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April 29 2011

19:29

Can the U.S. Military Shower Trackable Dust Onto Terrorists?

If the Air Force gets its way, it will have spying eyes hidden in the very motes on its enemies’ boots. In a wonderfully vague request this week, the Air Force called for companies to design miniature drones capable of dusting targets with signal-emitting particles. They say the technology (assuming it works) could be used to identify civilians or track wildlife, which is military-speak for “we want to track and kill terrorists, not bunnies.”

According to the request, the Air Force wants a small remotely piloted aircraft, or SRPA, that would “unobtrusively distribute taggants onto moving targets.” They describe taggants as tiny electro-magnetic-emitting devices. The key part of the request is for the tracked person to not be aware that he’s being tracked. The request makes the laughable point that a swooping SRPA or tracking-device-laden paint ball probably wouldn’t be obtrusive enough because “the target would obviously notice a swooping SRPA and likely feel the sting of the well-placed pellet.” (Either that, or you’re dealing with one very unaware terrorist.)

To be unobtrusive enough, the Air Force says that the drone should be able to deliver a ...

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March 14 2011

12:59

DARPA Wants to Train Soldiers to Be the Life of the Party—With Video Games

Take a look at the guy standing alone next to the punch bowl at a party and it’s clear: meeting new people can be pretty challenging.

And while parties can be tough for some, it’s even more difficult to integrate and interact after being deposited on the other side of the world in a completely new culture.

Being a suave, talkative ambassador for your countries is difficult under these circumstances, and the nerds at DARPA decided that soldiers could use a lesson in what they call “basic human dynamics skills.” They’ve decided that our soldiers just aren’t smooth enough and could use lessons to turn them into the ultimate conversationalist.

Wired’s Danger Room blog reports on the DARPA announcement:

“After such training,” the agency adds, “soldiers will be able to approach and engage strangers in unfamiliar social environments, orient to unfamiliar patterns of behavior, recover from social mistakes, de-escalate conflict, rigorously practice transition in and out of force situations and engage in the process of discovering and adapting to previously unknown ‘rules ...

Tags: Technology Attacks! What’s Inside Your Brain? DARPA military social skills soldier video games

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November 12 2010

18:05

What Does Your City Smell Like? DARPA Wants to Know

How could the government know about a chemical attack before it wreaks havoc? By smelling it.

But the problem is, to detect an abnormal stench, the government first needs to know the city’s normal aroma, to have an idea of its “chemical profile.” To that effect, DARPA just released a solicitation looking for suggestions on how to best build chemical composition maps of major United States cities. Spencer Ackerman over at Wired’s Danger Room t0ok a look at the solicitation and explained what DARPA is looking for:

The data Darpa wants collected will include “chemical, meteorological and topographical data” from at least 10 “local urban sources,” including “residences, gasoline stations, restaurants and dry cleaning stores that have particular patterns of emissions throughout the day.”

Then, subsequent chemical readings from the area could be compared to the “map” to check for abnormal chemicals in the air. Since many chemicals that can be used in a terrorist attacks are normally found around our cities, it’s difficult to just screen for them without having an idea of their baseline levels, explains Wired:

In theory, chemical attacks can be detected before they happen. Even trace amounts of chemicals give off specific signatures that tools like sorbent tube samplers can register. But in order to figure out if dangerous chemicals are stockpiled somewhere or are floating through the air, the government’s going to have to know the baseline level for those chemicals wafting near your trash receptacle.

DARPA is looking for proposals on how best to collect data while spending less than 30 minutes doing it. They also want to collect information on the two-day fluctuations in chemicals, and take readings at different times of the year, says Wired.

Then they’ll adjust for atmospheric and environmental variables like wind speed, humidity and time of day–when, say, the dry cleaners’ is open to spew perchloroethylene vapor into the air–to account for the impact on chemical potency. They’ll use that data to “predict concentrations down to trace gas concentrations of 10 parts per trillion” across a whole city.

I wonder if they could pick up the maple syrup smell in NYC.

Image: Flickr/Save vs Death