NYT's Lame Camo Coverage

I'm not one of those bloggers that feels the need to play gotcha every time some big paper gets a story wrong. But yesterday's article on page one (page one!) of the New York Times is lightweight, even for a breezy feature.

It's all about the Army's new-ish combat uniform -- and how soldiers don't like the velcro on the ensemble. Which is kind of interesting, I suppose. But you'd think the fact that the camos don't actually hide soldiers in many environments would get a mention, at least. A lousy sentence. Especially since these Army Combat Uniforms, or ACUs, or supposed to be "universal camouflage." And especially since the Army just decided to sink another $72 million into the new uniforms.

As one Defense Tech, ERV, reader noted the other day:

The ACU (as I have seen in both the woods of Georgia and the desert & urban areas of Iraq) is pretty much crap. Yes, I agree it works well if you are lying still in a gravel parking lot or next to a large moss covered live oak. Any other circumstance, though, you are truly "Ghost Recon". I work at the Recon Surveillance Course 4th RTB at Benning, and teach camouflage here. The grey pattern sticks out like a white ghost. At nighttime it gets highly illuminated by the moon and stars. The ACU is pretty much the joke of the Army. Joke's on you. Thank God I am a Marine!

Or check out this PowerPoint presentation, on how the camo pattern for the new uniforms was picked. What eventually became the ACU's pattern (called "urban track") comes in, at best, 3rd place out of 4. Yet just about every soldier is now wearing that also-ran. Trial after trial between competing patterns were held. And then, out of nowhere, the Army picked the pattern for the ACU -- a pattern that hadn't even been in the tests. That's deserves, at minimum, a brief nod from the Times, no?

(Big ups: WT)

New Camera Sees In Bullet Time

Here's your cool gadget of the week: a video camera that can follow speeding bullets midflight. I took a look at the gizmo, built by Nova Sensors Inc for the Air Force Research Laboratory, for Wired News. I've examined Nova's goods before. But this is the first time it's ability to mimic the Matrix's bullet time sequences has been revealed.

The first videos -- which you can see via the Wired story -- are crude. But it's an impressive capability. Existing sniper-finding systems rely on radar or acoustic sensors. And they can be heavy, bulky, and are one more piece of kit to carry. Nova Sensors device (known as VAST) can be integrated into a thermal imager, devices which are small enough for personal use.

Effectively, it could turn every round into a tracer bullet. Anyone firing at you would give themselves away immediately, even if the muzzle flash is hidden. From Nova President Mark Massie’s comments on the sensor, it sounds as though different types of rounds may have very different signatures, so enhanced software would not only be able to pinpoint the source of a shot, it could say what type of weapon is being fired. A system that tells you that two AK-47s and one AK-74 are firing from the upper story of Building A? Sounds pretty useful.

Interestingly, right at the moment a new evaluation is being carried out using ShotSpotter acoustic sniper location system in conjunction with Boeing's ScanEagle UAVs. The idea is that the ShotSpotter indicates the location and Scan Eagle goes over to get a better look. A ScanEagle equipped with the VAST camera system would be a logical extension of this idea.

(The bad guys could try to get around it by using bullets cast from ice when they are sniping, an approach only used so far in bad thrillers as far as I know. It's possible; it gives terrible ballistics and very limited lethality, but the bullets could not be tracked by the VAST system. Or at least, not until Massie's team spend five minutes on the software and get it to pick out cold objects against the warm background as well as hot ones.)

If only Zapruder had had one of these, we would be able to see exactly how many bullets were fired at Kennedy and from what direction...

There are likely to be a lot of other applications which are more prosaic than following bullets in flight. But as a first demonstration, it’s pretty impressive.

-- David Hambling

Undead "Warrior" (Updated)

As expected, the Army has eliminated funding for its high tech soldier ensemble, Land Warrior, in its budget for 2008. The gear -- a collection of radios, electronic maps, and next-gen rifle scopes -- was finally supposed to connect the average infantryman into the growing network for combat. But the Army never could figure out the seemingly-endless weight and usability issues.

Robot Economist is almost delirious over the program's demise:

DOD planners dream up expensive systems... while ignoring the obvious success of modern digital device formats, such as cellphones, PDAs and even iPods. You may not be able to tap out a text message on a cellphone during a firefight as easily as with the Land Warrior, but what are you doing text messaging anyways? That's what the radio is for!

But Land Warrior isn't quite dead, yet. The 4th Battalion, 9th Infantry will still be taking more than 200 Land Warrior uniforms to Iraq, later on this year. The systems were already bought and paid for, in earlier budgets. And the hope is that Land Warrior performs so well under fire that the Army's chiefs have no choice but to turn the program's cash spigot back on. "It's kind of a Hail Mary pass," one Pentagon insider tells me.

The Advanced Precision Kill Weapon System II, a new rocket for Apache and Cobra copters, and the Army Tactical Missile System have been wiped out, too.

Also, as expected, the Army will trim its mongo modernization project, Future Combat Systems, by cutting "two classes of unmanned aerial systems, one unmanned ground system and remov[ing] the Intelligent Munition System [a sort of smart landmine] from the program," Inside Defense reports. Army budget director Lt. Gen. Dave Melcher says the changes will save $3.3 billion over five years. FCS will still cost taxpayers $10.6 billion in fiscal year 2008 alone, if the Pentagon's budget goes through. Plus, there will be another $222 million for the Warfighter Information Network - Tactical, which is designed to help troops on the battlefield plug into info networks through satellite, airborne and terrestrial links. That's a nearly 100% increase over the previous year.

Defense News lists some of the other items that the Army is buying this year with its $27.8 billion procurement budget:

• $473 million to buy Patriot PAC-3 missiles.
• $596 million to buy 7,000 Humvees.
• $828 million to buy 2,862 trucks in the Family of Medium Tactical Vehicles.
• $483 million to buy trucks in the Family of Heavy Tactical Vehicles.
• $172 million to buy mortars rounds.
• $222 million to buy artillery rounds.
• $167 million to buy rockets.
• $132 million to buy combat service support equipment.
• $712 million to modernize AH-64 Apache helicopters.
• $705 million to buy UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters.
• $191 million to buy Chinook CH-47 cargo helicopters.
• $468 million to buy Armed Reconnaissance Helicopters to replace OH-58D Kiowa Warriors.
• $230 million to buy Light Utility Helicopters.
• $98 million to buy 5,900 M4 carbines.

“We are trying to procure M4s for all soldiers in theater; the shorter weapon gives a lot more potential,” the service’s budget director, Lt. Gen. Dave Melcher said.

UPDATE 7:44 PM: "The 4th Brigade was also scheduled to test Land Warrior at the National Training Center at Fort Irwin, Calif., but now that has also been canceled," Federal Computer Week notes. "NTC is a common final stop for realistic training before Iraq deployments."

The unit will be fully supported throughout its Iraq deployment, Atherton said. The Army has funding for unit support and repair parts through 2007 and is confident they will find procurement or operating money to keep the unit alive in 2008.

Meanwhile, the program office for Land Warrior here at home will be shut down. The Army will buy replacement parts and materials to last during the duration of the deployment...

The Army is looking for alternatives to give dismounted soldiers a point of presence on the network, Melcher said. One possibility is something called the Single Infantry Transport System, which has similar capabilities, he said.

The research from Land Warrior will be folded into the Future Force Warrior program, a component of the Future Combat System, Melcher said.

Move Over, Minority Report

I guess I'm the last person on the Web to learn about Jeff Han's straight-outta-Minority Report multi-touch screens. But add me to the just about endless list of folks who find the displays beyond cool -- almost like a dream about how computers should look and act. (Here's a video of Han and the screens in action.)

In this month's Fast Company, Defense Tech pal Adam Penenberg has the lowdown on how the screens came to be -- and where we might see them in the future. Not surprisingly, the Defense Department is extremely interested. Here's a snip from Adam's story:

Suppressing a smile, Han told the assembled brain trust that he rejects the idea that "we are going to introduce a whole new generation of people to computing with the standard keyboard, mouse, and Windows pointer interface." Scattering and collecting photos like so many playing cards, he added, "This is really the way we should be interacting with the machines." Applause rippled through the room. Someone whistled. Han began to feel a little bigger.

But he was far from finished. Han pulled up a two-dimensional keyboard that floated slowly across the screen. "There is no reason in this day and age that we should be conforming to a physical device," he said. "These interfaces should start conforming to us." He tapped the screen to produce dozens of fuzzy white balls, which bounced around a playing field he defined with a wave of the hand. A flick of a finger pulled down a mountainous landscape derived from satellite data, and Han began flying through it, using his fingertips to swoop down from a global perspective to a continental one, until finally he was zipping through narrow slot canyons like someone on an Xbox. He rotated his hands like a clock's, tilting the entire field of view on its axis--an F16 in a barrel roll. He ended his nine-minute presentation by drawing a puppet, which he made dance with two fingers.

But Han is doing more than just designing the next generation of computer interfaces. He's also got a pair of contracts with Darpa...

...including one involving visual odometry: Modeling his work on the brain of a honeybee, Han has been looking for ways to make a computer know where it has been and where it is going -- part of an attempt to build a flying camera that would be able to find its way over long distances. Han has also made it to the second round of a DARPA project to create an autonomous robot vehicle that can traverse terrain by learning from its own experiences. The goal: to perfect an unmanned ground combat vehicle that could operate over rough trails, in jungles or desert sand, or weave through heavy traffic as if it had a skilled driver behind the wheel.

New Army Camos: No Place to Hide?

At the middle of 2004, the Army announced that its soldiers would get a new uniform. No longer would G.I.s have keep separate outfits for desert or woodland combat. The new, "digital" Army Combat Uniform, or ACU, would be capable of blending into them all. Slate explained how, shortly after the roll-out:

Making the ACU as invisible as possible required developing an entirely new "digital" camouflage pattern, derived from the Marine Corps' so-called "MARPAT" camo scheme, which was launched in 2001. MARPAT is pixilated—bit-mapped on a computer, and then "printed" directly onto nylon... Unlike the old camo, digital camo suggests shapes and colors without actually being shapes and colors—like visual white noise. While it may serve a hunter well to appear to be part of a tree, a contemporary soldier needs to be on the move, and so his camouflage must help him blend into the "flow of space."

But how much does it help, really? The ACU has now been in service for 18 months or so; the entire Army should be outfitted with the camos by the end of this year. Some soldiers, gathered on the AR15 website, are complaining that the "universal" cammos aren't really suited to every environment. Yeah, the outfits do a good job of hiding people in the desert and in cities, they argue. But There's very little green in the ACU's pattern, they argue. So the things stick out like a sore thumb wherever there's even a bit of vegetation.

"I just came back from a range, where there was dry sandy areas, grassy areas and a wooded area behind it. Many soldiers still had BDUs [Battle Dress Uniforms, the old green outfits] and the rest had ACUs. Throughout the day I couldn't help but notice that no matter what the backgound was, the ACU attracted the eye and stood out quite obvious, whereas the BDU really only stood out in the sandy areas. What was also quite obvious was the fact that I wasn't the only one that noticed it. From the colonel on down, there were rather drastic remarks on the uniforms ineffectiveness. Not so much bitching about durability, velco, etc., just the colors. It was obvious that at some time, some place, this garbage will get soldiers killed."

"I just returned from A-stan where we were on of the last units to be issued DCU's [the old Desert Combat Uniforms]. When the ACU's started showing up there was quite a stink about the "multi environment" claim as it stuck out badly. The SF guys would wear the "target identification cloth" (ACU) inside the wire but when on an operation would wear BDU or DCU depending where they were going. Only the office and supply pogues at Bagram thought the ACU's were the "hip" thing to wear.

Then there's the conspiracy theory. Different uniform designs were tried out, including a "multicam" pattern from Brooklyn's Crye & Associates, before the Army picked its digital camos. Some say Crye's design (see left) did a better job hiding soldiers -- but wasn't picked, regardless.

"During testing the ACU was thrown out during the first round at Natick [Soldier Systems Center]. A Multicam type of uniform had won in the final testing. As was told by Natick labs, all research was set aside... the final "choice" [was made] with absolutely no soldier feedback or testing... There are hundreds of emails and letters daily as to the ineffectiveness of the ACU. However, leadership is turning a blind eye to these very valid complaints. For what reason is unknown. Political I would guess."

So let's hear it: Which uniform do y'all like better? Got any stories of the ACU sticking out -- or working like a charm? Sound off in the comments.

(Big ups: WT)

UPDATE 2:17 PM: Just to be clear, there are definitely situations where the ACUs work very, very well. For instance, check out this picture David Axe took at the National Training Center last July. One soldiers' legs are practically invisible.

Darpa Preps for "Baghdad 2015"

The current TomDispatch has a great round-up of Darpa's research into the future of urban warfare. But man, do you have to put up with a lot to get to the good stuff.

The article's main thrust is that the Pentagon is readying itself for a "low-intensity world war of unlimited duration against criminalized segments of the urban poor." There's an "assumed need to be in the urban Iraqs of the future, [so] the question for the U.S. military becomes a practical one: How to deal with these uppity children of the third world."

Yeah, I'm rolling my eyes, too. Like the failed-state jihadists of the world will just go about minding their own business... if the U.S. just stays out their slums. Sure. Worked like a charm, before 9/11.

Besides, the U.S. has been fighting in cities since... well, since before there was a U.S. (George Washington tangled with the Red Coats in New York City, for example.) And we've never been all that good at it. The fact is, American armed forces have almost always preferred a stand-up fight -- an open war -- to some close-quarters, urban combat. That's what are training is oriented around. That's what our gear is made for. But the guys plotting to hurt us and our allies are in cities. So it's into urban canyons our military must go.

The article winces about American military talk of prepping for "Baghdad 2015" and urban fights of the issue fights. "Today, it's Baghdad; tomorrow...it could be Accra, Bogota, Dhaka, Karachi, Kinshasa, Lagos, Mogadishu or even a perennial favorite, Port au Prince." But given how badly "Baghdad 2007" is going, doesn't the Pentagon -- and especially, its research arms -- owe it to the rest of us to get better at those kinds of conflicts? Especially when Baghdad is only one in a long list of urban operations (Mogadishu, Srebrenica, Kabul) the U.S. has found itself in over the last few decades? Wouldn't anything less would be... well, a dereliction of duty?

Anyway. After several more paragraphs, we get to the meat of the story, on "the wide range of efforts to visualize, map out, and spy on the global mega-favelas that the U.S. has, until now, largely scorned and neglected." Most of these programs won't be new to close readers of Defense Tech. But it's interesting, and helpful, to see 'em all in one place. Items include...

VisiBuilding: This is a program aimed at addressing "a pressing need in urban warfare: seeing inside buildings" by developing technology that will allow U.S. forces to "determine building layouts, find anomalous quantities of materials," and "locate people within the building..."

UrbanScape: This program aims "to make the foreign city as ‘familiar as the soldier's backyard'" by providing "the warfighters patrolling an urban environment with an up-to-date, high resolution model of the urban terrain that can be viewed, manipulated and analyzed."

Urban Hopping Robots... a semi-autonomous hybrid hopping/articulated wheeled robotic platform [like this one, maybe -- ed.] that could adapt to the urban environment... and provide the delivery of small payloads to any point of the urban jungle while remaining lightweight, small to minimize the burden on the soldier.

Close Combat Lethal Recon This deadly, loitering explosive expressively for use in urban landscapes will expand a soldier's killing zone by reaching "over and around buildings, onto rooftops, and into open building portals." Think of it as a smart grenade or, according to DARPA Director Tether... "a small mortar round with a grenade-size explosive in it. A fiber-optic line unreels from its back end and provides the data link that allows the soldier to see the video from the munition's camera and to fly it into the target."

If it works -- and that's always a big if, when you're talking about a Darpa project -- that does sound like a nasty weapon. Not just in a city. But in any environment.

FWIW, The story leaves of of its list two of the creepiest Darpa programs geared towards urban fights. "Combat Zones That See" tries to strap cheap cameras together, giving soldiers watch over an entire city at once; the "Integrated Sensor is Structure" program aims to do the same thing -- with a giant, all-seeing blimp. And then there's Darpa's next robotic road race. It's through... a city! (Cue scary music.)

Ad: Discovery Channel's FutureWeapons and the Secret World of Military Weaponry

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Discovery Channel gives viewers unprecedented access to the latest military weapons in the second season of FUTUREWEAPONS, including several that are exclusive to Discovery Channel cameras. Host and ex-Navy SEAL, Richard “Mack” Machowicz, goes to manufacturing sites around the world to test weapons, detail the science behind the hardware and explain how it gives soldiers strategic advantages during combat. FUTUREWEAPONS premieres Monday, January 15, 2007, at 9 PM (ET/PT).

Some of the exclusive weapons featured in the series include two that are currently being used by soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Boot Banger neutralizes car bombs and improvised explosive devices (IEDs), and the Gatecrasher breaches walls so that troops can shoot or climb through. Throughout the second season, more than 15 featured weapons will be exclusive to Discovery Channel, in addition to a look at more than 15 different weapons that are currently being used by soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“FUTUREWEAPONS gives viewers a unique perspective on wartime strategy that no one else is offering,” said Jane Root, EVP and GM of Discovery Channel, The Science Channel, Military Channel and Discovery Times Channel. “We are pulling back the curtain on 21st century weapons to bring viewers to the cutting edge of technology.”

Viewers looking for more information about Mack and the hardware featured in the series can go to readyaimfuture.com for an exclusive interactive weapons gallery, games, behind the scenes footage and a video diary where Mack discusses his favorite weapons, his experience as a Navy SEAL and his history.

In addition to a robust website with exclusive content and in-depth information, Discovery Channel’s sister network, The Military Channel, will air WEAPONOLOGY at 10 PM (ET/PT) on Mondays immediately following FUTUREWEAPONS. In this new series viewers learn about the history to develop better, faster and stronger weapons. The line of fire from basic weapon to modern super weapon is far from straight, and WEAPONOLOGY brings together the great leaps that designers have made in military technology over the last century. During the FUTUREWEAPONS broadcast, viewers will be prompted to The Military Channel for WEAPONOLOGY with in-program promos.

Behind the Army's Cash Crunch

Our Army gets $168 billion a year to train and fight. So why do its chiefs keep complaining about a cash crunch? The Wall Street Journal's Greg Jaffe explains, in maybe the best article on the subject to date.

From 1990 to 2005, the military lavished money on billion-dollar destroyers, fighter jets and missile-defense systems. Defenders of such programs say the U.S. faces a broad array of threats and must be prepared for all of them. High-tech weaponry contributed to the swift toppling of the regimes in Iraq and Afghanistan, but has been of little help in the more difficult task of stabilizing the two countries.

Of the $1.9 trillion the U.S. spent on weaponry in that period, adjusted for inflation, the Air Force received 36% and the Navy got 33%. The Army took in 16%, it says. Despite the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, both dominated by ground forces, the ratio hasn't changed significantly...

It may seem hard to believe that a country which allocated $168 billion to the Army this year -- more than twice the 2000 budget -- can't cover the costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. But the two pillars of the Army, personnel and equipment -- both built to wage high-tech, firepower-intensive wars -- are under enormous stress:

The cost of basic equipment that soldiers carry into battle -- helmets, rifles, body armor -- has more than tripled to $25,000 from $7,000 in 1999.

The cost of a Humvee, with all the added armor, guns, electronic jammers and satellite-navigational systems, has grown seven-fold to about $225,000 a vehicle from $32,000 in 2001.

The cost of paying and training troops has grown 60% to about $120,000 per soldier, up from $75,000 in 2001. On the reserve side, such costs have doubled since 2001, to about $34,000 per soldier.

At Fort Knox, Ky., the cash crunch got so bad this summer that the Army ran out of money to pay janitors who clean the classrooms where captains are taught to be commanders. So the officers, who will soon be leading 100-soldier units, clean the office toilets themselves.

"The cost of the Army is being driven up by [Iraq and Afghanistan]. That's the fundamental story here," says Brig. Gen. Andrew Twomey, a senior official on the Army staff in the Pentagon. The increased costs are "not from some wild weapons system that is off in the future. These are costs associated with current demands."

Senior Army officials concede they mistakenly assumed prior to the Iraq war that if they built a force capable of winning big conventional battles, everything else -- from counterinsurgency to peacekeeping -- would be relatively easy. "We argued in those days that if we could do the top-end skills, we could do all of the other ones," says Lt. Gen. Thomas Metz, the deputy commander of the Army's Training and Doctrine Command. Iraq has proven that guerrilla fights demand different equipment and skills. "I have had to eat a little crow," says Gen. Metz...

The Humvee stands as a metaphor for the problems the Army faces. First fielded in the early 1980s, it was designed to ferry soldiers around behind the front lines of a conventional war. In recent years, the vehicle, which troops drive on the streets of Iraq, has been modified countless times. The Army has bolted layers of armor onto it to protect troops from roadside bombs. It has added sophisticated electronic jammers, rotating turrets, bigger machine guns, satellite navigational systems and better radios.

The result is a Humvee that is much better than the version the Army took to Iraq in 2003. But the add-ons have driven up its cost. The modified vehicle is top heavy and tends to tip over at high speeds. Army officials say they can't add more weight without overwhelming the engine or breaking the axle.

"The Army recognizes that the Humvee has reached a limit of our ability to improve it for the current fight," Gen. Speakes says.

What the Army says it really needs is an all-new vehicle, designed to better withstand roadside bombs that have become part of life in Iraq. But such a vehicle likely won't be ready until 2010 or 2012, Army officials say. In the interim, the Army wants to buy something on the commercial market -- South Africa, Turkey and Australia all make alternatives. Yet it's not clear whether the Army, which is struggling to equip the current force, has the money.

Army Axing High-Tech Uniforms, "Future"

The Army made a big decision, back in October. After 15 years and a half-billion dollars in development, the service would finally take Land Warrior, its ensemble of high-tech soldier gear, to war for the first time. The collection of radios, GPS-locators, and next-generation rifle scopes wasn't perfect -- far from it. But, for infantrymen who typically don't even have a walkie-talkie, it was an important first step towards plugging the average soldier into battlefield network.

But, just six weeks later, the Army appears to have reversed itself. According to Inside Defense, service financiers have decided to kill off Land Warrior in its 2008 budget. It's one of a number of high-tech programs slated for big cuts by the Army.

The service got $17 billion less than what it wanted for its 2008 budget from the Pentagon and the White House. "Earlier in October... Army Chief of Staff Gen. Peter Schoomaker said if the service got less than what it needed in FY-08 it would be forced to slow the modernization of the force," Inside Defense's Dan Dupont notes. "In submitting its budget plan to Pentagon leaders last week, the Army contended that budget constraints have forced the service to take what it believes are imprudent risks in the readiness of today’s forces, as well as in its future plans."

Future Combat Systems -- the Army's plan to connect all its next-generation tanks, robots, and fighting vehicles to that battlefield network -- is also slated to take a good-sized hit.

By delaying key milestones, shifting some pieces of the program out of FCS plans and killing others, the Army believes it can save more than $3.3 billion over the next six budget years (fiscal years 2008 to 2013).

The moves would reduce the cost to field each FCS brigade combat team, but it would also push back procurement plans for BCT equipment, delaying by five years the schedule for fielding the teams, according to sources familiar with the plan.

The FCS cuts also entail the removal of some unmanned aerial vehicles from the program and the deferral of some vehicles, as well as some ammunition. The upshot of the moves would be an FCS program consisting of 14 platforms plus the network, down from the 18 envisioned today, with FCS systems to be fielded at a rate of one brigade combat team per year for fifteen years, beginning in 2015. Prior plans called for those 15 BCTs to be fielded at a rate of 1.5 per year over 10 years.

Now, just because the Army has proposed these cuts doesn't necessarily mean they are going to happen. As you may have heard, there's a new party taking over Congress. And, at least in the run-up to the elections, these guys made a lot of noise about giving the Army a boost. Then there's the new Secretary of Defense. He may be more favorably inclined to funding the Army than his predecessor was. Certainly, he seems to look kindly on the larger goal of retooling the military. Check of this exchange with Sen. Elizabeth Dole:

SEN. DOLE: Dr. Gates, the transformation efforts undertaken by Secretary Rumsfeld are critical to meeting the challenges of the 21st century. While Secretary Rumsfeld made transformation of the military a priority, obviously much remains to be done. In your view, which transformation programs are the most important and effective in fighting this war on terror?...

MR. GATES: Senator Dole, one of the things that has impressed me the most in the briefings -- the very short briefings that I've received preparatory to this hearing, is the extent of the transformation that actually has taken place in recent years, compared to when I was in government.

I can't tell you how many crisis meetings I sat through in the Situation Room over a 20-year period, and we would look at military contingencies, and we would be looking at 60 to 90 days to generate a brigade, to get a military force on the move and in place.

So the expeditionary nature of the Army, the mobility, the change in mind-set -- sometimes perhaps those of you who have been really close to it may not fully appreciate just how dramatically the situation already has changed, compared to when I was in government last.

I think that the transformation needs to continue... The two things that I think make a lot of sense has been this shift of the Army from being basically a static force to a more mobile expeditionary force. I think that's very important.

I think that the -- based on very superficial information at this point, this -- the shift from divisions to the brigade structure does make a lot of sense, and I think it provides a lot more flexibility.

I would say that one of the things that I think is very important in the transformation is continuing to strengthen our capacity to fight irregular wars. I think that's where the action is going -- is most likely to be for the foreseeable future. And so I think it's very important that it go forward.

High-Tech Uniforms Finally Heading to War

A high-tech collection of soldier gear, 15 years and half a billion dollars in the making, will finally make it into battle. The 4th Battalion, 9th Infantry has adopted the Land Warrior suite of wearable electronics, and will take it with them to Iraq when they deploy next year. It's the first time a large group of infantrymen will be tied to the combat network that's connecting so much of the military.

These days, the vasy majority of dismounted soldiers don't even have radios -- let alone the electronic mapping and messaging tools that have become commonplace in most Humvees. That'll change, once the "Manchus" of the 4/9 Infantry don the Land Warrior ensemble.

Radios and GPS locators come standard. A helmet-mounted monocle lets the soldier know he and his buddies are on a satellite-powered map. That same monocle is connected to the weapon sight, so the infantryman can, in effect, shoot around corners. The sight also serves as a long-range zoom, with twelve times amplification. "It makes every rifleman a marksman," Colonel Richard Hansen, Land Warrior's project manager, crows. Night vision, and laser targeting – which once required clunky binoculars, or attachments to the gun -- are now built in, too.

Getting this kind of gear out to troops has taken just about forever. First proposed in 1991, Land Warior went through one clunky, next-to-useless iteration after the next. One cost $85,000, and weighed over 40 pounds. Another was way too fragile for combat. Even this version 3.0 (now down to 12 pounds and $30,000 each) has had a bunch of weight, security, and usability issues.

The concerns were so great that the original vision -- giving every soldier a full set of high-tech gear -- has been scrapped. For now, only Manchu team leaders will get the entire Land Warrior ensemble, Col. Hansen tells Defense Tech. Regular riflemen will be equipped with GPS beacons, to let their sergeants and lieutennants know where they are.

It's a small step. But a significant one.

UPDATE 12:10 pm: I was out with the Manchus at Ft. Lewis, WA, when they were testing out the Land Warrior gear. I'll have a complete run-down of what I found in an upcoming issue of Popular Mechanics.

"Own the Night... and Share It"

An eagle-eyed reader points us to an interesting-looking Darpa program that could tip the night vision equation back in America's favor. If it gets beyond the goofy video stage, that is.

The goal of the Multispectral Adaptive Networked Tactical Imaging System (MANTIS) project is to combine images from three slices of the spectrum -- short wave infrared (SWIR), long wave infrared (LWIR), and visible light -- into a single view.

“The SWIR sensor operates in the 1- to 2-micron range, providing low light performance, a primary image and scene context with the ability to see through fog,” MANTIS manager Jeffrey Paul tells Signal magazine. “The LWIR camera operates in the 8- to 12-micron range, and as a thermal imager needs no light; it penetrates smoke and dust and can find partially hidden targets. All of these bandwidths can be digitally imaged. Once that occurs, we can do whatever we want with the imagery in real time, including fusing it to use that one best image to present to the soldier.”

In that way, MANTIS would be similar to other image fusing projects that the military is currently investigating. MANTIS' twist is that the combined image is then supposed to be beamed wirelessly to the helmet visor of every soldier in a squad, "so that each person sees what every other person sees."

"We also have a TiVo-like record and playback capability so that the last 10 seconds can be called up and played again. Digital information and high-speed processors handle these functions and connect them over the network to enable image sharing,” Paul maintains. “MANTIS also uses inertial navigation and global positioning system receivers so that each soldier will precisely know his location and the processor will know where he is looking at all times, his fields of vision and of fire."

OK, OK. So it all sounds a little far-fetched. And I'm sure MANTIS suffers from all the same limitations discussed here. But there do seem to be some prototypes floating around, at least. And the system is scheduled to make the transition from Darpa to the Army at the end of this year.

Nex-Gen Night Vision Still Fuzzy

Night vision gear gave U.S. forces a huge leg up in the first Gulf War. But these days, anyone can buy see-in-the-dark goggles for a few hundred bucks, online.

So military research labs [are] push[ing] to give U.S. war fighters nighttime optics that are several steps ahead of what can be bought at any hunting and fishing store, or duplicated by foreign militaries," National Defense magazine notes.

At the top of the want list is a system that fuses both 'image enhancement,' which relies on ambient light, and infrared capabilities.

Infrared does not rely on ambient light, as does image enhancement, which emits the technology’s characteristic green glow. Laying infrared over the image will help operators see camouflaged targets and give them better contrast, experts said. “If you turn on that fused system, the red will pop out at you, and you can react very quickly,” said Elizabeth Redden, chief of the human research and engineering directorate field element at the U.S. Army Infantry Center at Fort Benning, Ga.

However, military researchers are grappling with several challenges to create this fusion. Helicopter pilots, for example, cannot use infrared sensors through windshields, noted Chief Warrant Officer Wade Fox, an adviser to the night vision devices branch at the Army 110th aviation brigade, Fort Rucker, Ala. “A fused system is really where we want to go.”

Such a system could still be used by crewmembers like door gunners who can stick their heads outside windows. For pilots, an infrared sensor could be mounted outside the cockpit, and the imaged fused on a helmet-mounted device. However, external cameras can create distortion caused by viewing the same object from two different angles, also known as a parallax effect, which makes it difficult to maneuver.

No Blood for... Solar Power?

Last Thursday, the Christian Science Monitor reported on an unusual memo from the staff of Marine Corps Maj. Gen. Richard Zilmer, the highest-ranking Marine officer in Iraq’s troubled Anbar Province. According to the Monitor, and to more comprehensive treatments in Inside Defense and Defense Industry Daily, Zilmer asked the Pentagon to find a way to get "solar panels and wind turbines" into the hands of his troops. Without access to renewable energy solutions, Zilmer expects to see "continued casualty accumulation [which] exhibits potential to jeopardize mission success."

Say what?

The article in the Monitor suggests two different ways in which solar- and wind-powered generators for isolated outposts would reduce U.S. casualties. The first is that "despite desert temperatures, the hot 'thermal signature' of a diesel generator can call enemy attention to U.S. outposts." How, exactly, an array of solar panels and wind turbines would make U.S. troops less conspicuous in a country bristling with diesel generators is left unclear.

The second argument holds more water. As hard as it is to believe, diesel and other refined petroleum products are actually imported into Iraq by truck, largely from Turkey. And fuel convoys – not to mention the U.S. troops riding in them – are some of the most tempting targets to insurgents: in August 2005, for example, the Army 1st Corps Support Command alone was reporting 30 IED attacks a week.

All that fuel convoyin' costs not only lives, but money, too. Military estimates for the cost of one gallon of generator fuel delivered to a unit at a forward position range from $100 to $400. This is a problem.

(If you’re curious to know how they get those types of numbers for a single gallon of fuel, take a gander at this LMI presentation, from 2004, which cranks out an estimate of $3 per kilowatt-frickin'-hour – or about $120 per gallon of fuel consumed – on the battlefield, compared to $0.40/kWh ($16/gallon) to run those same generators stateside. If this stateside number seems high, too, remember that the number represents all costs associated with turning that gallon of fuel into useful energy, including personnel costs, equipment depreciation, and so on.)

So, what can be done?

Right now, there’s no easy answer. Arlington, Va.-based SkyBuilt Power offers a containerized, deployable solar-/wind-powered generating station which has gotten a lot of press, but the system, which produces "0.5 kW to 150 kW or more," is reported by the Monitor to go for a neat $100,000.

Still, that price tag looks a lot less scary when you keep in mind the absurd cost of running a diesel generator on the battlefield. According to the Monitor, Zilmer’s memo estimated that a system like SkyBuilt’s would pay for itself in three to five years.

That, of course, is probably why In-Q-Tel, the CIA’s own venture-cap firm, is one of SkyBuilt’s big backers.

Part of the logistics crunch which is feeding those convoy casualty rates has more to do with inept planning than with a lack of available technology. In February 2006, the engineering journal IEEE Spectrum published a must-read article describing how diesel fuel is trucked in from Turkey to power Baghdad’s main power station, even while the natural gas which could power the same turbines, if the appropriate equipment were installed, is flared off as waste at an oilfield across the street.

Obviously, renewable energy isn't going to solve problems on the scale of Iraq's FUBARed power grid, nor will it solve problems that are really about planning, and not technology. And just as obviously, there's no mature technology out there ready to take the place of every diesel generator and internal combustion engine in the U.S. armory.

But as I wrote almost a year ago, the Department of Defense can't afford to sit around and wait for someone else to mature those technologies: "the mature renewable-energy and fuel-efficient technology of the future may never appear in reality until it appears among DARPA's 'Areas of Interest.'"

Since I wrote those words, I'm glad to say that there's been all sorts of movement on this front. And the publicity garnered by Zilmer’s memo can only help matters along.

So next time you hear about a company that’s developing better solar cells, or more efficient wind turbines, pay attention. They’re not just Mother Nature’s best friends – they may well be a jarhead's best friend.

-- Haninah Levine

Now That's What I Call High Mobility

This vehicle, which I cover in New Scientist magazine's web edition today was one of the few gadgets to elicit an instant a reaction of 'I want one of those!'

It's called the Chimera and it's designed for infiltration and exfiltration of Special Forces. The two-seater buggy has unique capabilities: it can be dropped from high altitude, fly stealthily a few dozen miles under its own power and land on a postage stamp. Pack away the parafoil and it's a ground vehicle capable of 60 mph.

After the job is done comes the clever part. With fifty yards of rough track it can get airborne again and head back.

Looked at one way, it's an extension of existing tactics. Special Forces have long jumped with motorbikes or other vehicles to give them added mobility. Atair, who make the Chimera, once rigged up gear for Swedish Special Forces to jump with their 1400lb snowmobiles - in fact they have a whole range of powered and unpowered parafoils for tactical use.

Looked at another way, it's a genuine, practical flying car you can park in your garage. Not just an off-roader, it's an off-off-roader, capable of crossing rivers, jungles, swamps, ravines...or traffic snarl-ups. Even if it only flies at 40 mph, that's about 39.5 mph faster than you can travel at street level.

I can't see them ever being allowed for urban commuting, but this would be something like the ultimate fun vehicle for cross-country trips.

(John Cleese voice:) "Do try and bring it back in one piece, 007..."

-- David Hambling

Undetectable Radar? (Probably Not)

Active radar signals, due to those pesky laws of physics, are generally easy to detect. Because a radar system emits a powerful beam of electromagnetic radiation, traditionally in a very narrow frequency band, an adversary equipped with only a passive radiation detector can easily zero in on the platform carrying the radar.

For decades the military has been searching for a less visible (and vulnerable) "low probability of intercept" (LPI) radar. This June, Ohio State University’s ElectroScience Laboratory claimed that its engineers—led by Dr. Eric K. Walton—had succeeded and "invented a radar system that is virtually undetectable."

A flurry of fawning press coverage followed. Even Dr. Walton, though, acknowledges that he did not invent noise radar, as the technology is called—it was first proposed in the 1950s. He did, however, receive the first patent for the technology earlier this year. Heavy signal-processing requirements kept noise radars in the lab for decades, but they have finally proved feasible (and, according to Walton, cheap—he claims around $100 per unit).

And they probably are undetectable—by typical radar detectors.

Typical radar signals are high-power, narrowly focused pulses;* each signal is extremely short. Most radars can’t send and receive at the same time, so immediately after a pulse is sent out the radar switches to listening mode and strains to hear the pulses’s echo. Incidentally, this makes them farsighted—-they can’t see objects up close.

To detect these radar signals, an adversary can simply sweep his field of view searching for high-powered pulses that are narrowly focused at a single frequency. Since radar signals cannot be perfectly focused and are not constrained like lasers—the beams become larger as they travel, to form a cone—this is easier than it might sound.

Engineers have developed new techniques to make detection more difficult. For example, frequency-hopping radars move each chirp to a different frequency (the F-22 radar system reportedly does this), while spread-spectrum (radars and radios) use a (small) band of frequencies simultaneously. The signals are still extremely powerful compared to background noise, though, and are relatively easy to find with the simple detectors mentioned above.

Noise radar is different in two main ways. Like spread-spectrum radar, it spreads its signal over a band of frequencies, but the band is about 1,000 times wider than most spread-spectrum technologies. Furthermore, the signal is also shaped to look like noise—the radio equivalent of ants racing on a TV screen.

The wide band of frequencies has several advantages. Different frequencies interact with different materials in different ways—basically, using an ultra-wideband (UWB) signal allows you to see through walls, trees, rock, and many other obstacles if the signal is well constructed.

More relevant to this discussion, UWB noise radar signals also spread their power out over the different frequencies; the result is that traditional detectors, searching for very powerful signals near a particular frequency won’t see noise radar. They will just "hear" more static.

And since the noise radar signal is shaped like, well, noise, it would also be hard—if not impossible—to find it by looking for a pattern in the chaos. The noise radar can only detect its own returned signal by first recording it, then comparing a time-delayed version of the recording to what it hears reflected back. (This characteristic also means noise radars detect in "rings" -- the simplest version would detect movement only at a fixed radius from the radar, but it is possible to scan many "rings" very quickly for a more complete picture. The computing requirements for this type of scanning make placing noise radars on fast-moving platforms impractical for now, but they would make exceptionally good proximity detectors, for example.)

Because of their UWB signals, noise radars work best by looking for specific targets -- they must incorporate some knowledge of what a specific target’s reflection will look like. They would have great difficulty detecting an unforeseen obstacle—without prior knowledge of what its reflection would look like, the noise radar would probably just see right through it.

The best way for an adversary to detect a noise radar would be to search, directionally, for sources of UWB noise. The key question here is how "loud" the radar’s noise would be, compared to background sources like the sun, the galactic center, local power lines, battlefield electronics, etc. Noise radars could be constructed in any number of different ways, and the signal could also be endlessly changed for different applications; lacking specific data, it is hard to speculate on how difficult they will be to detect with this technique.

From what we know now, the "undetectable" claim is something of a stretch, but these radars will almost certainly find uses. They do not interfere with each other or nearby electronics (which are designed to filter out noise), and they can see through walls. If ever used in a military capacity, they would likely force a change in radar detection and seeking technologies. It might cost the Pentagon a pretty penny to detect these new toys, but undetectable radars are probably still a long way off.

-- Eric Hundman

*UPDATE: Thanks to Rutty for the clarification. I originally wrote "chirps" here rather than pulses, which was incorrect. "Chirping" in this context refers to a popular type of signal modulation often used in radars--it ultimately allows for greater resolution.

Set Cammos to Vibrate

I think we can all agree a vibrating cell phone in your pocket means good times. Now imagine the same buzzing sensation across your entire body, communicating tactical data. A tap here could mean a bad guy approaching; a pulse there, someone more friendly. That's what the Navy is aiming for, in its next line of 'combat attire'.

There's an old English saying that "too many technologies interfere with operations and reduce the overall effectiveness of the soldier already overloaded by audio-visual cues" - and I think it applies here. Marines and soldiers are receiving more information than ever and could soon be in danger of overload -- even before they get the next-gen, fully-wired cammos.

So how to get around the processing jam? Some folks in Florida think the tongue could be the key. The Navy, on the other hand, is placing its bets on haptics -- the skin's sense of touch. So the service is on the look-out for:

"(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, it may soon be possible for budding Bene Gesserits, with appropriate training, to receive volumes of material via the sensitive parts of the body. Depending on location, thermal and/or pressure switches could transmit every command a unit leader could wish for. Exporting the data into existing virtual environments would allow exact replications of operations to take place - an obvious bonus for training.

Robert Lindeman has been working in the field for the past several years and has succesfully tested both a basic "vibrotactile" armband "sending simple signals to dismounted infantry during live-fire exercises on an obstacle course" and "upper-body vibrotactile feedback system for training Marines in building clearing exercises in VR". The 'Tactavest' relays cues via bluetooth to a central controlling 'TactaBox' which activates the necessary stimuli to orient the user - Tacterrific, you'll agree.

The vest is an example of basic directional control, but consider a vibrotactile belt for waypoint navigation or a vibrotactile suit for helicopter pilots to combat spatial disorientation and you can predict the benefits for all services. For example, existing commercial applications already include: Balance prostheses, hearing aids, medical training and gaming systems.

Personally, I think my underpants would provide their own haptic/olfactory warning to my 'battle buddies' in a combat situation. So, for now, I'll pass on haptics, thanks all the same.

-- Steven Snell

Marines Ban Under Armour

I couldn't even begin to count the number of soldiers and marines I've met who wear those wicking, Under Armour t-shirts. Especially in hot weather, the form-fitting, synethic shirts do a nice job of keeping sweat from collecting, so you don't get too clammy under those cammos.

But now, in one of the hottest places of all -- Iraq -- marines won't be able to wear the clothes any more.

Marines conducting operations outside forward operating bases and camps in Iraq can no longer wear synthetic athletic clothing containing polyester and nylon, Marine Corps commanders have ordered.

The ban on popular clothing from companies like Under Armour, CoolMax and Nike comes in the wake of concerns that a substantial burn risk is associated with wearing clothing made with these synthetic materials, officials said.

When exposed to extreme heat and flames, clothing containing some synthetic materials like polyester will melt and can fuse to the skin. This essentially creates a second skin and can lead to horrific, disfiguring burns, said Navy Capt. Lynn E. Welling, the 1st Marine Logistics Group head surgeon.

Whether on foot patrol or conducting a supply convoy while riding in an armored truck, everyone is at risk to such injuries while outside the wire.

Under Armour has been aware of the risk for a while, it seems. As Stars & Stripes notes, there's a message on the company's web site which reads:

Do not wear Under Armour products when exposed to extreme radiant heat or open flames. Under Armour products may melt in extreme heat that exceeds 350°F. Never use Under Armour products as a substitute for flame-retardant or ballistic protective equipment.

Back in October, the Marines announced a new set of official skivvie shirts that were just "like the Under Armour shirts."

Beat the Harsh Afghan Winter^TM in Style

Keeping warm in cold conditions has been a problem for troops since, well, since there have been troops. The DoD Transformation site has the scoop on the latest developments: Vacca Incorporated's biofuel-powered flameless catalytic heaters.

Through the Company Grade Officer Initiative, the directorate funded the integration of the heaters into a vest.

The lightweight, easy-to-use prototype combines a standard work vest with two of Vacca Inc.'s biofuel-powered heaters in the two front panels of the vest.

Using fuel cell concepts developed at Los Alamos National Laboratories, Vacca Inc. developed heaters that work by passing methanol or ethanol across a catalyst membrane. The reaction byproducts are heat, carbon dioxide, and small traces of water.

The prototype weighs dramatically less, at only 12 ounces, than the 1.7-pound commercial products on the market today and has the potential to weigh eight ounces in future designs.

And

Commercially-introduced lithium ion heated jackets provide heat for two and a half to three hours before recharging the battery.

In contrast, Vacca Inc.'s prototype, can last 22 hours with 100 cubic centimeters of fuel in low heat mode (22 Watt) and 12 hours in high heat mode (42 Watt) according to the company's final report.

The vest's internal fuel supply has high/low/off settings for increased control.

Both the vest and fuel are much more affordable to the Department of the Defense compared to the available commercial products.

The vests are projected to cost less than half of what current commercial solutions cost and could be ready to launch by 2007.

How about a body armor/heating vest combo?

-- cross-posted by Murdoc

GPS JUMPERS

He spent way, waytoo much time watching an awful, sports-themed porno called Blowin' the Whistle. But my college housemate Chris will be forever rad in my book. Because he would jump out of planes at 35,000 feet or higher -- braving sub-zero temperatures, sucking on oxygen tanks, free falling for minutes at a time. And then, when he'd finally splash down, he'd go rescue sailors and astronauts lost at sea.

All that was brutal, of course. But there was an equally large danger looming – that he'd miss his target entirely. You see, guys like Chris, doing HALO (High Altitude Low Opening) and HAHO (High Altitude High Opening) jumps, have to leap out of their planes during fog and rain and woolly-thick cloud cover. All of which makes it awfully tough to stick a target.

A new set of gadgets being developed at the Army's Natick Soldier Systems Center should help the Chrises of the world. The Military Free Fall Navigation System connects GPS guidance controls to a helmet heads-up display – "a tiny TV-like display mounted to one side of [a] goggle," Natick says. All of that is then plugged in to a PDA-based mission planner, which can recalculate drop zones and redirect parachutes in the sky, based on wind speed and direction. Natick hopes to field a prototype by 2006.

THERE'S MORE: The navigation system for jumpers runs off of many of the same technologies being used to make precision cargo airdrops. Defense Tech previewed that system – called, no joke, the "Sherpa" – here.

NAVY GETS NEW DUDS

After months after the Army rolled out its summer line of fatigues, the Navy is showing off new-fangeled uniforms of its own.

The key word here is "uniform." Sailors have long had a variety of working outfits. The Navy Working Uniform is an attempt to put everyone in the same clothes, the Navy News Service says.

The Navy Working Uniform is being designed to take the place of utilities, wash khaki, coveralls, woodland green, aviation green, winter working blue and tropical working uniforms. The normal wear life is designed to last up to 18 months, compared to the current wear life of six months for the working uniform.

The working uniform design is not intended to camouflage Sailors against the background of a ship. Instead, the multiple colors on the uniform - navy blue, deck gray, haze gray and black - are common in the maritime working environment, making them a more practical choice.

“What we have heard from Sailors aboard ship is if they get a small spot of paint or grease on a pair of solid-color utilities or coveralls, it’s easily visible and detracts from the uniform’s appearance,” Scott said. “With the Navy Working Uniform’s multicolor pattern, a small spot or stain may be almost entirely unnoticeable.”

Another positive aspect of a multicolor pattern is that wrinkles caused by daily wear would be less visible, and the new uniforms will be wash and wear with no ironing required.

There's good news for the Navy's gadget freaks, too. Sailors in working uniforms will will now be able to wear cell phones and PDAs, Gizmodo notes. Lady gadget freaks are especially psyched. Skirts are now optional "for the first time since women officially entered the service in 1908," the AP reports.

GAMERS GET ARMY'S NEW DUDS

Soldiers in the field won't see the next generation of combat uniforms until 2007, at the earliest. But videogamers can check out the "Future Force Warrior" gear right now, in the latest Tom Clancy digital adventure. Players can strap on the FFW helmet, with night-vision sights, radio antennae, and bone-conducting microphones built in. They can drink out a new-fangled, "on-the-move" hydration system. And, of course, they can blast away, with the ultra-slick M29 rifle -- the one with the mounted camera, laser target designator, and grenade launcher built in. There's no word, yet, on whether gamers will be able to use FFW's extended, unisex zipper and expanded butt-flap, which allow G.I. Janes to tinkle without "literally being caught with their pants down," explains an FFW program manager.

THE POETRY OF AL JAZEERA

A DARPA-backed project is now giving real-time translations of Al Jazeera and other Arabic-language TV channels.

But like just about every voice-recognition program, this one is buggy.

"In a demonstration the company recently conducted over the Web, the system produced somewhat cryptic English sentences that gave the viewer an extremely rough idea of what the Al Jazeera newscasters were describing," reports the New York Times' John Markoff.

"It's more like poetry than prose," said Bradley Horowitz, founder of Virage, the translation firm. "It evokes the right things, but it's hardly accurate."

"LASER RIFLE" DESIGN A HOAX

It's the kind of proposal that makes sci-fi dorks (including this one) quiver with anticipation: a 1999 design, found by DefenseReview, for a real-life laser rifle.

So when I read about the far-out sounding "Gasdynamic Laser Weapon" on Slashdot, I fell for it.

Without reading too carefully, I bought the gobbledygook about the Stavatti Corporation using streams of carbon dioxide, nitrogen, and helium gases to help generate pulses of laser light. And I swallowed when I called the company, and was told the president was out of town, looking for government funding.

But Defense Tech's readers are smarter than its editor, and they immediately called bullshit.

"Looks like an April Fool's gag," is how several readers described the rifle design.

"A very elaborate gag," added another. "Obviously written by an insider."

A third noted newsgroup posts from 2002 calling Stavatti's designs for an "F-26" airplane into question.

But the kicker came from Stavatti's own website:

The company is the first in history to double as a drum maker and a defense contractor, you see.

Stavatti Percussion conducts the retail sale of percussion products Stavattiís founder and current CEO, Christopher R. Beskar, plays the bagpipes. Early in his piping career, Mr. Beskar joined a bagpipe band. This band was in need of drummers to play the snare in accompaniment of the pipes. Mr. Beskarís brother Shawn joined the band and became an accomplished pipe band snare drummer capable of Grade 2 competition while yet in High School. Later on, Shawn became CFO of Stavatti. While serving as CFO, Shawn began marketing Premier Pipe Band Products under a business entity designated DSDC.

DSDC focused exclusively on the sale of high performance pipe band drums and accessory products. Reselling Snares, Bass and Tenor drums to pipe bands throughout the Midwest, in 1996 DSDC became a division of Stavatti Corporation known as Stavatti Percussion.

Concentrating upon the value added resale of pipe band percussion products, Stavatti can address all your pipe band drumming needs!

And Stavatti doesn't just design any weapons. "Stavatti builds space fighters," the company website says.

"We know what threats are out there. A 9mm just wonít cut it when you are facing 30 ft tall insectoids, or the reptile alien overlords from Rigel."

To battle these baddies, of course, you need a laser rifle.

THERE'S MORE: Stavatti CEO Chris Baskar insists his company is legit. But he can't produce a single customer for his high-tech arms buisiness.

In a phone interview from a Virgina hotel room, Baskar claims that he has "60 people in the company." But when pressed, he admits that all but three "are essentially assisting on a pro bono basis."

He also says he sees nothing wrong with a company trying market laser rifles and drums at the same time. Yamaha, he notes, makes drums, pianos -- and motorocycles, too.

What about the statements on his site about using his Stavatti guns to stop "alien overlords"?

"It indicates a little bit of classified work," he replies. "Other than that, it's humor."

AIR FORCE PROGRAM MAY LET PILOTS SEE IN SANDSTORMS

Nature accomplished earlier this week what Iraq's Republican Guard could not: Blinding sandstorms paralyzed the American air campaign, grounding helicopters and cutting bombing runs by as much as 85 percent in some areas.

But there's an Air Force program in the works that may enable pilots to plow through just about any foe -- even an Iraqi sandstorm.

The solution is an onboard computer that digitally renders the pilots' surroundings when they can't rely on the real one to guide them. It's called "synthetic vision," and its backers are promising that the system will let pilots see in nasty weather, just like night-vision goggles let troopers roam around in the dark.

Read all about it in my latest Wired News story.

THERE'S MORE: An Air Force source believes that synthetic vision will be used more for drones than for manned aircraft. Seeing through a UAV's eyes is already tough; using them in a sandstorm is pretty much impossible. But operating a UAV while looking at a rendered world? That could work.