It looks like Call of Duty. It’s not. It looks like a movie. It’s not. Instead it’s an incredible photograph of a Marine Corps Super Stallion Helicopter taking off with a M777 howitzer in the California desert. In real life. What a powerful image. The helicopter is lugging the 7,500 pound 35 foot long monster of a weapon like it’s nothing.
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Laser pods mounted on drones to shoot down missiles. Yeah, that’s science fiction warfare, right there. And that’s exactly what the US military wants. The US just gave Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman contracts to develop aircraft-mounted laser weapons to protect drones from getting hit by missiles. Or create a flock of drones that can form a shield with lasers.
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We’ve all seen the destruction that tsunamis can cause. It doesn’t play around. But back in 1944, the US military wanted to play around with tsunamis in hope of creating a man made tsunami bomb—basically setting off 10 large blasts in the ocean to create a 33-foot tsunami that would pulverize and drown a city. More »
DARPA aids our military in myriad ways, from designing one shot, one kill weapons to creating robotic pack mules to carry soldiers’ gear. It’s also been building tools for soldiers to better survey their environment and identify threats, and its latest such tool is called the Cognitive Technology Threat Warning System (CT2WS). CT2WS is comprised of a 120-megapixel electro-optical video camera with a 120-degree field of view feeding a laptop running cognitive visual processing algorithms. Those algorithms identify potential targets in the video feed, which are shown to a soldier wearing an EEG cap that monitors brain signals. You see, the human brain is particularly good at perceiving threats, and CT2WS looks for the particular brain wave that occurs when we see one. The human component drastically improves the accuracy with which the system can identify enemies from afar. How accurate? Testing in desert, tropical and open terrain showed that without a solider/EEG filter, the system had 810 false alarms out of 2,304 threat events in an hour. Incorporating the filter resulted in only five false alarms per hour, plus it was able to identify 91 percent of the potential targets successfully. Not good enough, you say? Add commercial radar into the mix and the army becomes omniscient — the system then identified 100 percent of the test targets.
Filed under: Misc
DARPA threat detection technology uses a camera to see targets, software and soldier brains to identify them originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 20 Sep 2012 13:30:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Finally. A bit of closure. AT&T has confirmed the long-lived speculation of its policy to unlock in-contract iPhones for our military men and women deployed overseas. To qualify for the complimentary service, active military members must have an account in good standing and provide the carrier with deployment verification — that’s it, no other hoops to jump through.
The revelation was made today as part AT&T’s new Device Unlock Portal, which allows off-contract iPhone owners to apply online to have their handsets unlocked. Previously, this unlock service was available only through the carrier’s retail outlets, online chat support or by dialing 611. As a quick rehash of the non-military policy, all users — either current or former AT&T subscribers — must have completed their contractual obligations to AT&T, and the phone cannot be flagged as lost or stolen. All those eligible should certainly apply for the service, as an unlocked iPhone is infinitely more useful when traveling abroad — a reality that deployed military members know all too well.
[Military photo via Shutterstock]
Filed under: Cellphones, Wireless, Mobile
Confirmed: AT&T offers complimentary unlock of in-contract iPhones for deployed military personnel originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 10 Sep 2012 21:07:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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