Thought Process

In what's portrayed as a new approach, the U.S. Army is including soldiers in the early stages of equipment development, and in the case of the Future Weapons Systems, it's having them pitch it as well.

Last January, defense contractors employed nearly 400 computers, dozens of vehicle mockups, and more than 100 soldiers and engineers in a preliminary test of the Future Combat Systems (FCS), a technological enterprise billed as the "cornerstone of Army modernization."

The Army followed up with a complete line of videos and slick multimedia touting the involvement and input from recently … Read more

Psychiatrists and researchers are using a notorious party drug to treat veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder and are asking the Department of Veterans Affairs to expand the program.

Scientists say methylenedioxymethamphetamine produces an experience described as "inhibiting the subjective fear response to an emotional threat." Late-night rave-goers know it as Ecstasy and say it produces an intimate, euphoric groove and makes you grind your teeth.

The Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies is sponsoring clinical trials to determine potential risks and benefits of using the drug as part of the psychotherapy for treating post-traumatic stress disorder.

In the … Read more

Ahoy, GPS-stranded motorist. Stop banging the dashboard, and consider this timely reincarnation of dead reckoning to help you find your way out of "GPS-denied environments," or at least alert others to where you can be found.

Seer Technology is offering a miniature, self-contained, electronic navigation unit called NaviSeer that mixes GPS and DR in a complex gumbo of hardware and proprietary algorithms to deliver user location in real time.

It does this by blending the output from three gyros, three accelerometers (one at each axis,) a magnetometer, and a baro altimeter, and then running it through a Kalman filter.

The result: coordinates accurate to within less than a yard, according to Seer. And no, it "does not require sensors to be worn on the legs or feet."… Read more

The Oak Ridge National Laboratory has created software that uses colonies of borg-like cyberrobots it says will help government agencies detect and fend off attacks on the nation's computer network infrastructure.

The Ubiquitous Network Transient Autonomous Mission Entities (Untame) differs from traditional security software agents in that its cybot "entities" form collectives that are mutually aware of the condition and activities of other bots in their colony (PDF).

When these cybots detect network intruders, they communicate with one another, preventing cybercrooks from creating and using a diversion in one spot within the network to then break through … Read more

Action spy dramas increasingly feature a computer geek character who accesses everything from satellite imagery to floor plans to convenience store security cameras, then feeds the data to his team, saving the day. This type of work, it turns out, is easier said than done.

Two agencies are trying to make it easier to access and blend Web-based snoop-scoop. The U.S. Joint Forces Command and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency are sponsoring an annual demonstration called Empire Challenge, which "seeks to improve interoperability of intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance activities" among end users.

One of last year's Challenge … Read more

A new system allows investigators to boot, run, and install investigative tools to examine computers used in the commission of crimes or terrorism, without altering the contents or compromising the chain of evidence, according to the inventor.

It's common today for computers and their contents to be tagged as evidence. The problem has been how to boot and examine their contents, and still maintain "forensic soundness." Traditionally, this required painstaking hours of copying and transferring data. The result was a huge backlog in computer crime labs across the nation, while investigators waited months for forensic information to … Read more

Morocco's national security service has begun issuing millions of "contactless," biometric identification smart cards to simultaneously fight terrorism and guarantee respect for "citizens' rights and liberty," according to that North African government.

Moroccan citizens over 18 years old are required to carry the new ID, but on the upside; the card conveniently supplants birth certificates, certificate of residence, certificate of life, and certificate of nationality in "all procedures for which these documents must be provided."

Artists, however, will continue to be issued a professional ID card by the Ministry of Culture.

The smart … Read more

Soaring cost estimates for protecting US borders against nuclear smuggling arrived at by the Domestic Nuclear Detection Office (DNDO) are unreliable and could result in "significant" overruns, according to a Government Accounting Agency (GAO) report.

How significant? The projected cost to implement the Radiation Portal Monitor Program has gone from $399 million in 2003, when the Customs and Border Protection was in charge of the project, to $1.3 billion when DNDO took over in 2005. In 2007 the cost of equipping US ports with portal monitors was $1.7 billion. It's now $2.1 billion. But … Read more

A Malibu, CA company is developing a new system to protect military communication gear from high-power microwave weapons, nuclear blast generated electromagnetic pulse (EMP) and the mythic, directed-energy "e-bomb".

One nuclear airburst can unleash the EMP equivalent to 100,000 volts per square centimeter, frying computer, radar and communication equipment within hundreds of miles. It's possible to protect electronic circuitry from EMP with something called a Faraday cage, or covering it up with 1 inch mesh, grounded, copper chicken wire as they've done with FEMA headquarters; problem is-nothing gets out either, which defeats the purpose when … Read more