If you’ve caught an episode of COPS lately, then you’ve probably noticed that so-called less-lethal weapons have caught on with police departments across the country as a way to force unruly suspects into compliance. Tasers, which delivers an electrical current to the suspect via two dart-like electrodes, are often the weapon of choice. Now, the Pentagon wants to use beefed up Taser technology on the battlefield.
The puny little electrodes that the police weapons use just won’t do for the military. That’s why the U.S. Department of Defense has been developing a long-range electric shock device that fires from a 40-millimeter grenade launcher and can subdue an enemy from just under 200 feet away. The new Human Electro-Muscular Incapacitation (HEMI) projectile is being developed for the Pentagon by Taser International under a $2.5 million contract and should be ready for prototype testing some time after the new year [Popular Science]. HEMI’s range is three times longer than Taser International’s XREP shotgun-style projectile, which has generated controversy because of concerns that the projectile could be deadly in untrained hands.
(more…)
Cyber spies have hacked into computers containing information about the U.S. Defense Department’s most expensive weapons program ever: the $300 billion Joint Strike Fighter, a fighter jet also known as F35 Lightning II. The intruders were able to copy and siphon off several terabytes of data related to design and electronics systems, officials say, potentially making it easier to defend against the craft. The latest intrusions provide new evidence that a battle is heating up between the U.S. and potential adversaries over the data networks that tie the world together [The Wall Street Journal].
U.S. officials reportedly traced the hackers back to China, but experts note that it’s extremely difficult to determine the real origin of an online attack, as paths can be disguised and identities masked. Meanwhile, the Chinese Embassy said in a statement that China “opposes and forbids all forms of cyber crimes.” It called the Pentagon’s report “a product of the Cold War mentality” and said the allegations of cyber espionage are “intentionally fabricated to fan up China threat sensations” [The Wall Street Journal].
(more…)
If the U.S. Navy has its way, dolphins and sea lions will soon be patrolling Puget Sound to protect some of the nation’s most sophisticated submarines from possible terrorist attacks. But although the animals have already been through boot camp and are on the job in other parts of the world, Washington State animal lovers and environmentalists are concerned that dolphins and sea lions are ill-suited for conditions in Puget Sound. Animal rights activists are worried dolphins will suffer in the cold waters and environmentalists worry the local habitat may suffer from the droppings of these patrollers [MSNBC]. The Navy is currently holding public hearings in Seattle and towns along the Puget Sound, and has said it will make a decision by October.
The Navy says dolphins and sea lions make great marine sentries, and are more capable of detecting a lone diver approaching a submarine than the most advanced technology. “Their strengths are that they are a mobile sensor: They have the best sensor we know about, and you can have them swim anywhere in the bay. They can outswim any man, they can localize the threat, and they can combine with the sea lions, which have good directional hearing” [Los Angeles Times], says Steve Hugueley, who works with dolphin patrollers at a submarine base in southeast Georgia.
(more…)
In several years police officers may have laser or microwave guns to point at miscreants, according to the Justice Department’s research and development agency. These nonlethal weapons build on knowledge gained from the Pentagon’s controversial Active Denial System (ADS) – first demonstrated in public last year, which uses a 2-metre-[wide] beam of short microwaves to heat up the outer layer of a person’s skin and cause pain. Like the ADS, the new portable devices will also heat the skin, but will have beams only a few centimetres across. They are designed to elicit what the Pentagon calls a “repel response” – a strong urge to escape from the beam [New Scientist]. But the idea of giving cops a tool capable of instantly inflicting pain from across a town square is raising protests from human rights advocates.
The Justice Department is working on two separate weapons. One, the Personnel Halting and Stimulation Response, or PHaSR, uses an infra-red laser to heat a patch of skin about 4 inches in diameter, and pairs that heat with another bright laser that dazzles the eyes. The PHaSR looks like a bulky rifle, and law enforcement officials say that a cheap, portable version could be very useful to police and prison guards. Sid Heal, formerly a Commander in the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department (and before that a Marine) , has long been an advocate of non-lethal weapons and thinks the new devices might have potential. “Needless to say, the “market” is so vacant with alternatives that ANYTHING is going to be appealing at this point” [Wired News], says Heal.
(more…)
Thousands of Gulf War veterans who complained of memory and concentration problems, rashes, headaches, and muscle pain following their return from Kuwait and Iraq were suffering from a real illness and weren’t just feeling the aftereffects of combat stress, according to a new congressionally mandated report. The report broke with most earlier studies by concluding that two chemical exposures were direct causes of the disorder: the drug pyridostigmine bromide, given to troops to protect against nerve gas, and pesticides that were used — and often overused — to protect against sand flies and other pests [Los Angeles Times].
One-quarter of the 700,000 U.S. troops who took part in Operation Desert Storm have reported symptoms of Gulf War Syndrome, according to the report, which fails to identify any cure for the malady. It also notes that few veterans afflicted with Gulf War illness have recovered over time [CNN]. The report calls for at least $60 million in new federally funded research on the syndrome and potential treatments.
(more…)
The U.S. Supreme Court has sided with the Navy over the Pacific Ocean’s whales, declaring that the Navy can continue its military exercises using high-powered sonar, despite environmentalists’ arguments that the sonar can harm whales’ ears or cause the panicked animals to beach themselves. The court ruled, in a 5-4 decision, that national security needs override these concerns. Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the majority opinion, stating: “Of course, military interests do not always trump other considerations, and we have not held that they do. In this case, however, the proper determination of where the public interest lies does not strike us as a close question” [ABC News].
The lawsuit centered on 14 sonar exercises that the Navy wanted to conduct off the coast of Southern California to train seamen in detecting enemy submarines. In his opinion, Roberts stressed the military threat posed by modern subs. “Modern diesel-electric submarines . . . can operate almost silently, making them extremely difficult to detect and track.” America’s potential adversaries have at least 300 of these subs, he said. “The president — the commander in chief — has determined that the training with active sonar is ‘essential to the national security’” [Los Angeles Times].
(more…)
The Supreme Court heard arguments today on whether environmental laws can be used to prevent the U.S. Navy from conducting sonar exercises off the coast of California, where some researchers believe the sonar could harm whales and other marine mammals. Last March, a federal judge strictly limited the sonar practice, but the Navy appealed the decision to the Supreme Court.
The lower court’s order disrupts the Navy’s war-game exercises, which are “critical to the nation’s security,” said U.S. Solicitor Gen. Gregory Garre. He also disputed claims that the piercing sound of the sonar causes severe harm to the whales. But Los Angeles lawyer Richard B. Kendall described the sonar as like the sound of “a jet engine in this room multiplied by 2,000 times.” He said beaked whales, in panic, dive deeply to escape the sound, and they sometimes suffer bleeding and even death when they try to resurface [Los Angeles Times].
(more…)
Look, up in the sky: It’s a biofuel-powered jet! It’s a hydrogen-powered plane! In fact, you can expect to see both of these alternative energy aircraft in the sky in coming years. The aviation industry is rushing to innovate as fuel prices continue to take their toll and as the public questions the impact air travel has on climate change.
In North Dakota, an engineering team working with DARPA has created a soybean and canola oil biofuel for jets that they say is indistinguishable from conventional jet fuel, with a similar density and freezing point. The research team is currently in the process of producing 25 gallons (95 liters) of the bio–jet fuel for ground testing in a jet engine as early as next month. “The thing that needs to happen is a purchase order to come through from the Air Force so we can get [the] investment to build that first plant,” [engineer Chad] Wocken says. “We could get a plant operational in two to five years if there were a commitment to buy the fuel” [Scientific American].
(more…)
A biotech company is developing an “ultrasonic tourniquet” that could be used to quickly staunch bleeding for soldiers in the battlefield. The company, Siemans Healthcare, announced that it has won a contract with the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), which hopes to have a prototype of the device in hand within 18 months.
The hope is that the device, known as the Deep Bleeder Acoustic Coagulation cuff (or DBAC), will be able to non-invasively clot blood vessels and stop internal bleeding from combat limb injuries – the leading preventable cause of death of soldiers in action. Longer term, Siemens believes the technology will also find applications in civilian care [Medical Physics Web].
(more…)
Military contractors have successfully fired a high-energy laser attached to a modified commercial aircraft, in a ground test that is a step towards testing the airborne laser system in flight. Boeing and Northrop Grumman are working on the system, which is intended to shoot down ballistic missiles.
The laser is in the back half of a Boeing 747-400F jumbo jet. Subsequent tests will increase duration and power before the beam is sent through a fire control system to a turret mounted in the nose of the aircraft [AP]. A long series of ground tests and flight tests will build up to an attempt to intercept and destroy a ballistic missile in flight; that test is scheduled for August 2009. The Defense Department has already spent $4 billion on the airborne laser system, and the final price tag is expected to reach $5 billion.
(more…)
On Sunday, the Iranian state television network showed impressive footage of a slender white rocket blasting off from a launch pad, leaving behind billows of smoke. Iranian officials say that the rocket, named Safir, or “ambassador,” successfully reached orbit, demonstrating the technological known-how to send up satellites. The rocket released equipment that beamed flight data back to ground control, said Reza Taghipoor, the head of Iran’s Space Agency, in a live television interview [AP].
Yet shortly after Iranian officials boasted of their fledgling space program, unnamed sources from the U.S. Defense Department began disputing those claims of a successful launch. “The Iranians did not successfully launch the rocket,” a senior U.S. defense official told CNN Monday. The two-stage rocket could have been capable of launching a satellite into space, but the U.S. intelligence assessment shows that the second stage “was erratic and out of control,” said the official, who declined to be identified because of the sensitivity of the intelligence. The rocket “did not perform as designed,” the official said [CNN].
(more…)
Last week’s suicide by a government biodefense researcher who had been linked to the mailing of anthrax-laced letters in 2001 has raised thorny questions about whether the benefits of biodefense research outweigh the risks. Researcher Bruce Ivins had reportedly been informed by the FBI that he was about to be indicted for murder in the incident that killed five people and sent 17 more to the hospital.
Some observers point out that biodefense research has vastly increased since the terrorist attacks of 2001, and raise the question: Has the unprecedented boom in biodefense research made the country less secure by multiplying the places and people with access to dangerous germs? … Nationwide, an estimated 14,000 people work at about 400 laboratories and have permission to work with so-called select agents, which could be used in a bioterror attack, although not all are authorized to handle the most toxic substances, like anthrax [The New York Times].
(more…)
The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to take on the above question in its next term, when it will wrestle with a complicated lawsuit between the Navy and the Natural Resources Defense Council. For years, the environmental group has been fighting to limit the Navy’s use of sonar in training exercises off the California coast, arguing that the sonar injures and disorients whales and other marine mammals.
Environmentalists successfully sued the Pentagon over the practice in March, forcing major changes in the Navy’s annual offshore training exercises. A federal judge ruled it was “constitutionally suspect” for President Bush to issue a national security exemption so no environmental impact assessment was carried out [CNN]. The Supreme Court won’t try to determine whether the sonar is causing confused whales to beach themselves, but will instead weigh in on whether the executive branch had the right to preempt an environmental law by granting the exemption to the Navy.
(more…)
Finally, the U.S. Department of Defense is working on a bomb that even peaceniks can get behind — a bug bomb!
Motivated by the need to protect soldiers in the field from biting pests, the Defense Department teamed up with the Department of Agriculture to search for a longer-lasting and more effective insect repellent. “That was the principal motivation, the usability for the military,” says USDA investigator Ulrich Bernier. “You don’t want your soldiers reapplying every 15 to 20 minutes” [Science News].
Researchers have already identified several chemical compounds that seem far more effective than the current standard-bearer, DEET. In one test, a cloth soaked with a particularly promising compound repelled mosquitoes for 73 days, while DEET-soaked cloth lasted only 13 days.
(more…)
