This looks like the beginning of a George Romero's film, but it's real. It seems like one of the US Army's X-Files technologies is coming to us sooner than most skeptics expected: DARPA is developing now a portable blood farming system that could infinitely produce universal donor red cells from umbilical cord blood, right there in the battlefield. And yes, there's exactly where things go really wrong and soldiers are transformed into mad, blood-seeking, fresh-human-biting but really lovely zombies, ready to spread some kind of weird blood disease all over the world.

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The celebrated roboticists of Carnegie Mellon University are using their DARPA Urban Challenge know-how to give the gift of autonomous operation to a 700-ton mining truck formerly known as the Caterpillar 797B. As you might have suspected, the Japanese construction-gear firm Komatsu was actually first with an automated mining vehicle, but being Japanese, it's more compact, OK puny. Officially no mobile robot will have weighed as much as this bright yellow bastard, according to Discovery. It's way too easy to make a Terminator reference here, so I'm gonna have to play the Maximum Overdrive card. Not scared yet? Read on.

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Boston Dynamic's BigDog is already an impressive and freakishly animal-like beast, but Darpa it seems has bigger plans in mind and is asking for a smarter, bigger BigDog. The upgraded robot needs to carry 180kg of payload, run 32km on any terrain and survive un-refueled for a whole day to please Darpa's request. Plus it must be way quieter so it's more useful in real combat situations and have a smarter brain so it can steer itself autonomously as it trots after its soldier masters.

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Internal bleeding is bad, bad news, especially if you're on the battlefield and far away from a hospital. That's why the military is very interested in any technology that can help stop internal bleeding that can be applied by people other than doctors. And they may have come upon a pretty amazing solution: an ultrasound cuff that uses sound waves to stop internal bleeding. Amazing.

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Real-time videos that detect the most minute movements in enemy battle areas and advanced analytical systems that will efficiently sift through them are all in the works, according to DARPA documents. A $US6.7 million contract with software company Kitware revealed a DARPA project focused on rapidly indexing archived aerial surveillance. It also gave a taste of the technology our military already uses, and it sounds like something out of the Bourne Identity.

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The new 'Gandalf' project launched by DARPA is classified, so there isn't much in the way of details, but it seems that the goal is to use a special set of "handheld devices" to track targets of interest using "radio frequency geolocation." Spy planes and drones are already capable of similar functions, but this new portable system would allow undercover operatives to track targets on the ground without broadcasting their intentions to every terrorist within a hundred miles. I would have thought this sort of operation was going on already, but if we can bust bin Laden when he calls out for sex chats or listens to New Kids on a portable radio it is better late than never. [FBO via Danger Room]

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DARPA is pumping money into developing a submersible aircraft: a vehicle that can fly in the air and dive straight into the water, becoming a submarine. Badass!

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From the "how the hell did we miss this" department comes word that the U.S. military is hard at work creating "thought helmets" for its soldiers. If fully realised, this mind-interfacing piece of gear would allow for what plebeians would call magic, and Arthur C. Clark would call basic telepathy. The "good" news is the Army believes telepathic communication between soldiers in the field is entirely possible, some day. The bad news is that "some day" is decades away for this incredibly ambitious plan—this ain't no video game controller, folks.

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The U.S. Defence Advanced Researh Projects Agency--aka DARPA aka The Guys Who Run Area 51 and Have a Pact with the Aliens to Abduct the Entire Human Race in 2012--has turned its eyes to coal for aeroplane fuel. There's only one problem: coal-to-liquid fuel technologies are too expensive and produce too much pollution. Until now.

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DARPA is investing in developing a new kind of helicopter, one with what they're calling a Disc-Rotor. What makes a Disc-Rotor Helicopter different than a boring old helicopter? Well, when the blades start spinning fast, they're retracted into a disc. This disc continues to rotate, and it acts as a "rotating circular wing." The benefit of such a system would be to provide "mobility and responsiveness for troop and cargo insertion, satisfy an ongoing military interest for higher speed VTOL and hover capable vehicles, be survivable and bridge the gap in helicopter escort and insertion missions." Ho-Kay! I don't get it, but it sure will be neat looking, so I guess I'm on board. [The Register]

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