NEW SPY GEAR FOR IRAQ

The Pentagon is rush­ing new gear out of its labs and into Iraq, in an attempt to thwart guerilla attacks, the New York Times reports in a maddeningly-​​vague story today.
New Defense Department spend­ing “would include $38.3 mil­lion for teth­ered blimps equipped with dig­i­tal cam­eras to spy on guer­ril­las’ move­ments, more than $30 mil­lion for elec­tronic jam­mers to dis­rupt their remote-​​controlled bombs, and $70 mil­lion to develop and buy what the let­ter called other ‘rapid-​​reaction/​new solu­tion’ tech­nolo­gies.
“Some devices would help detect road­side bombs and booby traps that have been killing American-​​led occu­pa­tion forces, (Darpa chief Anthony) Tether said. These coun­ter­mea­sures use a vari­ety of approaches includ­ing lasers, acoustic sen­sors and elec­tro­mag­netic tech­nolo­gies, he said. He said the devices would be shipped in the next three to four months or sooner, after accel­er­ated, last-​​minute devel­op­ment and test­ing.“
THERE’S MORE: New Scientist has details on the tech­nolo­gies — includ­ing a laser sys­tem to home in on snipers by find­ing “the tiny par­ti­cles caught in the bal­lis­tic shock­wave gen­er­ated by a shot.”

October 23rd, 2003 | War Update | Comments Off Both comments and pings are currently closed.