen Russian MiG, and an old Lada.
A 486?!?! WE DREAMED OF A 486! We had a PDP-10 stuffed into a ladies hambag. I wasn't pretty, but it did the job, and this was in the . And Donald Rumsfeld would beat us if we couldn't get 95% uptime on Windows Server 2000. We could just about manage a write, but sometimes, the data would never be read again. And a GUMBALL machine? You had it easy! Our "air power" was a mortar conan and a highly trained rat.
They got some Red Faction obsessed mad scientist/techie guy to make a real life version of the gadget from Red Faction that lets you see through walls, unfortunately it can't kill anyone yet.
#!/bin/bash
login root
chmod 775 universe://
.. was the first thing which came to my mind, but I can't find an appropiate place to put it at :)
Canadian, eh?
Question Authority before IT questions You
NO doubt this device will somehow be used against the USA one day. Criminals will be using this soon, you just wait. I am happy I live in Jamaica where we dont go to war with anyone but ourselves! I wonder if the regular cops are gonna start using it and if so do they need a warrant to use it?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Why don't you go compare the numbers of dead on both sides in the Viet Nam war, in Somalia, and in Iraq (well not many numbers there yet so maybe not Iraq) instead of talking out of your ass.
Especially in Viet Nam the ratio of dead U.S. soldiers is at least a tenth of the figure of dead NLF/Viet Cong soldiers: that war was lost beacuse of lack of political support by U.S. citizens resulting in insufficient deployment (scaling back, trying to negotiate peace etc.) as well as the micromanaging idiocy of McNamara. Now the decision of going from supporting Viet Cong to fighting them is moronic either way imo and thus the whole war a terrible tragedy even though I understand and sympathize with the fear of the domino theory (which actually got confirmed considering what happened in Cambodia, Laos and the treath against Thailand). But don't claim that NLF/Viet Cong won because of some sort of superior military tactics or strategy because it's plain bullshit: they won by politics.
In Somalia Clinton wasn't interested in providing sufficient equipment and force levels in the first place, go read the book Black Hawk Down which in contrast to the movie of the same name is a documentary (including several pages of references and source discussion/debate as appendixes). You should gain actual knowledge it you read it.
So far in present day Iraq somewhat over 2000 U.S. soldiers have died, I'm confindent a lot more than 2000 of various terrorists and baathists have died. It wouldn't surprise me if at least a 1000, perhaps more, of them have died simply from blowing themselves up against civilians.
Your comparison with the British forces just reveals your total ignorance, and are you trying to imply that the Irish troubles was a guerilla war? Or that the U.S. army doesn't have urban warfare training? Or that the British weren't deployed to the Basra region because it was (correctly) perceived to be a much calmer area than the rest of the country? And because it had easier deployment and logistics? You are at least aware of the size differences I hope, but you don't seem to grasp the simplest implications of it.
There's tons more and loads of details and debate but I'm not going to waste more time on you except to say that I feel sorry for you with your overly simplistic opinions. Only you can change that.
Years of bloody conflict in Northern Ireland have made us pretty good at urban situations but it's wrong to blame this on the troops. One British army officer said the best tactic his men used was to wear berets rather than helmets and play football with the locals. You can't defeat a guerrilla army with firepower alone, you neeed local support as well.
The invasion was messed up in so many ways, even before the troops got there (lack of manpower, no post-victory plan, underfunding or misappropriated funds) that Iraq was always going to turn into a nightmare.
That said this device could be useful. Rescue teams in earthquakes and building collapses, fire crews and even individuals worried about muggers will love it. It's also going to be a boon to burglars.
People, people... who gives a f*** about military. Can I see a totally hot girl next door while she is showering with this?
There's a very simple way for looking through walls: it's called a window.
reverse the polarity on the flux capacitor and use this for some mad WiFi?
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
Depends on your point of view; if the "other side" has them it could *increase* your losses in urban combat, since they'll know which buildings it's worth lobbing a grenade in to.
It detects microchanges in air density...
even through 4 inches metal doors!
well, at least that said that crazy robot
i have found, you can find,happiness in slavery!
Also any minister or other religious person, or anybody who works for a corporation. Hollywood told me so.
-ccm
Too much Law; not enough Order.
This kind of nonsense comes up every time a new piece of technology is developed. These (new pieces of technology) will destroy our way of life and we'll all be the slaves of (our new evil overlords). This kind of bullshit will never happen. That's because regardless of whatever the new technology does, the politicians or the military or the evil profit-mongers will still need people to work for them and get things done, and that means that those people have power. Power is all that is necessary to facilitate a revolution.
Now, if the technology makes everyone but our evil overlords obsolete, then we might be in trouble. But, they also wouldn't have a good reason to enslave us, so they would have to so only for their own amusement.
Even if they could detect firearms, which I doubt, why would it matter? Nevada has extremely lax firearms regulations. I have never seen a hotel that had a posted policy against firearms; in fact I'm not even sure they can. Your hotel room is considered your residence and you have an inviolable right to have any kind of gun you like there.
-ccm
Too much Law; not enough Order.
I'm really really tired of people making comments of this sort. In any civilized society, the citizens have to give up some "privacy" in order to have the protection granted by the society. Privacy means nothing if your life and well-being are constantly at risk. So, enjoy your time in Jamaica. Oh, and enjoy your Jamacian crime rates as well.
Sig* sig = theOneSig();
stop accessing it from Afganistan!
~AC
The US Military already minimizes losses by killing everyone in the house before going in. They call in an air strike or lob a combo of HE+WP shells ("Shake 'n Bake"). See Fallujah, Najaf, Baghdad, etc...
Congratulations on a successful troll! You're no more USMC than a rock unless you can prove it, anyone can make claims... well I guess you could possibly be shotgun, it would explain your post and your knowledge of airplanes lol.
Hi, could someone stop by my house and demo the device for me? I have a few pesky mice that I want to get rid of. I'm hoping it can detect the little varmints breathing too and not just humans. Oh yeah, and if you can grab that darn neighborhood skunk that nukes my house in the summer from time to time, I throw in a bonus. Thanks so much.
--
I type a different sig every time I comment on something. Here is my latest.
...a megalomania detector for use on politicians and military personel. If the malware infested human is detected, the offender is stripped of title/position and no longer allowed to issue any orders to any other human in any sort of "official" position.
It has the added advantage of irradiating anyone it scans so they're dead by the time you actually get to them :)
I'm sure the nazis would've loved to have this technology when they were hunting for the hiding jews. Unfortunately history repeats and whoever it is this time who's hiding will have a much harder time next time around.
http://www.livejournal.com/users/cixel
With murder rate in Jamaica #3 after south africa and brazil, you sure don't have to worry about foreign soldiers or terrorists killing you
So this thing will really be able to distinguish between bad guy holding pipe bomb and joe citizen holding thermos or can of pringles? hmmm....
Yes, back in our days...
quidquid latine dictum sit altum videtur.
Terahertz imaging can penetrate only cloth, paper, plastic, and other thin tissues. It doesn't penetrate human skin, that's why it's been considered for airport security. It certainly won't penetrate a concrete wall.
The parent post is not insightful. It is just anti-american crap, backed up with no facts, no evidence, and no references. The moderators should be shamed for modding up such garbage. What does this contribute to the discussion?
If the Parent had his or her handle logged in, parent should of been modded up due to a witty reference from a killer videogame.
When Enoch Root and Randy Waterhouse are in the jail in Manila, Root comes out with this lecture about how the Second World War was a conflict between worshippers of Ares and of Pallas-Athene -- the Ares-worshippers built bigger guns and tanks, while the Athenians used their knowledge to make the same guns and tanks, which may have been inferior to the Ares-worshippers' ones, but they were mass-produced and covered in superior electronic sensors. The physically-strong were defeated by the mentally-strong. Knowledge is power, sensors are good, and surely this man-portable battlefield radar-scope is ... wholesome. Western armies need such things, as more and more conflicts are likely to be urbanised insurgencies rather than wars between nation-states.
But consider also Bobby Shaftoe. He relies not on decrypted communications intercepts and on fancy sensors, but on his eyes and ears and his brain and his training and he displays adaptability.
Shaftoe is inserted into Luzon with a team ahead of the main invasion, and given boxes of spare parts for Thompsons he is soon handing out assembled "trench brooms" to the Filipino soldiers with him. And when the Filipino lieutenant identifies an aircraft above them as a P-51, Shaftoe is taking cover, and any other soldier with sense follows his lead, because he has identified the aircraft as a US Army artillery spotter plane.
Shaftoe would take a dim view of this man-portable battlefield radar-scope. He doesn't need it. What would happen to anybody who is trained to use it and relies on it when they don't have it? At the first wall on the battlefield, they'll just ... stop.
Toys are fun but they are no substitute for competence. I am gravely concerned at the extent to which various militaries can no longer navigate because of their apparent dependence on GPS.
idspispopd?
I can't believe I still remember that.
Move 'sig'. For great justice!
You want to look after your precious troops? Don't piss off other countries. Pay more attention to your fucking airspace. Don't flip out and have hundreds upon hundreds of innocent (Civilians + Troops) lives lost. As I once read on a sign, "Bombing for Peace is like Fucking for Virginity." -- not everything can be solved by blowing shit up.
Just because there's one criminal orginization doesn't mean the whole fucking continent is evil, folks. If you think that's how life works, take a look at the US. Serial killers? check. Rapists? check. Murderers? check. War propaganda? check. (Disagree with me there? take a look at Uncle Sam. How many other countries have a commonly known figure that tells people to join the army? I count none.)
I know this is going to get modded as Flamebait or Troll, but trust me, it isn't. I have many a friend in the US. They agree with me. Matter of fact, that goes hand in hand with what I said in the prior paragraph about how it 'doesn't mean the whole fucking continent is evil, folks.'
It's never just a game when you're winning. - George Carlin
What 4th amendment protection will exist when police state can fly over your house and see inside? Seems like 4th amendment is pretty much gone now anyways with patriot act, and further abuses already committed. This just adds another method to chip away our rights. We will need a new bill of rights that spells out huge personal penalties when rights are violated that includes using technology to do so. br, TK
You forgot to mention lousy pay.
May the Maths Be with you!
then you can't make babies anymore.
Does it cause cancer?
If your going to be doing 12 hours of
house checking, it may be nice to survive
the RADAR RADIATION experience down the road.
Or are they counting on the cancer from
the use of depleated uranium bullets to mask
the cancer from using the handheld radar device?
Wow, you sound kind of psycho when browsing at +1 threshhold :)
they call it the "underground"
"Was it a millionaire who said 'Imagine No Posessions?'" -- Elvis Costello
Riiiiiiighhht.
Nice try there cowboy.
Yep, I never spell check.
More incorrect spellings can be found he
I'll probably be the one moderated troll or flamebait by this if anyone is - which is fine by me - but think of the absurdity of what you're saying. Should we ban bullets? The Nazis used them to kill prisoners! How about efficient highway systems (which I will admit are a rarity to begin with in the U.S.)? The Nazis used them to make troop movements more effective and transported some prisoners on them! We can't use the same technology and ideas as the Nazis!
You only need to look back to Somalia and Vietnam and all of those silly films which turn those total military disasters into some sort of victory as to how much of a problem they have.
...
You have a consistent failing. You confuse the political with the miliary.
US troops were not defeated in Vietnam or Somalia. In Vietnam, Giap's seige of Khe San was a failure. Giap's Thet Offensive was also a failure. The Viet Cong guerilla force was virtually wiped out during Thet. The North Vietnamese were forced to the peace table and recognized South Vietnam and it's right to exist. We packed up and left, it was 1973. In 1975, years after our departure, North Vietnam launched a fairly conventional invasion of the South. Ironically with US air support the Source Vietnamese army probably could have defended itself. However the political situation in the US prevented such assistance, assistance we had promised. North Vietnam won the propoganda war, it successfully sowed doubt and confusion into the US public, however it did not win the guerilla war.
In Somalia, you confuse high casualties with defeat. The US did not fail to take the building, it did not fail to secure the occupants. The Rangers suffered far higher casualties than expected but they did reach the helicopter they were going for and they were not overrun or forced to surrender. Our departure from Somalia was a political decision.
I don't know, but guerilla warfare is a skill that involves using your brain. Inevitably you also come into contact with ordinary civilians in an urban environment as well, and you have to have at least some idea of what to do and to be able to get along with them
US Special Forces are highly trained in that regard. They were also quite successful in Vietnam and Afghanistan. I think your opening of "I don't know" summarizes your post well. You don't know the miliary or history. You display a pop-history shallow understanding of both.
I would suggest training their troops an awful lot better than they do and giving their soldiers something every soldier should have - soldiering skills! That's why a lot of American soldiers are dying in Iraq. Unlike, especially their British, counterparts they just haven't got it in that kind of environment. Pure and simple. It's a people thing.
You confuse guerilla warfare with peace keeping operations. Soldiering skills are not where US troops are to be found lacking. Peacekeeping skills are where European troops have better training, not in soldiering. Whether this difference matters is open to debate. The problem in Iraq was due to a bad political decision, dissolving the Iraqi army. Perhaps I am mistaken but I don't think that the military was in favor of that one. The Iraqi army's high level leadership should have been removed but lower levels and the common soldiers should have been initially employed for security, under US command.
Dependence on equipment is bad
Yes, however so it ignoring technology. More importantly, who said US troops will not train to conduct operations with and without the high tech equipment. Mechanical and electronic failures are an important part of current training. I don't see anyone indicating this is about to change.
More from the same blog.
Mod parent up.
a y#Brief_history LCDsi cation_gp.htm#The%20Defence%20Industry Flat Panel Loudspeakers (and many others)
I'll add to that list; the automotive industry is full of them. First of all there's the night-vision cameras (arguably invented by the Germans pre WWII), radar parking aids, and heads-up displays.
At home you can cook using a microwave oven (invented by a researcher at Raytheon), which probably itself uses a Liquid Crystal Display (much of the development of which was done at the UK Radar Research Establishment at Malvern, formerly the Army Radar Establishment). Or maybe you'd like to listen to some music on a set of flat-panel loudspeakers (offshoot of research done by the British DERA into quiet 'stealth' helicopters).
A list like this could go on practically forever; in fact it's hard to find a product -- any product -- which hasn't been touched by military R&D at some point in its history. To be honest, dollar for dollar, I think it is quite possible that the American public (and other countries too, but particularly the U.S. because we consume so much technology) gets as much if not more out of the money spent on military research by contractors, than we do out of pure research at universities. Not to say that pure research doesn't have it's place, and is almost always inventive in nature, military research is usually directed and innovative, and produces useful devices in relatively short timescales.
Take a look around your home, unless you live on an Amish farm, you're probably surrounded by things, the initial development of which were paid for with defense dollars.
References:
http://www.achtungpanzer.com/ir.htm Infrared and Night Vision Scopes
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_crystal_displ
http://www.mod.uk/issues/diversification/diversif
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Tell you what. Instead of just sitting there in your armchair, sipping on your Bud Light and cheering every little bit of propaganda that fits your world view, why don't you enroll? Why don't you go kick that ass you want everyone to kick for you? I'm sure you would find out firsthand how well taken care of your unit is. I hear you might want to bring your own body armor though. Just as a precaution, you know. In case those filthy Iraqis steal yours. Cuz, you know, the US of A would never fail to give its valiant protectors of freedom everything they need and want.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
I don't want my neighbor's pothead son using one to peer through my bedroom wall while my wife and I are "busy."
The world would be a real strange place if this thing was available to the public, on sale at Walmart. The most basic form of privacy - a closed door - would disappear.
not to be an ass but;
:) Particularly if he's slowed down 'cause he's carrying so much in the desert
#1 - 50% of the population doesn't want you in Iraq
#2 - when you're paying 500$ for a wrench, don't expect to buy too many
#3 - learn to improvise; best way I know to get equipment is to kill the fucker that has one
#4 - ever try financing a war? there expensive as balls; if every supplymaster bought what his soldiers felt they needed to get the job done, wars would last one day instead of X years (which isn't necessarily bad in my opinion); point being like every other life-and-death situation, you triage as best you can -- the problem in the military is that their equipment costs way too much; dump your m-16 and do it soviet/chinese style; CHEAP but effective.
Lastly, so you don't hide behind the unpatriotic crap that I know you'll spill out in about two seconds when u read what I wrote, LET BE ME VERY CLEAR; BODY/TRANSPORT ARMOR is a *MUST* given the shear number of people getting killed over there due to IEDs (improvised explosive devices); There is a basic set of equipment that I consider essential for every soldier, that is one of them.
Furthermore, wouldn't you rather they cut out all the fancy crap, cut the cost on what they're buying, and spend more money on recruiting? I know that there aren't enough troops to finish Iraq, you'ld need at least 3-4 times as many. Wouldn't you prefer they spend their money there instead of a 10,000$ m-16?
MOD ME UP!
Well consider the military's full repertoire. They could have easily turned Iraq into a parking lot and killed EVERYONE. Or perhaps more realistically, they could have bombed the entire populace into submission, as well as any neighboring countries exhibiting poor border control. Millions could have been killed. Compare this to what they have actually done, and from a percentage standpoint they look a lot more like a defensive force to me.
Given the power and dominance of the US Military, things could be so so much worse. But even with the US current aggressive leadership, its behavior is unbelieveably restrained when viewed in a global or historical context.
Strange things are afoot at the Circle-K.
LIDAR can already do that and it was ruled by the Supreme Court that they needa warrant for it. I like a good conspiracy as much as the next guy...but you cant just lie...it's hte internet ;)
Could be new business opportunity for the paranoid to sell metallic wall coverings or paints which block these wavelengths. Would have to be non-toxic or one could sued under the lead-paint statutes.
"Held: Where, as here, the Government uses a device that is not in general public use, to explore details of a private home that would previously have been unknowable without physical intrusion, the surveillance is a Fourth Amendment 'search,' and is presumptively unreasonable without a warrant."
Scalia, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which Souter, Thomas, Ginsburg, and Breyer, JJ., joined. Stevens, J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which Rehnquist, C. J., and O'Connor and Kennedy, JJ., joined.
Yet another military-derived technology we use...before GPS, LORAN (LOng RAnge Navigation)was the primary method for nautical navigation; even with GPS, it's still extensively used in flight and nautical circles. LORAN was derived from British WW II radar navigation experiments. After the war, American researches adapted it for civilian use.
See the Wikipedia info...
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
Hmm, the military has no problem sensing through concrete wall. You can aim a tank at it and fire, or you can simply drive through the wall, but ordinary mortals may prefer using a window - that works with any thickness of concrete.
Oh well, what the hell...
Which aircraft would those be? There are no aircraft in the USMC inventory that doesn't have manufacturer support. AV-8B? Sea and Super Stallions? F-18s? How about the Huey's and Cobras the Corps still uses? All have a spare parts supply chain from their manufacturers. Corps aircraft tend to be older than Navy or USAF birds, but they're very well maintained. Hell, Bell Aircraft is putting the Huey and Cobra line back into production. I'm ex-Navy, an airdale, and I've worked with Corps aviation units. Your whole story smells of bullshit.
That sounds like an exageration. Go back to the hillbilly armor thing...the press makes that out to be some disgrace, but there's a long history of American troops using brilliant methods to equip themselves until the supply chain could catch up to their needs. Military planners didn't forsee the dangers of IEDs and vulnerability to the Hummers.....so the troops took matters into their own hands, by using scrap steel to armor up their vehicles. In previous wars, soldiers have done similar things, especially to thinly-armored explosion prone tanks of early WW II.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
'Some' privacy is not the ability of the state to watch your every move thru walls.
... to reduce losses in urban combat.
Losses to which side?
In communist Russia, the walls watch YOU.
"Cats like plain crisps"
I know all about my Jamaican crime rates....And I know I'm just saying WILL THEY NEED A WARRANT! I agree with giving up some privacies but you dont need people outside looking on you having a bath or having sex while your unaware!
I'm no structural engineer, but I know that concrete is extremely rigid--this is why steel-reinforced concrete is used in construction. The steel is more flexible, and helps hold together the concrete even when it cracks under stress. And I know that something very rigid is excellent at transmitting vibrations. So "seeing" through twelve inches of concrete (even reinforced concrete) should be much, much easier than "seeing" through, say, a sandwich of two five-inch reinforced concrete walls with a layer of something more flexible (e.g. rubber) between. As long as the two rigid layers are completely separate, there should be little or no transmission between them. I bet someone who was a structural engineer would be able to come up with a reliable way to defeat this (without sacrificing safety) in fairly short order.
It's a neat idea, though, and I hope it finds applications in (as others have suggested) search-and-rescue and elsewhere.
...laser pointers and airplanes have turned people into superman - giving the ability to fly and have laser vision.
No, no, no. Having a device that does something does not make you superhuman - having a brain that does something DOES make you superhuman.
or else!
If it's a good invention.
"Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us." -Jesus Christ The Lord's Prayer
Is this a typo?
See the picture in the article, left-bottom, on the certificate, there it says "2006", and just below that "2Q06".
What what does THAT mean?
Hivemind harvest in progress..
Anyone remember Tom Swift? TD
You aren't really providing a solution, here.
Hey, the PDP-10 was a nice machine. But no way would it fit into a ladies "hambag." A PDP-10 only fit in a room.
Now when I was in the military, our on-board computers were *analog* - servos, gears, integrators, etc. Even so, they managed to keep track of our position within a few miles on a 14 hour flight, and provide a very useful display on the TACCO's console.
The only good weather is bad weather.
How about the Lord Kitchener poster campaign for WWI "Your country needs you".
I don't doubt other countries had/have similar.
UNIX: 'cuz you can tattoo it on your knuckles!
That one nerd in "La Femme Nikita" was just pulling building schematics left and right, with the precision of inches. He was directing Nikita from his van. Geez... And I tawt.. i tawt all tis already invented. (-:
Lies.
it we can see who is in the room and where they are, why even go inside, just hook it up to one of those SDI lasers and ad jim morrisson said, noone gets out alive
Folk songs.
Medieval paintings and tapestries.
Organic vegetables.
Shaker furniture.
Janet Jackson's nipple.
Ordinary window glass.
Monica Lewinsky.
Cotton Towels.
Those who sacrifice security to condemn liberty deserve to repeat history or something. - Benjamin Santayana
When I got out, I was making about $1200 a month. That doesn't sound like much, but add to that free food, free housing, free travel (standby on military transports), the right to shop at the PX, and military discounts from lots of places...
Our military is paid well. They're not always paid in a timely manner, which sometimes causes problems for families... but they are paid well.
I don't think the Tsunami is a great example for the US military or US in general. They were generally regarded as arriving late, leaving early and generally not putting in anything like the resources other much smaller nations did. For example, Australian citizens donated A$1,000,000,000 - more than the US government and there's only 24,000,000 of us.
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum viditur
I don't know. $1200 per month seems very low for someone as highly skilled as a professional marine. Compare the job to something like unskilled construction work, then to skilled construction work. I doubt plumbing requires as much training as military service, yet it probably pays signifigantly more.
May the Maths Be with you!
Ah, the old "we could have killed more" argument. So 100,000 (Iraqi health ministry estimate) or 30,000 (US president estimate) deaths in an entirely unecessary war is okay because it could have been more? Fuck you.
Although I can't say about the pet rock, there is a connection having to do with window glass. The production of window glass was revolutionized by a process in which the molten glass is floated and cools on top of liquid metal, usually either tin or lead, which was in part developed by Henry Bessemer. Bessemer began his career as an inventor with the steel process that bears his name, the original purpose of which was improving the steel in artillery for the British military. There is apparently some argument as to whether Bessemer invented the process or just bankrolled and commercialized it, although it's his name that I've always heard in connection to the process.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Bessemer
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Float_glass
An indirect connection I admit, but I'm sure if you dug deeper that there are more.
As for folk music and Janet Jackson's nipple, I think the issue is less assigning credit than one of assigning blame...
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
I sure loved them when I was a kid. Who knows if they'll hold up. I kinda doubt they will.
You can even download them here
Man, you really need that seminar!
Ah, a great retort if I had been arguing for the necessity of the war. Nice try...
Strange things are afoot at the Circle-K.
Hogwash, I can't believe this was deemed "insightful" by you folks. All in all the argument is severely atrophic in nature. The fact that fear and greed drive most technology does not mean it is the only method. It simply means it is the predominate one you know. The reason this has happened is because the Republic has become infested with rats (Republic-rats). Some of the fattest rats in the pack are those involved in the feeding frenzy at the military pork barrel. The US spends more than the rest of the top ten spenders combined. There have been many times these rats were caught in their obscene milking of the taxpayer, I have no doubt most instances are never discovered. Enough is enough and too much is too much!
The poster makes the point that many if not most technology advances are driven by war. I do not doubt this. I do however take issue with the assumption that it is the only way technologys advance or that it is the most efficant method. The fact that it is done in a very exclusive and closed manner with far less chance for the efficiencys and synergies that are found in more inclusive open environments greatly reduces its efficacy. Take for comparison the difference between closed and open source programming environments. The motivation of open source programmers has not been not destroyed because their efforts were not directed entirely by fear or money lust. Now apply these models to science and technology in general. I believe you would find that the model transfers well. This because many people pursue these efforts for internal satisfaction, many for the respect of peers, many for the fame, a place in history.
There are motivators other than fear and greed. They are more apt to be approached logically, thus apt to be more efficant than fear, and they are more honorable thus vastly more trustable than greed. After you get finished rattling off your favorite Rush Limbaugh and FOX "news" talking points, sit back and read what you just wrote objectively to see is it really holds water before you post it to the world. The same applies to those who mod such up manure as "insightful", think for yourselves dag-gone-it.
Matthew
But that's $1200 a month completely disposable income. I knew a lot of 19- and 20-year-old Marines who drove brand new Mustangs and such. (A frivolous way to spend it, I know, but still...)
I suppose you don't believe I lived in a condemned building, either, but it happened. My barracks at MCAS New River was condemned because the asbestos insulation on the pipes was crumbling, but due to overcrowding in the other student barracks and a delay in the construction of a new building, they had people living in the condemned one WHILE THEY WERE RIPPING OUT THE ASBESTOS. Of course everybody blamed Clinton then, but from what I've heard, not a damn thing has changed under Bush. The budget may have increased, but so has operational overcommittment.
The American government spent $950 million US (1.2 billion Aussie) and the American people chipped in another billion (and, incidentally, the navy was there flying search and rescue immediately and we had boots on the ground in three days, which is on the same timetable as our *domestic* disaster relief plan for federal assistance despite the necessity of crossing that tiny little obstacle known to locals as The Pacific Ocean). I'm not denigrating the Aussie contribution in the least -- America, Japan, Australia, and India all deserve massive props for getting the relief effort organized as quickly as they did and for fronting truly massive amounts of resources. But, in recognition that there *will* be a next time, would it kill you to not spit in the face of the country that lead the world in humanitarian contributions and singlehandedly accounted for a quarter of the total? I mean, its not like we're going to stop giving out money just because we get grief over it (we sent what we could to Iran after the earthquake and got the usual Great Satan line -- thanks guys, a pleasure as always!) but some gratitude just once in a blue moon would be nice and make the next massive aid effort an easier sell in Congress.
Help poke pirates in the eyepatch, arr.
Sure.
And what did they do after Katrina? The usual: shoot people for stealing a banana.
Rescue people my ass.
And what if there's nothing behind the door until it is being opened?
First it was warp drive engines thats called hyperdrive. Now this. Soon enough we'll have a tricorder. If this works out, then we'll easily be able to find Osama.
My Gawd WTF...