• Watchkeeper surveillance drone "can see footprints through cloud"

    Thales UK’s Watchkeeper surveillance UAV is fitted with radar so sensitive, according to its makers, that it can detect not only individual people moving about on the ground — but even the footprints they leave in the dirt; Watchkeeper is a modified version of the Israeli Hermes 450 with added French and British bits and pieces

  • Raytheon-Navy team zaps UAV targets out of the sky with laser

    Four UAVs were engaged and destroyed using the Navy’s Laser Weapon System (LaWS), guided by Raytheon’s Phalanx Close-In Weapon System sensor technologies; in separate news, Boeing recently took delivery of the beam-director assembly for the U.S. Army-s High Energy Laser Technology Demonstrator (HEL TD) program, moving the system a step closer to its 2011 testing schedule

  • Safran in Talks to acquire most of L-1 Identity Solutions Inc.

    Paris-based Safran SA is exploring the acquisition of Connecticut-based L-1 Identity Solution; L-1 is likely to be split up, with another buyer acquiring a separate unit that sells consulting services to U.S. intelligence agencies; L-1 had a stock market value of about $670 million as of last Thursday; L-1’s CEO, Robert LaPenta, formed the company after serving as president and chief financial officer of L-3 Communications Holdings Inc. from 1997 to 2005; LaPenta helped start L-3 with co-founder Frank Lanza after both men left Lockheed Martin Corp

  • Facial-recognition solution offers surveillance new edge

    When the new facial-recognition solution finds a match in a database for someone who may be on a watch list, the client may be notified in multiple ways, including text message or e-mail alerts; biographical information such as criminal records are added and the images and made available to the client from any Web browser, including Web-ready mobile phones

  • DHS IG: flawed assumptions about technology, poor contractor oversight plague SBInet

    DHS’s inspector general says the trouble-plagued SBInet program rested on faulty assumptions about technology — assumptions which led both to technology failures and inadequate monitoring by DHS; the SBI program officials stated that the initial assumption that commercial off-the-shelf technology would be available to cover SBInet needs, serving as a basis for determining staffing requirements, ultimately proved to be wrong”; also, officials failed to ensure that one milestone was properly completed before progressing to the next phase, increasing the risk of significant rework and associated project delays; the future of SBInet is unclear, as earlier this year DHS secretary Janet Napolitano froze spending and ordered an assessment of the program to determine if it should continue

  • "Bulletproof custard" liquid armor better than a Kevlar vest

    Materials scientists combined a shear-thickening liquid with traditional Kevlar to make a bulletproof material that absorbs the force of a bullet strike by becoming thicker and stickier; its molecules lock together more tightly when it is struck, the scientists explained — they described it as “bulletproof custard”

  • Scientists: Oil spill's "grim reshuffle" of Gulf food web may destroy region's fishing industry

    The initial impact of the BP disaster on the maritime food chain in the Gulf are already apparent; scientists warn that if such impacts continue, they will result in a grim reshuffling of sea life that could over time cascade through the ecosystem and imperil the region’s multibillion-dollar fishing industry

  • Coalition of Tucson businesses launches campaign against Arizona harsh immigration law

    A coalition of 90 Tucson, Arizona businesses launches a “We Mean Business” campaign to show their resistance to SB 1070 — the harsh immigration law set to take effect 29 July; many of the owners agree there is a need for immigration reform; however they do not think the new law is the most effective approach

  • To qualify for lucrative defense research work, Florida research park undergoes anti-terrorism makeover

    Florida’s largest research park, located in east Orange County, has quietly and subtly transformed some of its most prominent facilities into anti-terrorism fortresses for the high-tech military agencies located there; the research center has now become a defense-industry “nerve center” that looks and operates more like a military base than ever before

  • Software to cut millions from nuclear clean-up bill

    New software lets planners work out the best way of breaking up and packing contaminated equipment while minimizing workers’ radiation exposure. It also shows in minute detail how radioactive waste can be stored in the smallest possible space, reducing the number of long-term storage containers needed

  • U.S. replaces noisy immigration raids at place of employment with "silent audits"

    The Obama administration has replaced noisy, media-covered immigration raids at factories and farms with a quieter enforcement strategy: sending federal agents to scour companies’ records for illegal immigrant workers; one expert says: “Instead of hundreds of agents going after one company, now one agent can go after hundreds of companies”; employers say the Obama administration is leaving them short of labor for some low-wage work, conducting silent raids but offering no new legal immigrant laborers in occupations, like farm work; federal labor officials estimate that more than 60 percent of farm workers in the United States are illegal immigrants

  • U.S. economy influences immigration more than security measures

    A Forbes’ columnist says that immigrants — legal and illegal — are an economic bellwether, and that recent rends in immigration show that both the low-skilled and high-skilled immigrants have doubts about the U.S. economy right now; a DHS study shows that overall population of unauthorized aliens in the United States dropped from 11.8 million in 2007 to 10.8 million in 2009, in parallel with the economic slow-down; the risk to U.S. national security and economic welfare are these: low-skilled immigrants will likely return when the U.S. economy picks up again, but to bring back high-skilled immigrants, America’s economy will have to do more than make a comeback — it will have to make a strong comeback

  • Leaking well may be sealed ahead of schedule

    The Deepwater Horizon may be sealed a month or so ahead of schedule — during the second half of July rather than the second half of August — owing to three positive developments: one of two relief wells being drilled will be in a position to engage in “bottom kill” in several days; the containment ship Helix Producer, capable of capturing an additional 53,000 barrels of oil a day, is on station; BP is pressing ahead with plans to swap the current leaky containment cap with a new, no-leak, bolt-down cap

  • New counter-IED approach: flying car

    California based company offers a solution to the vexing IED problem: a car flying car; if soldiers find themselves in a tactical situation requiring a quick escape, they can flip a switch and the car just shoots up in the air; in April DARPA invited engineers to dream up a flying car — for the initial design of which it allocated $54 million — to give the military an “unprecedented capability to avoid traditional and asymmetrical threats while avoiding road obstructions” through vertical takeoff and landing

  • U.K. approves well-capping and containment study; new prevention, mitigation solutions sought

    In response to BP’s Gulf disaster, the U.K. offshore oil and gas advisory group charged its technical review group to proceed with developing new solutions for preventing or mitigating similar catastrophes in the future; over the past twenty years nearly 7,000 wells have been successfully drilled in the U.K. continental shelf