military

Inside the Navy's Command Center of the Future

SAN DIEGO--I have seen the future of military command centers, and it is small rooms with glass walls and video screens with built-in artificial intelligence.

That's probably a gross oversimplification, but those are certainly some of the elements on display at the Navy's Command Center of the Future, a prototype project currently under way at the Space and Naval Warfare (SPAWAR) Systems Center Pacific here.

For those not familiar with SPAWAR, it is a Navy laboratory tasked with "creating an unfair advantage for our war fighters," according to Jim Fallin, the facility's director of communications, … Read more

Urban Hopper robot can leap over 25-foot walls

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency has demoed its Precision Urban Hopper robot, a wheeled ground unit that can leap over 25-foot-tall obstacles and keep on truckin'.

Seen in the video below, released last week by the Sandia National Laboratory, the shoebox-size Hopper easily takes on a chain-link fence, bounces a bit after landing, and then keeps rolling. It seems that a piston-fired leg makes it fly.

The Precision Urban Hopper is being developed by Sandia and Boston Dynamics, creator of the famously creepy BigDog robot, for surveillance operations in urban terrain. Guided by GPS, it is designed to "… Read more

Social networks--the new front in war on terror

Unnamed intelligence agencies and certain academics have yet to give up on data mining to identify terrorists and predict attacks, despite a 352-page tome published last year pronouncing the practice a waste of time.

The U.S. is spending "hundreds of millions of dollars" to develop techniques to mine the mountains of information gleaned from e-mails, telephone calls, interviews with suspects, and now social networks to build-up Facebook-style databanks on international terrorists, according to a recent piece in the British newspaper, The Independent.

The result has been the arrest and interrogation of "many thousands of innocent people&… Read more

Chinese military site to show off 'good image'

"We feel your pain" is one of the first messages on the newly inaugurated Chinese Defense Ministry's Web site aimed at assuaging international concern over a spurt in that country's military buildup.

"The aim of the Defense Ministry's Web site is to let the outside world know about China's defense policies...and show off the good image of the military's powerful, cultured and peaceful forces," explains an introductory message.

China's military, the world's largest, has recently increased its spending by almost 18 percent, far outpacing that of its neighbors, … Read more

Into the wild blue yonder

Military Aircraft is a basic screensaver consisting of high-quality photos of fighters, bombers, and other butt-kicking aircraft. Although it doesn't do anything fancy, it has all the features we would expect of a basic screensaver and functions well.

Unlike many free screensavers, Military Aircraft contains attractive, high-resolution images. We do not particularly consider ourselves to be aviation buffs, but we enjoyed the screensaver's 22 photos and the wide range of interesting aircraft they depict; lovers of military aircraft should find this screensaver quite enjoyable. The program's settings are accessed through the Screen Savers tab in the Display … Read more

Boeing looks to elevate its UAV game

Boeing this week is touting a pair of deals focused on unmanned aerial vehicles, both of them rotorcraft.

On Monday, the aerospace behemoth said that it's getting $500,000 from the U.S. Marines Corps that will go toward a project meant to demonstrate the cargo-hauling capabilities of Boeing's A160T Hummingbird. The Marines are looking into the possibility of dispatching unmanned aircraft as cargo carriers in place of trucks driven by flesh-and-blood troops.

By February, Boeing will have to demonstrate that, in six hours or less per day for three consecutive days, the 35-foot-long A160T can tote a … Read more

British military encouraged to get online

As professional organizations become increasingly guarded about employees' use of social networks, British troops are actually being encouraged to use social media to talk about what they do--within limits, of course.

The Ministry of Defence has issued its Online Engagement Guidelines (PDF), 13 pages of recommendations for keeping in touch with friends and family via blogs, social networks, virtual worlds, and multiplayer games without endangering military personnel and activities.

The statement says, "Current and emerging Internet technologies, such as simple self-publishing, sharing of user-generated content, and social networking, are of growing importance to Service and MOD civilian personnel in … Read more

Military to get priority Google Voice accounts

Staying in touch with family and friends can be a challenge for military staffers, especially those serving overseas. With its latest campaign, Google is trying to help.

Google will now offer priority Google Voice accounts to active members of the service, according to the company's official blog. Military staffers with .mil addresses will receive Google Voice invites within 24 hours after requesting them, says Tuesday's blog, written by U.S. Army Sergeant Dale Sweetnam.

In his guest blog, Sweetnam, who works with Google on the U.S. Army's "Training with Industry" program, explained the problem … Read more

Road Trip pic of the day, 7/9: What is it?

Update at 9:22 a.m. PDT: We have a winner. It's a BOMARC B--Boeing/Marc CIM-10B surface-to-air missile housed at the Hill Air Force Museum, near Ogden, Utah.

BOISE, Idaho--Out here on the highways of Colorado, Utah, and Idaho, I've seen a lot. I'm on Road Trip 2009 and making daily stops at military installations, national parks, small towns, big cities, energy research institutions, and more.

That means I take a lot of pictures, and every day from here until the end of Road Trip 2009, I'll be presenting you with one picture--and a challenge. … Read more

Reading machine to snoop on Web

What if the wisdom of Web could be yours, without having to read through it one page at a time? That's what the military wants.

DARPA has hired a company to develop a reading machine to reduce the gap between the ever increasing mountain of digitized text and the intelligence community's insatiable appetite for data input.

BBN Technologies was awarded the $29.7 million contract to develop a universal text engine capable of capturing knowledge from written matter and rendering it into a format that artificial intelligence systems (AI) and human analysts can work with. (PDF)

The military … Read more