Slashdot Mirror
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!!!!
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...)
Magic.
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*
(someone had to say it)
US Democracy:The best person for the job (among These pre-selected choices...)
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
OMG WALLHACK!!
Microwaves. Very high powered, narrowly focused microwaves. You switch the unit on, put it to the wall, and if you hear a loud "OWWWWWWW!" from the other side of the wall, there's someone there.
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
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.
The Americans always think there's some sort of magical technical solution to something they have always been extremely crap at - guerilla warfare.
.run away! Run away!
.France and Mssr. Lafayette), but it seems it has forgotten its own history.
It is one of history's little ironies that later events have overclouded the fact that Benedict Arnold was one of the most brilliant leaders of guerilla warfare in history.
The capturing of Fort Ticonderoga in order to procure its cannon and how those cannon subsequently made their way to Boston. The Battle of Beemis Hights (I spent last night in the home of Gen. Philip Schyler who deployed Benedict in that action). Coming, literally, within yards of conquering Canada for America (and would have done so but for the lack of a pair of walkie-talkies).
Washington weren't half bad either. Why did he cross the Deleware (in secret, at night, in winter when such a move couldn't be expected)? To attack the endentured rear guard holding a barracks after the main army had marched out and then . .
America once stood as the object model for how guerilla fighters in a third world country could stand up to and prevail over a superpower (with a wee bit of help from . .
Not to mention its raison e'tre.
KFG
Canadian, eh?
Question Authority before IT questions You
"If we fought in Iraq like we did in WWII when we occupied Germany we wouldn't have these problems of insurgency. Back then if someone exploded a car bomb or shot our soldiers, we just pulled out of the city, shelled it for 24 hours(all of it).... By making it a living hell for everyone, if the enemy attacks our soldiers, then the people stop hiding these insurgents or supporting them."
Oh dear.
I guess we have to blame your teachers for this, "Sir Foxx".
In WWII, we Americans didn't destroy whole villages during occupation: the Germans did that.
German civilians put up very little resistance prior to Germany's surrender, and no real resistance after surrender. No car bombs (indeed, car bombs are really a more recent invention), little or no shooting of American occupiers.
Now, the Nazi Germans did carry out reprisals against civilians in occupied countries. Don't believe me: look up Lidice or Oradour-sur-Glane and educate yourself.
When I was growing up (I'm guessing I'm a bit older than you), Americans took some pride in being the "good guys", pride in not being like the Nazis or the Soviets. We used to be proud that the rest of the world looked to America as an example of a free democracy. That was before we decided to export "democracy" by means of torture and secret prisons and Big Brother-ish spying.
That was before we became mirror images of the totalitarian regimes we had been so proud to fight against.
Like I said, I'm probably bit older than you, "Sir Foxx", and in some way, I guess, luckier, even though I didn't grow up with a computer in the house, much less a PSP or an iPod in my pocket. But I did grow up in an America that had principles. In an America that stood against torture and secret prisons and warrantless searches and unchecked government power. In an America that really was, in some true way, "the land of the free and the home of the brave".
America is no longer the "land of the free" and it's certainly not the "home of the brave". Again, I don't blame you "Sir Foxx", anymore than a Roman of the Republic would have blamed a child who grew up under Caesars for thinking Augustus really was a god.
But trust me, Americans used to be brave. Not your sort of brave, which is just the bravado of the scared bully, of the totalitarian state: "we can bomb you, we can make your life a living hell, unless you do what we say".
Americans used to be brave in that we were willing to die for the liberties our Founding Fathers risked their lives to give us. We were willing to fight and die to protect the right of any knucklehead to criticise the President, because we knew that sometimes the President is a knucklehead.
We used to be brave enough to risk getting on a train or plane without being treated like convicts or slaves or cattle, without being searched by blandly rude security guards.
We used to be brave enough to "Live Free or Die", to say "Give me Liberty or give me Death". Now we Americans piss our pants and beg to put up with any indignity, and loss of freedom, for a little security.
Nineteen hijackers didn't do this to us. Saddam didn't do this to us. Osama didn't do this to us. Yes, one terrible day Osama and his hijackers killed a bunch of Americans and shocked us all.
But it wasn't Osama who surrendered our liberty and our principles and our decency. We've done that all on our own.
Again, it's not your fault, "Sir Foxx". I blame your teachers. They never taught you what it really means to be an American.
Yeah, we can make Iraq, in your words "a living hell for everyone". And we're busy doing it right here at home too.
Opinions on the Twiddler2 hand-held keyboard?
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."