DARPA: New Terror Threats Demand New Technologies
To deal with the complexities of modern warfare, DARPA seeks to develop integrated and layered systems that can continue to give the military a decisive edge. Examples of technologies that could increase in potency when used in this way include “adaptive electronic warfare,” manned and unmanned systems, tactical cyber capabilities, and advanced intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance. “Modern warfare may be too complex for a single new capability to deliver sustained superiority across a variety of scenarios,” according to the document, titled “Driving Technological Surprise: DARPA’s Mission In A Changing World.” The agency’s investment strategy is to use advanced, commercially available technologies where possible while encouraging new development at universities, government labs and private sector companies, as well as through…
DARPA Developing Guided Bullet With DEAD Reckoning Navigation: Not Only Has Your Name On It, But Address Too
DARPA’s director has announced that GPS is past its prime, and war-boffins have set out to create an alternative, or complementary, technology designed to be small enough to fit inside small-caliber ammunition. GPS is wonderfully ubiquitous, and a great gift from the US military to the rest of the world, but it’s not too accurate – and vulnerable to jamming. This is not even to mention that it only works with line of sight to the sky, all of which has prompted DARPA to come up with a better alternative squeezed into an 8mm cube. That model uses gyroscopes, accelerometers and an atomic clock (development of the latter having been kicked off in 2008) to navigate by dead reckoning. Assuming one knows the starting position, or at least where one wishes to be in relation to that point, then navigation is just a matter of knowing one’s speed and duration of travel – with suitable accuracy of course. Last we heard it was being slipped into…