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Prison guards could soon stop fights with a harmless tool that shoots a laser-like beam, video game-style, down into a room where trouble is brewing. The Assault Intervention Device (AID), funded by the National Institute of Justice, is still large and unrefined but will soon be installed for trial in at least one prison, the Pitchess Detention Center in Los Angeles County.

The AID directs an energy beam, which is in the invisible millimeter wavelength, that penetrates just deep enough beneath the skin to make the target’s pain receptors shout. The sensation is a burn like touching a hot stove or an iron. It only lasts up to 3 seconds – the AID controls automatically shut the beam off to prevent shooting for longer without resetting the trigger finger. The beam can hit a target about 100 feet away, and is about as wide as a CD.

According to Raytheon, the device’s manufacturers, it causes no actual damage to nerves or skin. This video shows the sharp reflex caused by an AID hit, and the unscathed hit receivers.

Watch The AID in action:

If you watched, you probably also noticed how big and clunky that device is. Indeed, it stands at seven and a half feet tall and is controlled by joysticks. The shooter aims using a computer screen linked to the device. Seems like it would be an easy transition from Xbox user to AID shooter.

Though it’s better than the current options, batons or pepper spray, Cmdr. Bob Osborne of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department tells TechNewsDaily that its efficacy still needs to be proven in real assault situations before anyone should bother making it smaller and easier to use. I wonder, if it could eventually become hand held, would this compete with Tasers?

Source: Discovery.com

Colorado State University has received and $8 million grant from the Department of Defense. They’ll use the money in hopes of growing plants to detect explosives in shopping malls or airports.

Researchers at CSU say they’re finding that plants are at least as good, maybe better, than dogs at sniffing out things like explosives and dangerous chemical weapons. Landscaping plants, for example, can look really nice, but also be programmed to change color when there’s danger in the air.

“If this plant would sense an explosive or an environmental pollutant, it would turn white,” CSU biology professor Dr. June Medford said. “It’s a little slow (right now).”

Medford says right now the plants take a couple hours to begin turning white, but she says with more research any kind of plant could be altered to change color in minutes or possibly seconds.

“You can do it for a lot of other plant species, but it’s not quite as simple as this,” CSU researcher Pete Bowerman said.

Researchers dunk the plants in custom-made bacteria that changes the plant genetically to make it sensitive to anything from TNT to radon.

“They can detect multiple substances and they can turn different colors,” Medford said.

Security at places like airports could well have an entirely different look if plants are doing the screening.

“Instead of that nasty line at DIA that can wind on forever and ever and ever, you would go through a beautiful garden area. Now in my garden area we would have a variety of plants that would detect a variety of those nasty things that a terrorist might take in,” Medford said.

Medford says cameras could detect the color changes automatically to alert security.

“We can then take the 10 people that happened to go by those plants at that time and those 10 people will be patted down, not the hundreds and thousands and everybody that has to have it done right now,” Medford said.

The next step in the research is to get the plants out of the controlled environment of the lab and perfect them so they don’t give false alarms when someone pours out their cup of coffee or walks by with the wrong perfume, for example.

Source: CBS

Armoured vehicles will use a new technology known as “e-camouflage” which deploys a form “electronic ink” to render a vehicle “invisible”.

Highly sophisticated electronic sensors attached to the tank’s hull will project images of the surrounding environment back onto the outside of the vehicle enabling it to merge into the landscape and evade attack.

The electronic camouflage will enable the vehicle to blend into the surrounding countryside in much the same way that a squid uses ink to help as a disguise.

Unlike conventional forms of camouflage, the images on the hull would change in concert with the changing environment always insuring that the vehicle remains disguised.

In Helmand, for example, all armoured vehicle have desert sand coloured camouflage, which is of little use in the “Green Zone”, an area of cultivation where crops are grown and the Taliban often hide.

Up until recently such concepts were thought to be the stuff of science fiction but scientists at the defence company BAE Systems now believe battlefield “invisibility” will soon become science fact.

Scientists at the BAE hope the new technology will be available to use with the British Army fighting in Southern Afghanistan and in future conflicts.

The concept was developed as part of the Future Protected Vehicle programme, which scientists believe, will transform the way in which future conflicts will be fought.

The programme is based around seven different military vehicles, both manned and unmanned, which will be equipped with a wide variety of lethal and none lethal weapons.

The unmanned vehicles or battlefield robots will be able to conduct dangerous missions in hostile areas, clear minefields and extract wounded troops under fire.

The vehicles include:

* Pointer: an agile robot which can take over dirty, dull or dangerous jobs, such as forward observation and mine clearance.

* Bearer: a modular platform which can carry a range of mission payloads, such as protected mobility, air defence and ambulance;

* Wraith: a low signature scout vehicle;

* Safeguard: an ultra-utility infantry carrier or command & control centre;

* Charger: a highly lethal and survivable reconfigurable attack vehicle;

* Raider: a remotely or autonomously controlled unmanned recce and skirmishing platform – similar in design to the “Batmobile”

* Atlas: a convoy system which removes the driver from harm’s way.

BAE’s Future vehicle project is, in part, a reaction to the Ministry of Defence’s (MoD) ‘Capability Vision’ for armoured vehicles, designed to spur development along different paths from the MoD’s previous research.

Commanders are aiming for a prototype within four years and an experimental operational capacity by 2013.

The brief is for a lightweight vehicle, weighing 30 tonnes, powered by a hybrid electric drive, with the same effectiveness and survivability of a current main battle tank.

The UK’s current tank, the Challenger 2, weighs 62.5 tonnes, and runs a 1,200hp V12 diesel engine.

Britain’s current fleet of armoured vehicles are also close to approaching the end of their service life and armoured vehicles designed specifically for use in Helmand, such as the hugely successful Mastiff, may be inappropriate for use in other operational theatres.

Scientists at BAE are also looking at a number of revolution battlefield inventions which will increase troop protection as well as making the vehicles more lethal.

One concept being developed is to develop technologies, which will cut the use of fuel on the battlefield. In Afghanistan, the cost of fuel is 50 times that of the pump price.

All fuel currently used by NATO troops comes in via road convoys which are often attacked by insurgents which are responsible for 80 per cent of US casualties.

Scientists are close to developing a form of transparent armour – much tougher than bullet proof glass – which could be used in turrets of on the sides of armoured vehicles which would improve the situational awareness of troops inside.

Also being developed is a technology known as “biometric integration which uses advanced algorhythms to analyse crowds and to search for potential threats from suicide bombers by analyzing suspicious behavior in groups or individuals.

Electronic scanners would search for suspicious behavior, inappropriate clothing or individuals on wanted lists who can be identified through facial or iris recognition.

The information would then be displayed on screen within vehicle or handheld vehicles carried by dismounted troops.

Hisham Awad, the head of the Future Protected Vehicle project said: “The trick here is to use machines to do what they are best at (and humans are not) – ploughing very quickly through dull, repetitive data to strip out the overwhelming bulk which is of no use and would take a long time and enormous human resources to process.

“Then you can quickly bring human intelligence to bear where it excels – making life-or-death decisions based on ‘real time’ information on suspicious activity flagged up by the machines.”

Source: The Telegraph

The Obama administration on Friday ended a high-tech border fence project that cost taxpayers nearly $1 billion but did little to improve security. Congress ordered the high-tech fence along the border with Mexico in 2006 amid a clamor over the porous border, but it yielded only 53 miles of protection.

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said the lesson of the multimillion-dollar program is there is no “one-size-fits-all” solution for border security.

Napolitano said the department’s new technology strategy for securing the border is to use existing, proven technology tailored to the distinct terrain and population density of each region of the nearly 2,000-mile U.S-Mexico border. That would provide faster technology deployment, better coverage and more bang for the buck, she said.

Although it has been well known that the virtual fence project would be dumped, Napolitano officially informed key members of Congress Friday that an “independent, quantitative, science-based review made clear” the fence, known as SBInet, “cannot meet its original objective of providing a single, integrated border security technology solution.”

The fence, initiated in 2005, was to be a network of cameras, ground sensors and radars that would be used to spot incursions or problems and decide where to deploy Border Patrol agents. It was supposed to be keeping watch over most of this nation’s southern border with Mexico by this year.

Instead, taxpayers ended up with about 53 miles of operational “virtual fence” in Arizona for a cost of at least $15 million a mile, according to testimony in previous congressional hearings.

Sen. Joe Lieberman, chairman of the Senate’s Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee said the SBInet concept was unrealistic from the start. Napolitano’s decision “ends a long-troubled program that spent far too much of the taxpayers’ money for the results it delivered,” said Lieberman, I-Conn.

The high-tech fence was developed as part of a Bush administration response to a demand for tighter border security that arose amid a heated immigration debate in Congress.

The Bush administration awarded Boeing a three-year, $67 million contract. Then-Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said at the time the department was “looking to build a 21st century virtual fence.”

But the fence had a long list of glitches and delays. Its radar system had trouble distinguishing between vegetation and people in windy weather, cameras moved too slowly and satellite communications also were slow. Although some of the concept is in use in two sections of Arizona, the security came at too high a cost.

DHS and Boeing officials have said that the project called for putting together the first of its kind “virtual fence” too quickly by combining off-the-shelf components that weren’t designed to be linked

Mississippi Rep. Bennie Thompson, top Democrat of the House Homeland Security Committee, said the committee held 11 congressional hearings on the fence project and commissioned five reports by the Government Accountability Office, which blasted the project. Thompson, who chaired the committee until Republicans took over the House this month, called the project a grave and expensive disappointment.

Last January, Napolitano suspended spending on the project beyond work on two phases of the fence in Arizona. She ordered a study to determine whether SBInet could be fixed so it worked effectively and fulfilled its original goal. She also asked for a study to come up with lower cost, equally effective alternatives. She used $50 million meant for the fence to buy other technology and Border Patrol vehicles.

Boeing was the contractor for SBInet. Despite the problems, the Homeland Security Department granted Boeing a second one-year option on a three-year contract to work with the department for maintenance and upkeep of the two Arizona sections that are operational. That agreement continues through September 2011.

Some technologies from the project, such as stationary radar and infrared and optical sensor towers, will be used in future border security that will largely rely on mobile surveillance systems, unmanned aerial vehicles, thermal imaging devices and tower-based remote video surveillance systems. Money that was provided in an interim spending bill for the high-tech fence will go to the proven technologies.

The agency said in a report that it does not intend to use the existing Boeing contract to buy other technology systems for future southwest border security. It also said it will conduct “full and open competition” for elements in the new border security plan.

The Homeland Security Department has been studying other areas of the southern border to decide what technology and other resources would best beef up security in those areas. An initial proposal of technology needed to monitor three sectors — El Paso, which includes New Mexico; San Diego and the Rio Grande Valley of Texas — was to be done by this month. Proposals for border security technology for other sectors should be available by March, according to the report.

Rep. Peter King, chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, criticized the administration for taking too long to make its final decision to cancel SBInet and too long to decide what to do next. He wants a comprehensive border security plan that provides staffing, fencing and technology.

In a statement, Boeing said it is proud of the accomplishments of its team and the “unprecedented capabilities” delivered in the last year to assist the Border Patrol. The company said it appreciates that Homeland Security Department recognizes the value of the fixed towers Boeing built as part of SBInet.

Source: Yahoo News

The Army wants to issue every soldier an iPhone or Android cellphone — it could be a soldier’s choice.
And to top it off, the Army wants to pay your monthly phone bill.

To most soldiers, it sounds almost too good to be true, but it’s real, said Lt. Gen. Michael Vane, director of the Army Capabilities Integration Center (ARCIC). He said the Army would issue these smartphones just like any other piece of equipment a soldier receives.

“One of the options potentially is to make it a piece of equipment in a soldier’s clothing bag,” Vane said.

Efforts are underway around the Army to harness smart phones to revolutionize the way the service trains and fights.

Army-issued smartphones are already in the schoolhouse and garrison, or on post, in the hands of some students at Fort Leonard Wood, Mo.; Fort Lee, Va.; and at Fort Sill, Okla., under an Army program called Connecting Soldiers to Digital Applications. CSDA’s next step, already underway at Fort Bliss, Texas, is testing for the war zone.

In February, the Army plans to begin fielding phones, network equipment and applications to the first Army brigade to be modernized under the brigade combat team modernization program. That test will not be limited to smart phones but will include any electronic devices that may be useful to troops.

“We’re looking at everything from iPads to Kindles to Nook readers to mini-projectors,” said Mike McCarthy, director of the mission command complex of Future Force Integration Directorate at Fort Bliss.

The Army plans to roll out wireless Common Access Card readers for the iPhone in January and for Android phones in April. This would give soldiers secure access to their e-mail, contacts and calendars.

At war, smartphones would let soldiers view real-time intelligence and video from unmanned systems overhead, and track friends and enemies on a dynamic map, officials said. But the Army must first work through the complex task of securing the data and the network before it sanctions smart phones on the battlefield.

The goal is for soldiers to get information when they need it, wherever they are.

“What we’re doing is fundamentally changing how soldiers access knowledge, information, training content and operational data,” McCarthy said. “The day you sign on to be a soldier, you will be accessing information and knowledge in garrison and in an operational environment in a seamless manner. We’re using smart phone technologies to lead this.”

Open to multiple phones, the Army has not conducted testing of the concept over classified networks. The service first had to prove it could combine the phones and applications with a mobile infrastructure capable of offering service in an austere environment.

“We had to prove that we could make the electrons flow from one end to the other successfully,” McCarthy said. “We took a little bit of license in not going over classified networks. Once it works, we can start working on the information assurance piece.”

The Army is open to using multiple phones, according to Rickey Smith, the director of ARCIC-Forward.

“We’re not wedded to a specific piece of hardware. We are open to using Palm Trios, the Android, iPhone or whatever else is out there,” Smith said.

The Army probably won’t develop its own phone or do much to alter the commercial phones it buys.

It would rather make minor tweaks and “ruggedize” existing phones, which as long as the phones’ shapes and electronic guts aren’t modified, will place them at close to retail prices, said Tony Fiuza of the Army’s Communications-Electronics Research, Development and Engineering Center.

Vane said the Army is still figuring out the dollars and cents of buying smartphones and apps. One option, though, is giving the purchasing power to the soldier.

Soldiers could receive a monthly stipend — what Vane called a “maintenance fee” — to spend on both minutes and apps, allowing each soldier to personalize his phone with the training and tactical apps he needs.

“If you did it that way, the advantage would be to pay for the phone once and then you pay a maintenance fee to the soldier … and then the soldier can buy whatever iPhone, Android or hardware that he or she likes,” Vane said. “Then the challenge is just figuring out how we pay for the minutes each month.”

Army officials want soldiers to bring the phones to the war zone, where their intelligence sharing and communications capabilities could revolutionize battlefield tactics.

A widespread deployment of the phones to the battlefield could come as soon as next year, Vane said.

What the Army found is that soldiers with smartphones are more likely to collect data and share it.

Vane said he wants to use the phones to collect biometrics on enemy combatants.

“Can we connect this to biometrics? Well, that’s the direction we’re headed,” he said.

The technology is there, but “the challenge will be to work through the policy issues of sharing data and information assurance,” Vane said. “Army officials remain concerned of enemy forces hacking into the phones, but don’t want that fear to paralyze the use of these phones.”

The Active Denial System (ADS) is a non-lethal, directed-energy weapon developed by the U.S. military. It is a strong millimeter-wave transmitter primarily used for crowd control causing what the Air Force has called the “goodbye effect.”  Informally, the weapon is also called heat ray. Raytheon is currently marketing a reduced-range version of this technology. The ADS was deployed in 2010 with the United States military in Afghanistan, but was withdrawn without seeing combat. On August 20, 2010 the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department announced its intent to use this technology on prisoners in the Pitchess Detention Center in Los Angeles, stating its intent to use it in “operational evaluation” in situations such as breaking up prisoner fights.

The military’s history of disclosing details about the controversial weapon has been mixed. After years of secret work, the Pentagon disclosed the weapon’s existence in 2001, shortly before a news article was about to be published describing the device.

Though the Air Force says years of testing have proved its safety, in 2007 an airman acting as a test subject was severely burned. The Air Force later that year released a heavily redacted report describing the accident, which required the airman to be airlifted to a burn center. A copy of the full report later provided to Wired.com revealed that the lack of proper operator training and missing safety equipment contributed to the accident.

Watch as a ’60 Minutes’ reporter tried to endure the heat:

An “Iron Man” suit similar to one worn by actor Robert Downey Jr. in the movies is a step closer to reality. A wearable exoskeleton is being developed by defense contractor Raytheon (RTN), which hopes to deploy it by 2015. The company says it gives wearers 17 times normal strength and will cost about $150,000.

A lunchtime crowd is gathering beside the parking lot at Raytheon Sarcos, the defense contractor, on a recent day in Salt Lake City. White-collar workers from nearby office parks stand with their yogurt cups and sandwiches, watching with quiet awe as a man in a metal suit — sort of half-man, half-robot — performs superhuman feats of strength.

This may be the closest these people will get to a real-life “Iron Man,” the character from the comic books and hit movies.

A lawyer for the former Blackwater president who has been charged with gun crimes hinted at his client’s defense Wednesday, telling a North Carolina court room that a US government agency approved of what the company was doing.

Ken Bell — attorney for Gary Jackson, who was arrested last week along with four other Blackwater staffers — told the court that “all of this was with the knowledge of, the request of, for the convenience of, an agency of the US government,” reports the News & Observer in North Carolina.

While Bell would not say which US government agency that may have been, the News & Observer article suggests that he was talking about the CIA.

“The company has close ties to the Central Intelligence Agency. The company has provided security to CIA stations and officers in Afghanistan and other countries, and several Blackwater officials were once high ranking CIA officials,” the article states.

Federal prosecutors indicted Jackson, who was president of Blackwater until last year, last week in a case that stemmed from a raid on Blackwater’s North Carolina headquarters in 2008, which turned up 22 automatic weapons, including 17 Russian-made AK-47s.

“The 22-page indictment includes accusations of falsifying paperwork to give a firearms gift to the king of Jordan and using the Camden County Sheriff’s Office, which had less than a dozen uniformed officers at the time, as a front to buy AK-47s for Blackwater’s training facility in Moyock,” the News & Observer reports.

Prosecutors told the court in Wednesday’s bail bond hearing that, as president, Jackson ran Blackwater with “sheer arrogance” and a “scofflaw attitude,” the Associated Press reports.

The News & Observer states that, if the agency involved is indeed the CIA, it may complicate the trial because of the presence of classified information.

Lawyers and court personnel need security clearances, and special evidence rooms are required. Special computers are needed to draft motions, according to Richard Myers, a UNC law professor who has worked with classified materials both as a prosecutor and as a defense attorney.

“It certainly makes your prosecution more complex,” Myers said.

Defendants often try to introduce classified material in an effort to make prosecution more difficult.

In February, the Senate Armed Services Committee found “reckless” use of weapons by Blackwater employees in Afghanistan, and found Blackwater staffers had removed weapons from US military facilities without proper authorization.

In one instance, a Blackwater employee signed out military weapons under the name “Eric Cartman,” a character in TV’s South Park.

Need a lesson on how to make money in a war zone?

Try studying defense contractor KBR, a former unit of Dick Cheney’s Halliburton. The engineering logistics company — whose conflict zone days date to the Vietnam War — won a contract worth $4.6 million to repair military vehicles at a base outside Baghdad. For the job, they employed 144 mechanics.

How many hours do you think they worked?

According to an analysis by Mother Jones, based on a report by a Pentagon Inspector General, the 144 KBR mechanics worked as little as 43 minutes per month, on average.

Even KBR’s internal figures tell a shocking story of military contract waste. The company says that of the workers they had, just 6.6 percent were being used at any given time, on average. KBR said that “worker utilization” rates ranged from a meager 3.97 percent in April 2009 to 9.65 percent in September 2008.

Read the rest of the story at: RawStory