It’s been 114 years since HG Wells first described the nefarious “Heat Ray” in The War of the Worlds. And finally—finally—the US military is on the cusp of deploying a mobile high energy weapon of its very own. Luckily, ours is designed to fry incoming artillery and mortar threats, not the whole of a freshly-conquered civilization. More »
We’ve seen some large-scale simulations, including some that couldn’t get larger. Simulated cellular networks are still a rare breed, however, which makes Sandia National Laboratories’ MegaDroid project all the more important. The project’s cluster of off-the-shelf PCs emulates a town of 300,000 Android phones down to their cellular and GPS behavior, all with the aim of tracing the wider effects of natural disasters, hacking attempts and even simple software bugs. Researchers imagine the eventually public tool set being useful not just for app developers, but for the military and mesh network developers — the kind who’d need to know how their on-the-field networks are running even when local authorities try to shut them down. MegaDroid is still very much an in-progress effort, although Sandia Labs isn’t limiting its scope to Android and can see its work as relevant to iOS or any other platform where a ripple in the network can lead to a tidal wave of problems.
Filed under: Cellphones, Wireless, Mobile, Alt, Google
Sandia Labs’ MegaDroid project simulates 300,000 Android phones to fight wireless catastrophes (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 03 Oct 2012 17:24:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Truth is stranger than fiction after all, and it seems that the latest iteration of Boston Dynamics’ LS3 (Legged Squad Support System) has taken a page out of George Lucas’ Star Wars book, where it definitely brings back memories of the AT-AT (All Terrain Armoured Transport) Walker that debuted in Star Wars V: The Empire Strikes Back, although there is a far closer resemblance to the AT-TE (All Terrain Tactical Enforcer) Walker that appeared in Episode 2: Attack of the Clones.
The LS3 is meant to be a battlefield support robot, accompanying war fighters into battle while being sturdy enough to tote up to 180kg payloads, ensuring troops can concentrate on bringing the fight to the enemy instead of being encumbered by their equipment and supplies. Will it carry weapons, or have its own built-in defense mechanisms? We do not see any reason not to, so let us raise our cups to the possibility of a ‘digital centaur’ of the 21st century.
By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Sand Flea and RHex from Boston Dynamics, Boston Dynamics’ PETMAN is a BigDog on two legs,
Remember an episode of the cartoon Pokemon which caused seizures in over 600 Japanese children back in 1997? Well, it seems that the US Army was inspired by that particular “episode”, pardon the pun, and intend to harness the phenomenon of seizures for a new, non-lethal weapon. The kind of gun that the US Army intends to develop would be one that is capable of triggering a seizure in “100 percent of the population” across long distances – we are talking about possibly hundreds of miles here, at least that is what Wired’s Danger Room reported. According to a document that was obtained by Wired, it specifically mentioned the Pokemon seizure incident which happened on December 16th, a good 15 years ago, when flashing lights actually resulted in symptoms of epilepsy in hundreds of the Japanese viewers.
The idea of using an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) to disrupt the electrochemical pathways in the human brain results in the brain being forced to fire off wildly in a pattern that is not too different from that of an epileptic seizure. The thing is, this idea is not even remotely close to being realized in its final form, but imagine the possibilities if it were to be developed. Definitely not the kind of weapon you would want the bad guys to own, would it?
By Ubergizmo. Related articles: US Army tests female body armor in Afghanistan, The U.S Army $5B pixel pattern is a FAIL,
Each year, the US Navy consumes around $11 billion worth of fuel – which is a whole lot of money when you think about it. Well, scientists over at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) might help ease the burden of forking out so much money just for fuel alone, that they have managed to come across a process which can transform seawater into jet fuel. It sounds more like science fiction than reality, but NRL did release an announcement that detailed the transformation process of changing from gas to liquid, where carbon dioxide will then be extracted from the seawater, resulting in hydrogen gas.
Research assistant Dr. Heather Willauer explains, “The reduction and hydrogenation of C02 to form hydrocarbons is accomplished using a catalyst that is similar to those used for Fischer-Tropsch reduction and hydrogenation of carbon monoxide. By modifying the surface composition of iron catalysts in fixed-bed reactors, NRL has successfully improved C02 conversion efficiencies up to 60 percent.”
Imagine that, an aircraft carrier with a deck full of fighter jets armed to the teeth with a payload that can wipe out a small country, operating without ever having to worry about running out of fuel. One thing though, this does not mean that the end result is any greener than before, but at the very least it eliminates the risks of re-fueling at sea, especially when weather conditions are harsh.
By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Laser machine gun combo appeals to US Navy, Dolphins trained to thwart enemy divers and mines?,
So there you are, walking around on the world’s most advanced aircraft carrier. Everything around you is a multi-million dollar machine packed with advanced technology. Then something propped in the corner catches your eye. Is that an old wooden ladder? What the hell is that doing here? More »
A recently declassified document from the Army’s National Ground Intelligence center details a series of proposals for non-lethal weapons ranging from a close-range laser to a device that would flood cellular networks. In particular, it contains descriptions of a weapon that would cause mass seizures. While it’s not surprising that the Pentagon would investigate non-lethal weapons, what is surprising is the inspiration for the seizure gun: a 1997 episode of Pokemon where a flashing Pikachu caused several simultaneous seizures in Japan. From the report:
The photic-induced seizure phenomenon was borne out demonstrably on December 16, 1997 on Japanese television when hundreds of viewers of a popular cartoon were treated, inadvertently, to photic seizure induction.
The Army basically wanted the ability to force combatants to drop and shake like kids having a grand mal seizure while watching cartoons. While it’s impossible at the moment to know what kind of actual weapons stemmed from the proposals in the released document, the Pokemon-based weapon well of inspiration is anything but dry: there are several super-effective techniques that can be learned from Nintendo’s monster-collecting game. Sure, the military has been investigating Psychic for a while, but have the considered the paramilitary effectiveness of skills like Hyper Beam or Razor Leaf?
If you want to take a closer look at the declassified document, it’s available courtesy of Wired here.
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Driving around in unfamiliar territory, searching for a gas station while your gauge hovers just above E is maddening and stressful. But imagine experiencing that same feeling while manning a giant aircraft carrier through foreign—and sometimes hostile—seas. To make fuel easier to come by, the Navy is working on a way to produce it from ocean water. More »
Aircraft carriers are, how to say, big. Building them is a lot easier if you have a really, really big crane. Meet Big Blue. She’s the largest crane in the western hemisphere, and she’s hard at work piecing together the new Ford-class aircraft carriers in Newport News, Virginia. More »
What can $2 billion get you these days? Not much if you are a defense company, as one of Pentagon’s spy blimps known as JLENS (Joint Land Attack Cruise Missile Defense Elevated Netted Sensor) from Raytheon has finally managed to successfully detect as well as track an anti-ship cruise missile, followed by the Navy blasting said cruise missile out of the sky successfully. This might sound like a success, but it is a marginal one,
In the test, the blimps managed to detect the test missile, where the Navy purposefully shot off a Standard Missile-6 interceptor after that, managing to bring the incoming missile under control. Mark Rose, Raytheon’s program director, said, “It was a very successful intercept, and I’m pleased to say lots of pieces of the target scattered over the desert.”
These blimps have seen drastic budget cuts over the years, but in theory they are sound – specially designed to float in the air while boating a sensor range of approximately 342 miles, remaining on guard for longer periods of time, while consuming far less fuel and manpower. The thing is, what was originally meant to be 14 blimps has been cut to two, and the prognosis for this project does not look good in the long run. Talk about burning money literally!
By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Unmanned Air Force space plane lands in California by itself, Brains scanned for potential battlefield threats,
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