Tomorrow is Today

Drone Manufacturers Look To Domestic Markets As Military Spending Slows

This year’s show is cast against a backdrop that is somewhat austere for the many, many robotics systems makers who exhibit here. Most of them do the majority of their businesses with governments around the world, many of which—like the United States—are facing huge cuts in military spending and a slowdown in the acquisition of new technologies.

But when the age of austerity closes a door, Congress every so often opens a window. The mandated integration of unmanned systems into the U.S. national airspace by 2015 has many makers of unmanned aerial systems looking to apply their technology to civilian skies, while unmanned ground vehicle makers are making inroads into spaces like telepresence, site security, ground-based infrastructure inspection, and cargo logistics.

(via The Coolest Warbots, Drones, and Unmanned Tech at the Robotic Systems Show | Popular Science)

DARPA Funds Military “Smart-Suit” Wearable Tech Research

The suit, which is expected to include sensors and its own energy source, will be designed to delay the onset of fatigue, enabling soldiers to travel further in the field, while also supporting the body and protecting it from injuries when the soldier is carrying heavy loads.

A team of bioengineers at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard will work on the project.

The suit is designed to be lightweight, efficient and nonrestrictive… It will be made from soft, wearable devices that will be connected to stretchable sensors for monitoring the body’s biomechanics.

Another technology that is expected to be part of the suit will produce low-level vibrations that should increase the body’s sensory functions and should give the wearer a better sense of balance.

(via Harvard scientists to build Iron Man-like suit for military | KurzweilAI)

US Law Enforcement to Use Targeted Radiation Blasts to Conduct Warrantless Searches on Local Roads

Search technology used in Iraq and Afghanistan coming to an interstate near you.

American Science & Engineering, a company based in Billerica, Massachusetts, has sold U.S. and foreign government agencies more than 500 backscatter x-ray scanners mounted in vans that can be driven past neighboring vehicles to see their contents…

While the biggest buyer of AS&E’s machines over the last seven years has been the Department of Defense operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, Reiss says law enforcement agencies have also deployed the vans to search for vehicle-based bombs in the U.S. “This product is now the largest selling cargo and vehicle inspection system ever,” says Reiss.

Imagine the same controversial technology that is used in US airports now being used on the highway without notification.

The vans [are a] mobile version of the same scanning technique that’s riled privacy advocates as it’s been deployed in airports around the country.

The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) iscurrently suing the DHS to stop airport deployments of the backscatter scanners, which can reveal detailed images of human bodies…

“It’s no surprise that governments and vendors are very enthusiastic about [the vans],” says Marc Rotenberg, executive director of EPIC. “But from a privacy perspective, it’s one of the most intrusive technologies conceivable.”

(via Full-Body Scan Technology Deployed In Street-Roving Vans - Forbes)

(ht boingboing)

Small-Town Cops Stocking up on Surplus Military  Gear

In 2011 alone, more than 700,000 items were transferred to police departments for a total value of $500 million. This year, as of May 15, police departments already acquired almost $400 million worth of stuff.

Not all of it is going to police, but unfortunately the Pentagon doesn’t really know where it’s going

Last year’s record would have certainly been shattered if the Arizona Republic hadn’t revealed in early May that a local police department used the program to stockpile equipment – and then sold the gear to others, something that is strictly forbidden. Three weeks after the revelation, the Pentagon decided to partly suspend distribution of surplus material until all agencies could put together an up-to-date inventory of all the stuff they got through the years.

Of course, local law enforcement is not qualified to use this equipment

A second effort, which gives federal grants to police departments to purchase equipment, is still ongoing, however. According to the Center for Investigative Reporting, since 9/11, the grants have totaled $34 billion. Which means billions of dollars’ worth of military gear are in the hands of small-town cops who neither need the equipment nor are properly trained to use it, critics charge. At best, it’s a waste of resources (since the gear still has to be maintained). At worst, it could cost lives.

and it’s not clear why they want it in the first place

Take the 50-officer police department in Oxford, Alabama, a town of 20,000 people. It has stockpiled around $3 million of equipment, ranging from M-16s and helmet-mounted infrared goggles to its own armored vehicle, a Puma. In Tupelo, Mississippi, home to 35,000, the local police acquired a helicopter for only $7,500 through the surplus program. The chopper, however, had to be upgraded for $100,000 and it now costs $20,000 a year in maintenance.

The nonchalance of the people buying the equipment is chilling

“We tell all of our taxpayers around here: ‘You paid for this equipment once, when the federal government bought it, you pay for it once, you might as well use it.”

All of this is seems to be a natural outgrowth of the militarization of police that we have already seen in big cities.

“There’s been an unmistakable trend toward more and more militarization of American law enforcement,” Norm Stamper, former Chief of the Seattle Police Department… During his tenure in Seattle, he clamped down on the WTO protests in 1999, the infamous “Battle in Seattle.” It’s a response he now calls “disastrous.”

According to Stamper, having small local police departments go around with tanks and military gear has “a chilling effect on any effort to strengthen the relationship” between the community and the cops. And that’s not the only danger. “There’s no justification for them having that kind of equipment, for one obvious reason, and that is if they have it, they will find a way to use it. And if they use it they will misuse it altogether too many times,” said Stamper. 

(via Small-Town Cops Pile Up on Useless Military Gear | Danger Room | Wired.com)

DARPA Launches Program to Industrialize Genetic Engineering

DARPA has launched a program called called “Living Foundries,”designed to apply the conventions of manufacturing to living cells, Wired Danger Room reports.

DARPA has awarded seven research grants worth $15.5 million to six different companies and institutions, including the University of Texas at Austin, Cal Tech, and the J. Craig Venter Institute. “Living Foundries” aspires to streamline genetic engineering for “on-demand production” of whatever bio-product suits the military’s immediate needs, starting with a library of “modular genetic parts.”

The agency wants researchers to come up with a set of “parts, regulators, devices and circuits” that can reliably yield various genetic systems. After that, they’ll also need “test platforms” to quickly evaluate new bio-materials to “compress the biological design-build-test cycle by at least 10X in both time and cost,” while also “increasing the complexity of systems that can be designed and executed.”

What could possibly go wrong?

(via DARPA, Venter launch assembly line for genetic engineering | KurzweilAI)

UK Military to Install Anti-Aircraft Missiles on London Residential Roofs for Olympics

What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

London’s security operation for the Games (running from July 27 to August 12) is pretty spectacular, and the military will be playing a central role alongside police and more conventional security officers. Britain’s MoD has already confirmed that up to 13,500 troops, two warships, Typhoon fighter jets, military explosives ordnance disposal teams, and combat helicopters will all be deployed around the country for the duration of the Olympics. But the militarization of their rooftops came as a surprise to residents, who were informed via the post that roughly 10 troops and a variety of hardware could be installed atop their buildings for up to two months this summer.

(via London Residents May Get Anti-Aircraft Missiles on Their Rooftops to Defend the Olympic Games | Popular Science)

Oh yeah, this (via Charlie Stross)

If one of those things is ever fired, either in anger or by accident, it’ll shower white-hot supersonic shrapnel across the extremely crowded residential heart of a city.

…If I were a terrorist I’d be licking my lips, trying to work out how to trigger a missile launch. Using a motor-powered model aircraft, free flight design (no radio controls to jam) aimed vaguely towards the Olympic stadium, with a nice radio beacon or some sort of infra-red source (a flare, perhaps) on its tail to make it easy to track?

These missiles will be the close-in option, because we know the RAF will already be flying combat air patrols over London; they won’t have much time to evaluate threats or respond intelligently. So launch from the back of a panel van, like the IRA mortar attacks on places like Heathrow or 10 Downing Street.

The twist in the scheme would be to aim past the missile launchers along a vector that would attract a hail of hypervelocity missile launches in the direction of, say, a DLR station at rush hour.

(Via Olympics 2012: A Bruce Schneier Moment)