Spidey-Sense For FutureWarriors

And some other WarPorn from DefenseTech.

"Haptic" harnesses:

"(an) unobtrusive, real time, bi-directional communication system that can be embedded in the combat attire of the counter-terrorism dismount warfighter for the capture of individual location and action information with subsequent presentation to the unit commander and other team members via the tactile modality".

"If the unit commander has the information about which team members are walking, running, standing, prone, kneeling, and/or firing weapons, he will be able to make well informed critical decisions based on a significantly better understanding of the situation at any given time. Even with the lack of physiological monitoring, these data could indicate potential causalities (e.g., prone, no movement, not firing). Additionally, direction of enemy, ammunition depletion, and severity of enemy engagements could be ascertained."

In other words, little vibrators on your skin will buzz to indicate useful information, like "There are a couple of guys behind you."

The designers think this is a way to overcome information overload; as computers gather and disseminate more real-time battle information, our soldiers suffer from too much information, rather than too little.

Scale back the info the vibrating pods are intended to communicate and maybe this will be useful.

On the other hand, I can see soldiers taking these things off immediately if they keep getting buzzed all the time for no good reason.

Other stuff from Defense Tech:

A study investigates the claim as to whether dogs have an sort of animal ESP allowing them to locate mines without resort to physical senses. Shockingly, the study finds that dogs can locate mines, but that they don't use ESP to do so, so much as they use their sense of smell.

Wow.

"Pain Ray" weapon not being used in Iraq, because it takes the "area denial weapon" too long to begin inflicting pain to actually be effective in practice.

Slingshot launch into space stuided by DARPA, Air Force. Accelerate a payload on a circular track over and over until you get it up to escape velocity. Then ramp the sucker into space and watch it fly.

Very sad. A new bomb creates a very small but very lethal kill zone, increasing the liklihood of killing the target while decreasing the chances of killing innocents nearby.

Sound too good to be true? Alas, it probably is. It may cause cancer.

In the bystanders we're trying to avoid harming, I mean. Not in the dudes we just blew up.

posted by Ace at 01:22 PM

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