• Through the wall, clearly: Radio waves "see" through walls

    A network of radio transmitters can track people moving behind solid walls; the system could help police, firefighters, and others nab intruders, and rescue hostages, fire victims, and elderly people who fall in their homes. It also might help retail marketing and border control

  • Surveillance gear-equipped beetles to be the U.S. military's latest weapon

    A team of scientists has implanted miniature neural and muscle stimulation systems into beetles to enable their flight to be remotely controlled; beetles can be equipped with surveillance gear and fly over enemy positions

  • iRobot shows morphing blob robot

    Massachusetts-based robotics specialist shows a blob robot which moves forward by inflating and deflating, or “jamming”; the jamming techniques allows the robot to transition from a liquid-like to a solid-like state; the goal is to build a robot that can squeeze through tiny openings smaller than its own dimensions, which could be valuable in a variety of military, surveillance, and search-and-rescue missions

  • Backscatter technology: the future of airport security scanning?

    Manchester Airport is testing backscatter scanning technology from Rapiscan; the Rapiscan system works by bouncing X-rays off an individual’s skin to produce an outline image of the person’s body

  • The Internet to be made more useful for the U.S. military

    DARPA awarded Lockheed Martin a $31 million contract to lead a team which will redesign the Internet to make it more suitable for military use

  • New compartment design protects vehicle crew in battle

    By putting the backs of the crew toward the center of the crew compartment, the new design concept moves the crew away from the outside walls to reduce the likelihood of injury from side blasts, provides better visibility for the crew to monitor their surroundings, and allows blast-resistant seats to be frame mounted

  • Uganda to conduct Marburg and Ebola vaccine trials

    Ebola and Marburg are viral infections that have a high mortality, killing 90 percent of victims; no effective treatment exists for these highly infectious diseases, which cause extensive internal bleeding and rapid death

  • Asteroid collision: How to defend Earth, II

    Asteroid impacts are much rarer than hurricanes and earthquakes, but they have the potential to do much greater damage; moreover, what if an asteroid hits Earth in the Middle East or the Asian subcontinent? Such an event could be misinterpreted as a nuclear attack — both produce a bright flash, a blast wave, and raging winds; the result may be a nuclear war

  • TSB funds technology development

    The U.K. Technology Strategy Board will award £39.5 million investment to help U.K. businesses develop technologies that address global challenges

  • MIT researchers develop powerful object recognition system

    The new object recognition system could allow computers in the future automatically to search through hours of video footage for a particular two-minute scene; intelligence analysts should be happy

  • Lockheed Martin show 360-degree IR sensor for better targeting

    The hand-launched Desert Hawk III is designed to operate in extreme temperatures and high altitudes and has provided the British Army with critical intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) capabilities in Iraq and Afghanistan; it will now be equipped with an upgraded 360-degree color electro optic (E/O) sensor, providing 10 times continuous zoom capability and aiding in contact identification

  • Better targeting technology reduces civilian causalities

    New technology allows missiles an accuracy of 2 meter — meaning they never miss a target by more than that amount

  • Developing enzymes to clean up pollution by explosives

    Demolitions used in war, or on testing grounds, contaminate the soil; Canadian researchers develop an enzyme that cleans up such pollution

  • Imagining new threats -- and countering them

    DHS air transport security lab is in the business of imagining new threats — then developing the technologies to counter them; their dream? To build a “tunnel of truth” in each airport lined with hidden sensors, scanners, and rays; passengers would get zapped and sniffed as they passed, and would not need to take off their shoes, toss their liquids, or anything else

  • Using a giant light-gas gun to blast object into space

    Former scientists at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) launch a company dedicated to, well, launching objects into space by using a giant gun; with a barrel 1.1-kilometers long, it uses compressed hydrogen gas to fire projectiles weighing 450-kilogram at six kilometers per second