It’s Memorial Day, so CNET got into the act by putting together a rundown of some of the Army’s Future Combat System, which “envisions a family of high-tech gear including sensors, aerial drones, and manned and unmanned ground vehicles, all fully networked and linked to individual soldiers” that will ultimately help save lives.
galleryPost('armyfcs', 8, 'U.S. Army FCS');– Matt Buchanan
This is a B-2 plane dropping a bomb equipped with the Joint Direct Attack Munition guidance kit. The kit adds inertial navigation and global positioning systems to the tail of traditional warheads. Unlike the more expensive traditional TV or laser guidance systems, which only work well in good weather, these bombs use the same GPS that you have in your car to hit targets like Osama Bin Laden, Ronald McDonald and Paris Hilton under any meteorological conditions. If you know where they are hiding, that is. And if they are not moving.
There’s also a version that uses laser (called LJDAM) to further increment precision, 600 of which have just been ordered by the US military citing “compelling and urgent operational needs.” No kidding. The LJDAM comes at two price points: $48,000 apiece for people who want to mount them on planes, and free for people receiving them on the ground, delivery included. – Jesus Diaz
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JDAM: A GPS-INS Add-on Adds Accuracy to Airstrikes [Defense Industry Daily]
I encountered this Star Wars reject at the RoboBusiness 2007 conference in Boston this week. Not only can this crane-happy robot diffuse bombs, hold a fire hose, and give injections, it will also drag your ass six ways from Sunday across the craggy desert—usually to safety, though in my case it was at high velocity towards a pretty sturdy wall. The war bot ranges in price from $80,000 to $300,000. The MSRP of a new set of cheeks is currently unknown. – Jack Ventura
Don’t forget to check out our RoboBusiness 2007 clips of the Bionic Baby Seal and the Hello Kitty Angel of Death ‘bot.
Event Site [RoboBusiness 2007]
Blu-Ray will dominate the industry in three years. Or maybe it will be HD DVD. The general consensus is that whoever wins doesn’t really get a lasting victory, since they’re both in the last physical video format ever. That sentiment has largely been the consensus of the press and leaders in the tech industry.
The end of physical formats for movie and TV shows could be called digital convergence, a happy, wonderfully singular, unified digital world. Content moves seamlessly from your multifunction portable device to your TV, between your computers, and to every monitor and audio system and random networked appliance in between. To have that happen in a stream of bits floating effortlessly on radio waves, without physical discs or specially designated boxes, would be truly wonderful.
But an end to physical video formats doesn’t mean an end to format wars. In fact, once film and television content are no longer bound by physical media, we’re in for the mother of all format wars.
Laser tag is sweet. R/C helicopters are sweet. When you combine the two only good things can happen. That’s why I’m pretty amped about the news that a Chinese toy maker has armed its new R/C chopper with an IR transmitter and sensor, allowing for two to have laser dogfights in midair. If one gets hit, its power gets cut, sending it crashing to the ground. Cold blooded!
These things don’t have U.S. distribution yet, which is a crime. Let’s make it happen, toy industry! Me wantee! –Adam Frucci
Product Page [via I4U]
This is the British Royal Navy’s newest class of submarine, the Astute. And this is what the nuclear-powered behemoth can do: generate its own air and water; sit in the English Channel and fire cruise missiles at North Africa; but perhaps the most extraordinary feature of the British-built sub is that it will never need to be refuelled throughout its 25-year lifespan, meaning it can sail round the world 40 times without surfacing – if your seamen don’t need feeding, that is.
The Brits have put in an initial order for three of the subs – a snip at $2.33 billion each – and each one is expected to enter into service in 2009, 2010 and 2011. The contractor, BAE Systems, in Barrow, says it learned a lot from US sub builder Electric Boat – namely to build sections of the sub vertically (hence the 12-storey construction towers at the plant) which saved on manpower. Check the big beast in the gallery below, and the specs after the jump.
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Always wanted to own your own Battlebot but don’t have the engineering skills or the wife’s permission to build one? Well, now you can buy a pre-mad Battlebot “Road Rage”, who fought in two actual seasons of the show and won three matches.
Best of all—as if owning a Battlebot wasn’t cool enough—it’s only going to cost you $300 or best offer! And if you know CL, that means people are lowballing him left and right with emails like “I’ve only got $235, can I pick it up tomorrow?” – Jason Chen
Craigslist [Thanks Joe!]
The U.S. Army is about to roll out these six-wheeled vehicles that may be the granddaddies of all of our robot overlords of the future. All the army’s bots up until now have been larger-scale versions of radio-controlled model cars, but the army’s injecting these bots’ souls with autonomy, giving them GPS points and then setting them free to move between them, and even teaching them to eventually lay waste to all in their path.
The Multifunction Utility Logistics and Equipment (MULE) vehicle pictured at left will be packing iron, too, loaded with two 7.62mm machine guns and a couple of serious anti-tank missiles. Not content with that, the army has put together an even bigger bot (pictured at right), a six-ton version that can open up an even huger can of whoop ass. Hey, soldier boy geeks: just make sure you teach these hefty hunks of steaming junk the three laws of robotics. – Charlie White
Army Tests Fighting ‘Bot [Danger Room]
If anyone takes their R&D seriously, it’s the US Army, who produces sweet combat tech on a consistent basis, from grenade bots to paralyzing searchlights. The Plasma Acoustic Shield System continues that fine tradition. I mean, come on, it has the word “plasma” in it, so it has to be awesome.
The tech behind it, “dynamic pulse detonation,” uses an “intense” laser pulse to generate a ball of plasma, which is followed up by a second laser pulse that produces a supersonic shockwave to along with it—bright lights and big sounds to shock and awe, in other words.
Alright, so if you’re not that impressed, just wait—the same builder, Stellar Photonics, is hawking a laser rifle to the army that would be able to frag foes from over a mile away. Lethal. Laser. Sniper. Rifle. Yeah. – Matt Buchanan
Plasma shield may stun and disorientate enemies [New Scientist Tech via Slashdot]
You may or may not have read reports last week about a Swedish fighter jet crashing in the Arctic Circle. So far, so what, you’re probably saying—after all, there were no fatalities. And so began the questions. What caused the accident&madash;was it pilot error? The wrong kind of snow? Maybe a flock of seagulls flew into the engines. Well, with those haircuts, it was a miracle the pilot survived…
A week on, we have our answer. Swedish Airforce investigators have concluded that the incident was all down to a problem with the pilot’s hi-tech pants. Find out what led to the pilot saying “Sayonara cockpit” and “Hello parachute canopy” after the jump.
