No, seriously, cyborg crickets. This is a good thing!

Why? Simple. When a building collapses, say from an earthquake or a terrorist bombing, survivors are often trapped in the rubble. Sometimes they’re rescued, and sometimes, due to the nature of being buried alive under tons and even tonnes of rock (something we do lose sleep over), they aren’t.

Enter the cyborg crickets. What the Pentagon hopes to do is make these six-legged pests into chemical sniffers and eventually even human sniffers when catastrophe strikes.

They’ll do this by implanting electrodes into winged insects to control their wing muscles. The inaugural class of crickets, cicadas and katydids are already being worked on as I type this, so that their usual calls and communication will instead only occur in the presence of certain chemicals.

Additionally, scientists would “install” an acoustic sensor on our new six-legged saviors that’s “designed to respond to the altered calls of other insects.” Ultimately, this final modification would ensure a cascade effect amongst the insects, so that their signals are eventually picked up by ground-based human-controlled transceivers.

So the next time you’re trapped in a collapsed building, don’t crush that little guy who’s chirping madly into your ear. He may very well be trying to save your life. [New Scientist]

Program manager Todd Hylton is aiming for “an approximately 10-gram aircraft that can hover for extended periods, can fly at forward speeds up to 10 meters per second, can withstand 2.5-meter-per-second wind gusts.” Right now, though, the teeny robobird can only fly for about 20 seconds at a time. But with some hard work, some day we will produce a robotic hummingbird that will strike fear into the hearts of our enemies. Wait, is fear the right word? [Wired]

In a recent briefing, the Department of defence laid out its new plans: Smaller and far more precise UAVs with badass names like “Suburb Warrior” and “Sniper” that will hunt in groups, rather than just blowing suspected hideouts to pieces with Hellfire missiles. The Suburb Warrior, for example, is designed to fire volleys of mini-missiles in tight formation, which makes a nice change from previous missiles that often demolished entire city blocks.

Unfortunately, these new UAVs should see production in about five years, by which time who knows what kind of battles we’ll need to fight—or who’ll be leading the Pentagon. But it’s a step in the right direction, that’s for sure. [Esquire]

After unidentified hackers made away with untold amounts of protected data on a highly-classified fighter jet project, the Pentagon decided to step up their cybersecurity. The first step? Creating the badass-sounding Cyber Command.

At the moment, cybersecurity is incredibly important (Obama compared it to nuclear and biological weapons in terms of its danger to national security) and, from the looks of it, incredibly badly managed. To start with, the Department of Homeland Security is officially in charge of cybersecurity, except when they aren’t. For example, the National Security Agency has been exerting more power and controlling more and more of the cybersecurity efforts, and the Department of Defence sometimes either manages it themselves or contracts it out to private companies.

Some of these private companies aren’t so great at it, which is how the last breach happened: A firm in Turkey and one other unnamed ally nation screwed up and allowed the maybe-Chinese-maybe-not hackers to copy terabytes of data on the $US300 billion fighter jet project. That’s not even getting into the myriad other organizations that run their own separate cybersecurity, from the Air Force to the CIA.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates plans to announce the creation of a Cyber Command to orchestrate all of these separate entities and impose some kind of order and standards on the whole bureaucratic mess. The Cyber Command (we will never get tired of typing that) will be under the umbrella of the Department of Homeland Security, and Homeland Security will probably receive a lot of extra funding for the additional unit.

Likely to head the Cyber Command is current NSA director Gen. Keith Alexander, who recently spoke at a cybersecurity conference promoting a sort of team strategy wherein the NSA would handle certain aspects and Homeland Security certain others.

We know military reorganisation isn’t as sexy as HACKERS HACK FIGHTER JET (WITH HACKING!) stories, but this kind of work will hopefully get our cybersecurity up to speed so we don’t have to worry about the safety of our secret awesome fighter jets. [Wall Street Journal, CNET]

The Joint Strike Fighter, also known as the F-35 Lightning II Fighter, is the most costly project in Pentagon history, so it’s a little bit problematic that some spies scampered in and nicked an unknown, but undoubtedly large, quantity of data without getting anywhere near caught. The cyber-spies encrypted the data on its way out, so nobody’s really sure where they came from or where the data went, but some IP addresses have been tracked to China, prompting a little bit of back-and-forth between the DoD and the Chinese government.

A Pentagon report issued last month said that the Chinese military has made “steady progress” in developing online-warfare techniques. China hopes its computer skills can help it compensate for an underdeveloped military, the report said.

The Chinese Embassy said in a statement that China “opposes and forbids all forms of cyber crimes.” It called the Pentagon’s report “a product of the Cold War mentality” and said the allegations of cyber espionage are “intentionally fabricated to fan up China threat sensations.”

Though the most valuable information, including data on the F-35’s flight control and sensors, is inaccessible (stored on non-networked computers), nobody’s really sure exactly what happened, and nobody, from the manufacturers to the researchers to the Pentagon’s press team, wants to talk about it. It’s a pretty alarming read, check it out. Wall Street Journal, image also via WSJ

The Pentagon has been working on the .50 calibre EXACTO for about a year already, and its main focus is to overcome climate conditions to stay accurate over a longer range. Here’s some jargon they’ve used to describe the kind of tech that might do such a thing:

Fin-stabilised projectiles, spin-stabilised projectiles, internal and/or external aero-actuation control methods, projectile guidance technologies, tamper proofing, small stable power supplies, and advanced sighting, optical resolution and clarity technologies.

Basically, we’re talking about bullets that can adjust to weather conditions in mid-air, either through external control or the abilities of the bullet itself.

Currently, snipers are really only accurate up to about 800 metres. Beyond that, it gets much harder to reliably hit a target: At 2,000 metres, snipers can probably hit the side of a barn, but a head shot isn’t too likely. This rifle could change all of that, and more importantly, lead to even more badass pirate takedowns than we’ve seen already. And we’re all about the pirate takedowns. [Time]

We should note that the Pentagon admonition is only the first time the agency has publicly commented on satellite-on-satellite spying. It’s probably been done, and done a lot, for a while now.

The satellites in question for this story, called MiTEx micro-satellites, are the direct result of work done at the DARPA project, whose internet-, gadget- and weapon-creating ways need no introduction here.

And they weren’t checking out foreign satellites, at least not yet. In this case, two MiTEx micro-satellites were evaluating the failed U.S. 2,250kg DSP 23 missile tracking satellite, which had launched successfully in November 2007, but failed soon after reaching a geostationary orbit. Its orbit has slowly degraded since then, endangering other geostationary satellites that share the space.

The controversy arrives when you start thinking about what’s happening up there, right now. If a satellite can manoeuvre to within striking distance of another satellite, and can dance around it without crashing, what’s stopping it from actually striking it some day?

Nothing really, which is why the UN is raising a stink. “I am positive other nations, particularly China, will find this development suspicious,” said Theresa Hitchens, the incoming director of the UN Institute for Disarmament Research in Geneva. “And the US behaviour regarding the program is hypocritical, given that Washington is always chastising Beijing for its lack of transparency regarding its space programs and intentions.”

Regardless, the fact remains that the U.S. has a class of micro-satellite in orbit today that can spy on, track, manoeuvre around and eventually destroy other satellites. Just leave the Sirius XM ones alone, ok? I’m sorry, honestly, but I’m one of the few people who actually enjoys having the pricing plans changed on a whim while channels disappear and reappear at random. [New Scientist]

The LED program was detailed in a section of Title III, a Department of Defence program, and will be completed by a company called Cree. The LEDs will reduce power consumption by 22%, and pay for themselves in four year’s time.

The program is being billed as a way to save money and reduce energy consumption, but because this is the Department of Defence we’re talking about, there was some ass-kicking verbiage in the description. In addition to providing a clean light source, the LEDs will also “promote creation and strengthening of domestic industrial capabilities to support national security needs.”

That’s right. These aren’t just super-efficient light sources, folks. They’re terrorist-fighting, Jack Bauer LEDs, and they’re taking names. [CleanTechnica]

- Beer-filled USB flash drives
– Fetus USB flash drives
– Sawed-off USB flash drives
– Carabiner USB flash drives
– USB flash drives shaped like obsolete equipment
– Food-shaped USB flash drives
– Arty meta-storage USB flash drives [AP]