A Helicopter Drone For The U.S. Army

(Credit: U.S. Army)

US Army Unveils 1.8 Gigapixel Camera Helicopter Drone -- BBC

New helicopter-style drones with 1.8 gigapixel colour cameras are being developed by the US Army.

The army said the technology promised "an unprecedented capability to track and monitor activity on the ground".

A statement added that three of the sensor-equipped drones were due to go into service in Afghanistan in either May or June.

Boeing built the first drones, but other firms can bid to manufacture others.

"These aircraft will deploy for up to one full year as a way to harness lessons learned and funnel them into a program of record," said Lieutenant Colonel Matthew Munster, product manager at the US Army's Unmanned Aerial System Modernization unit.

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More News On The U.S. Army`s Newest Helicopter Drone

US deploys 1.8 gigapixel helicopter surveillance drones to Afghanistan -- The Register
Hummingbird robo-drone gets 1.8-gigapixel camera -- CNet
New spy drone has 1.8 gigapixel camera -- Extreme Tech
US Army's A160 Hummingbird drone-copter to don 1.8 gigapixel camera -- Endgadget
Army to deploy vertical take-off UAS -- www.Army.mil

Making Ships Efficient and Invisible

U.S. Navy Ships at Sea Wikimedia Commons

Anti-Wave Tech Tricks Ocean Water Into Standing Still, Making Ships Efficient and Invisible -- Popular Science

We’ve already seen how future ships can be cloaked against sonar, and maybe someday even space and time. Now researchers say they can cloak the ships’ wakes, tricking water itself into acting as though nothing is there.



A new metamaterial cloaking system can trick water into standing still as an object moves through it, by eliminating the shear force and reducing water displacement, Duke University researchers say. This in turn reduces the amount of energy required to move an object — say, a ship — through the water, theoretically saving fuel.



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My Comment: And this is the research that they are publicizing .... I would love to know what they are not telling us.

U.S. Special Ops Tracking Terrorists Everywhere

Photo: An artists rendition of Montana State University's Explorer-1 [Prime] CubeSat. Montana State University/NASA

U.S. Special Ops Building Satellites To Track Terrorists Everywhere -- Popular Mechanics

The raid on Osama bin Laden's compound this month highlighted special forces' focus on finding high-value targets. Their hunt extends into space, too. An official with U.S. Special Operations Command has confirmed that his organization is testing tiny satellites that could keep tabs on targets from above.

An official with Special Ops revealed Wednesday that the U.S. recently launched mini-satellites that could clandestinely track high-value targets, like al-Qaida terrorists. "We sent up four satellites to demonstrate passing TTL [tagging, tracking, locating] data," Doug Richardson, a civilian official at U.S. Special Operations Command, told an audience on Wednesday, referring to a December launch of a SpaceX rocket carrying the CubeSats—inexpensive satellites so small they can fit in the palm of your hand, and which have been used for scientific missions for a number of years.

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My Comment: One more reason why the Pentagon is upset with all of these leaks.

Japan To Develop Their Own Stealth Fighter

The F-22 Raptor The U.S. has refused to sell Japan its F-22, so the island nation is building its own stealth fighter jet. USAF

Japan Announces Plans To Fly Its Own Domestically Developed Stealth Fighter In 2014 -- Popular Science

The stealth club just keeps on growing. China’s new mysterious jet prototype, thought to be a stealth fighter prototype to rival America’s F-22 Raptor, made its public debut just after the New Year in a series of “leaked” photos and video clips. Now, a Japanese senior military officer says Japan will test its own homegrown stealth fighter in just three years.

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My Comment: This is the Japanese way of telling us .... "screw you" .... we will do this ourselves.

Is A Trip To The Bar The Best Thing For Veterans Mental Health

Photo: First Lt. Travis Gilbert, 34, center, enjoys his first beer since returning from a yearlong deployment in Afghanistan. Anita Powell / S&S

For Veterans, Road to Mental Health May Begin at the Bar -- Live Science

Connecting struggling veterans to the mental health services they need is an ongoing challenge. Now, a new study finds that the process could start with a sympathetic bartender.

The exploratory study found that bartenders at Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) clubs could help identify veterans in trouble and direct them to mental health professionals. Brief and inexpensive training for these bartenders would widen the safety net for veterans in need of care, said study researcher Keith Anderson, a professor of social work at Ohio State University

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My Comment: I do not see many soldiers disagreeing with this course of treatment.

Marines In Afghanistan Are Getting Use To Using Solar Panels

Marines With ExFOB Marines and sailors of India Company, 3rd Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment pose with their Afghan national army counterparts in front of a solar power generator at Patrol Base Sparks, in Sangin District, Afghanistan. Photo by Gunnery Sgt. William Price/USMC

Marines in Afghanistan Find That Solar Panels Save Soldiers' Lives -- Popular Science

A battalion of Marines in Afghanistan is going green, using solar panels to reduce their energy consumption and thereby reduce the things they carry — and even save lives.

The Marines and sailors of 3rd Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment arrived last October at Forward Operating Base Jackson, outside Sangin, Afghanistan, with an array of solar equipment. The battalion’s generators typically use more than 20 gallons of fuel a day, but the Marines have cut that to 2.5 gallons a day, according to Staff Sgt. David Doty, who maintains the gear.

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My Comment: I just hope that they do not get cloudy days for a long period of time.

‘Invisible’ Material Can Now Fool Your Eyes

From The Danger Room/Wired:

Don’t start picking out the pattern of your cloak, yet. But invisibility just became a whole lot more likely.

Tech journalists and military dreamers have talked about real-life invisibility cloaks for a while, and with good reason. With their specialized structures, so-called “metamaterials” can bend light around objects, making ‘em disappear.

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Signal Achievements In Army History (Photos)

In 1860, the man in the center of this photo, Albert Myer, became the first-ever signal officer of the U.S. Army. (He's seen here some months later during the Peninsula campaign of the Civil War.) While the government liked Myer's ideas on signaling well enough to establish the U.S. Army Signal Corps at that time, the early years of the undertaking faced any number of challenges--ungainly technology, bureaucratic infighting, lack of funding and staffing. But the seed was planted in those early days, and the Signal Corps has now been around for 150 years (making this year the sesquicentennial), at the forefront of technologies from the telegraph to radio, radar, and satellite communications. Photo by U.S. Army

CSN Editor: For more photos, go here.

Video: Robots Now Guarding Nevada Nuke Site

From The Danger Room:

Citizens of Nevada, you can now relax. The Nevada National Security Site, home to tens of millions of cubic feet of low-level radioactive waste — and location of over a thousand Cold War nuclear weapons tests — is now being guarded by robots. The first of a planned trio of Mobile Detection Assessment Response Systems, or MDARS, is currently patrolling some of the more remote sections of the 1,360 square mile facility.

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My Comment: The Terminator movies do not seem like science fiction anymore.