See, the US Army is right. ICBMs are the fastest way to deploy ISR-Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance-spy bots. They only take minutes to launch and reach a target anywhere in the world. Loading them with spy bots will provide with access to real-time data about any conflict area, in virtually no time:

ISR platforms delivered from missiles can potentially provide battlefield information that is only seconds old when transmitted from long ranges. This information is particularly valuable since it is so current. It provides the potential for striking a very mobile enemy before he has time to alter his position.

But then, ICBMs usually carry a much dangerous load: Nuclear warheads. You can be sure that the the Russians—or the Chinese or the North Koreans—won't be happy about detecting an ICBM launch off Alaska. That's exactly the reason why other similar efforts pioneered by Darpa were scrapped. The US Army boffins, however, say they have a plan to avoid the confusion: Use a different kind of ICBM.

How different that missile could be? A ballistic missile is a ballistic missile. They follow a trajectory across oceans and continents to open and drop whatever load they have, being that nukes, spy bots, or cotton candy. Then, the Army also says that they want the spy bots to be fully armed, just in case they want to strike seconds after they find the enemy.

See, that still doesn't sound like a good idea to me. Like the old Russian proverb says: "If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, looks like a duck, it's a nuclear missile." [Wired]

Dubbed the Long Endurance Multi-intelligence Vehicle (LEMV), the craft will be based on Lockheed Martin's P-791 experimental hybrid airship, which you can see in the video below. The smaller P-791 was 125-foot long, but flew six tests in 2006. It's known as a hybrid because only 80% of its lift comes from buoyancy; the other 20% comes from three downward thrusters on each side.

As for the LEMV: a 40-foot long, 15-foot wide area behind the only sometimes-manned cockpit will carry intelligence systems, like radar and wide-area motion sensors, that will beam information back to commanders on the ground.

Totally makes me think of Aeon Flux or Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow. Crazy.
[Aviation Week via The Register]

The key, apparently, is size. Older HPMs were too long to be deployed, but the one that went into testing last week at a military facility in Huntsville, Alabama ("The Rocket City") is five feet long and just six inches thick. "It's a big deal," Edl Schamiloglu, an EE professor at University of New Mexico told IEEE Spectrum. "The military would be able to actually use these."

The weapon in testing will reach peak power of 35 megawatts for just 100 to 150 nanoseconds, pulsing out a microwave beam that covers 2GHz to 6GHz frequencies. There goes your Wi-Fi, and maybe your cellphone too.

The coolest thing about the bomb is its key power component, the "flux compression generator." Not only does it have a name that clearly was given to it by Dr. Emmet Brown, but one of the Texas Tech researchers developing the thing had this to say about it: "The FCG is like a battery that runs on a stick of dynamite"—well, C4 actually, but we get the picture. Big ba-da-boom.

If you're electrically inclined, be sure to soak up the more seductively nerdy details of this 21st-century ordnance at IEEE Spectrum. [IEEE Spectrum via Gizmag]

Part of me is happy for the Army and Air Force troops at the Yokota Air Base in Japan. I am all for taxpayer dollars going to improve our overseas troops' American TV watching experience (even if Heroes has crashed and burned, at least Fringe is there to take its place). But this seems like a form of suppression: The channels playback in realtime, 9 hours later. As far as I can tell, you can't even fast-forward through commercials, let alone the hours of crap TV in between the good bits.

Each of 33 channels gets its own dedicated server, so why can't each channel timeshift at the whim of whoever's watching that particular channel? Give our boys (and girls) in uniform a damned remote, Uncle Sam! I'm pretty sure they've earned it.

If this was a true rant, I'd get more into this "9 hours ahead" business. Sure, it's showing American TV at the Japanese prime time, but if my calculations are correct, it's a day off. Which means they get Thursday's Must See TV on Friday night? I'll take Liz Lemon any day of the week, but making people wait till Monday to see Amazing Race, that's just cruel and unusual. That said, at least sports and news will be broadcast in realtime. [Stars and Stripes via CNet]

We want to use the massively multi-player online game as an experimental laboratory to see if they’re good enough to convince humans that they’re actually human, that can think on their own, have emotions and talk in local slang. I actually interact with virtual humans in terms of asking them questions and they’re responding.

Once they have them perfected, they want to "deploy" these soldiers using something called "quantum ghost imaging". This will allow to create photorealistic, non-cheesy-fake-CNN-looking holograms out of thin air by "pairing photons that do no reflect or bounce off an object, but off other photons," whatever that means. Parmentola explains it as "“like having a tracing tool … that goes over the image and that’s connected to another one on a piece of paper that exactly imitates what it is that you are tracing with the other pen" which leaves me scratching my head as well. He hinted that this is closer than we can imagine.

The rest of their projects are equally mindblowing. Although this used to be the subject of much rumorology and speculation, the Parmentola confirmed that they are working in:

• A project to erase bad memories, which will be critical in helping soldiers with psychological damage.
• Devices that will translate one solider's thoughts into electrical signals that can be beamed to other soliders, to help in stealth operations.
• Growing back body parts, both internal organs and limbs (Parmentola said researchers are not far away from this), using molecular-sized particles that act as nano-scaffolding for the human cells to grow, dissolving after the organ has regenerated.

Let's hope it's no all smoke and mirrors, because this research has the potential to benefit countless others outside the battlefield. [DoD Buzz]

As you can see in the schematics, the fire-control system uses thermal optic, day-sight, laser range finder, compass and IR light to exactly measure the distance to the target, programming each of the rounds' fuses so it explodes next to the target using a wireless connection. According to the US Army, this gives maximum destruction power and minimum collateral damage, while allowing to save barriers that previously didn't allow to reach the target.

The capability to program the rounds is what allows this weapon to go "around objects." If, for example, there's a sniper hidden behind a trench, the soldier can program each round so it explodes just above the target. The bullets will explode at that exact range, taking down the target thanks to their air bursting power.

The XM25 is capable of firing an air-bursting round out to 600 meters with a 360-degree explosive radius, all with extreme precision according to testers. However, each round doesn't have to be lethal: There will be two kind of non-lethal rounds (blunt and airburst) to neutralize enemies without killing them.

The new system is also user friendly. Apparently, each type of bullet—high explosive air bursting, armor piercing, door breaching, anti-personnel, non-lethal—is color-coded:

All this technology comes at a price, however. The US Army will have to pay $25,000 for each weapon, plus $25 for each programmable 25mm round. The rounds, however, will be absolutely free of charge for terrorists or anyone at the other side of the battlefield, bad guy or passerby. [Defense Tech]

"Having a soldier gain the ability to communicate without any overt movement would be invaluable both in the battlefield as well as in combat casualty care," the Army said in last year's contract solicitation, which was awarded last month to a coalition of scientists and extraordinary gentlemen from the University of California at Irvine, Carnegie Mellon University, and the University of Maryland. "It would provide a revolutionary technology for silent communication and orientation that is inherently immune to external environmental sound and light."

The system, in theory, would work thusly. First, it would "decode the activity in brain networks" so soldiers could radio commands to their squad simply by thinking of the message. In the system's early stages (and, again, we're talking theoretical here), the person on the other end of that thought transmission would hear a robotic voice speaking the command into their headphones. But that's kind of primitive, don't you think?

But scientists eventually hope to deliver a version in which commands are rendered in the speaker's voice and indicate the speaker's distance and direction from the listener.

Yeah. We humans. Pretty amazing at times. At times. [TIME, Image: Wired]

The good news for peaceniks is the U.S. Army doesn't think mission-ready laser weapons will arrive until at least 2016, and even then the systems will be limited use (Doomsday delayed again! Hooray!).

That hasn't stopped G.I. Joe-type development from going forward, however. In addition to the aerial laser tested in June and the missile-targeting, ground-based HEL TD, Boeing is also working on the Laser Avenger. The Avenger is a Humvee-mounted laser weapon system designed to target small ground targets like roadside bombs, IEDs, and, let's face it folks, people. We just hope they aren't wearing Imperial Stormtrooper armor at that time—that shit is worthless! [CNet]

The MIT engineers used nanotech to measure the thickness of a single scale (about 500 millionths of a meter thick), and decipher the makeup of its four different layer materials. They discovered that the materials, in tandem with the geometry and thickness of each layer, all contributed to a pretty amazing suit of armor.

They even tested the armor plating by "biting" scales that had been surgically removed from a living fish. What they discovered then was that P. senegalus armor will probably replace the bulky ceramic plates that adorn our fighting men and women in warzones today.

The P. senegalus armor kept the crack localized by forcing it to run in a circle around the penetration site, rather than spreading through the entire scale and leading to catastrophic failure, like many ceramic materials.

Lighter, thinner, and better? I think with those kinds of results soldiers and law enforcement officials alike could probably turn a blind eye to the fishy smell. Either that, or baking soda just became the next indispensable item in their arsenal next to bulletproof vests. [MIT]

Here is the XM982 Excalibur precision-guided artillery projectile. Soldiers are able to program map grid coordinates into an Excalibur round and use GPS to guide it to target with pinpoint accuracy.
The Objective Gunner Protection Kit (OGPK) is a motorized, rotating turret mounted on top of Humvees and MRAP vehicles. According to the Army it offers protection from IED fragmentation and small-arms fire, includes transparent armor, a sling for the gunner, and super handy rear-view mirrors.
The HMMWV Egress Assistance Trainer (that's better known as "Humvee") is a mockup of a Hummer's cabin, and can be spun around to simulate an upended vehicle. Soldiers use this invention to practice disembarking from damaged or overturned vehicles before they're deployed. [CNET]

"If you think of a classic recruitment center, [all of] its forms and brochures are about as exciting as the post office," said Marc Babej, partner at marketing consultancy Reason Inc. "Why talk about it when you can demonstrate it."

So instead of campy handouts, potential Army recruits will get an accurate, interactive representation of what awaits them on today's battlefields. By the Amy's definition of "realism" that includes battle simulators, replica firearms and America's Army, the 2002 video game that lets players act out battlefield scenarios DOOM-style. In a word, games—not maiming and killing. The first interactive Army store location has yet to be established, a spokesperson said.

All I ask is, when this doesn't work, what's next? Never-ending WWDC Baghdad keynotes? Black turtleneck body armor? iPhone controlled UAVs? More "BOOMs?" What? [BrandWeek]

The Taliban, which wants the networks to go dark between 5pm and 7am each night, is convinced that Allied troops are using the cellphone networks to track down its remaining fighters. It has told the four companies responsible for the mobile networks—Etisalat, Areeba, Roshan and the Afghan Wireless Communication Company—that if its demands are not met, then great vengeance will be wreaked (or something.)

With a largely defunct landline network, Afghanis rely heavily on their cellphones—not least the Taliban, who use theirs to contact the media as well as co-ordinating their attacks. Were the Taliban to succeed, it would be a blow for the fledgling democracy. Ironically, coalition forces rely on satellites to locate their foes, not the cellphone companies, three of whom have their head offices situated outside Afghanistan. [Ars Technica]

Hackers, in the past year, have managed to procure top-secret information directly from Pentagon computers, as well as from major military contractors, including Boeing, Lockheed Martin and Raytheon. Growing concern for the safety of sensitive information has led to the introduction of the Mac computers as a way to thwart the efforts of hackers prematurely. At present, Apple provides some 20,000 of the Army's 700,000 servers and desktops. This may be a very small proportion, but the number is growing annually. This fact sits a little uneasy with us:

Although we would not trade our Macs for Aladdin's lamp, calling them in to the Army's systems to further its security is questionable. First thing, we are not great believers that Macs offer greater protection than Microsoft's offerings; secondly, even if they did; where there's a will, there's a way. That way may not be so difficult with Apple computers, making the route of attack potentially easier. Also, correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't Apple's Mac OS X license state military use of its software is forbidden? [Forbes]

The system's development timeline stretches into the next decade, but some of it might see some action by the next fiscal year, which starts in October. While I think the Class I Unmanned Aerial vehicle is pretty cool, admittedly I'm fairly smitten by the Small Unmanned Ground Vehicle solely because it's controlled with a modified Xbox 360 controller.

The Army's vision for soldier tech [CNET via CrunchGear]

The tech behind it, "dynamic pulse detonation," uses an "intense" laser pulse to generate a ball of plasma, which is followed up by a second laser pulse that produces a supersonic shockwave to along with it—bright lights and big sounds to shock and awe, in other words.

Alright, so if you're not that impressed, just wait—the same builder, Stellar Photonics, is hawking a laser rifle to the army that would be able to frag foes from over a mile away. Lethal. Laser. Sniper. Rifle. Yeah. – Matt Buchanan

Plasma shield may stun and disorientate enemies [New Scientist Tech via Slashdot]

Real-Life Ray Gun: Say When? [DefenseTech]