Futurist Foresight
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Posts tagged "warfare"
Could this be the super soldier of the future?
A new look at older military tech given a modern use.
Image Credit Wikimedia Commons
“In the wake of budget cuts, the US Navy is turning to older technology in the war on drugs. As the Associated Press reports, last week the Navy began testing two new tools to monitor and capture drug smugglers in the Caribbean: the blimp-like aerostat, which has previously been used for surveillance in Iraq and Afghanistan as well to monitor the US-Mexico border, and a drone that’s launched from the deck of a ship by hand. While both are relatively older technology, they’ve been outfitted with radar, cameras, and sensors that reportedly expand a ship’s radar range from five miles to around 50 miles.” - The Verge
Warfare: A lowtech answer to a global problem.
An Afghan designer has come up with a novel tumbleweed-esque device to find and detonate mines, a device that has evolved from the wind-powered toys he made as a child. Massoud Hassani’s Mine Kafon is made mainly from bamboo and biodegradable plastics, but the simple addition of a GPS chip means the wind-swept spheres can be monitored to reveal the location of mines… Continue Reading Mine Kafon: the low-tech tumbleweed minesweeper
![War: A graphic representation of the history of conflict.
sunfoundation:
Conflict History: All Human Conflicts on a Single Map
Conflict History [conflicthistory.com], developed by TecToys, summarizes all major human conflicts onto a single world map - from the historical wars way before the birth of Christ, until the drone attacks in Pakistan that are still happening today. The whole interactive map is build upon data retrieved from Google and Freebase open data services.](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_mbrfy4EfkL1qhn3smo1_500.jpg)
War: A graphic representation of the history of conflict.
Conflict History [conflicthistory.com], developed by TecToys, summarizes all major human conflicts onto a single world map - from the historical wars way before the birth of Christ, until the drone attacks in Pakistan that are still happening today. The whole interactive map is build upon data retrieved from Google and Freebase open data services.
The future of warfare
Future of Warfare, 2030: Massive High-Altitude Airships Rain Armed Drones on Remote Targets
A joint venture of European aerospace firms BAE Systems, EADS and Finmeccanica, MBDA asked its weapons engineers to project ahead to 2030 and take a stab at guessing how UAVs might then be deployed.
What they came up with is a class of UAV that provides expendable backup for the descendants of today’s Predator and Reaper drones.
The vision is of vast airships that constantly loiter at high altitude over target areas, carrying pods of small UAVs in much the same way as today’s fighter jets carry missiles under their wings.
These launcher racks could contain at least two types of armed UAV - a small scout and a long-range version. Both sprout spring-loaded wings when air-dropped and are powered by electric ducted-fan engines.
A controller on the ground - dressed in the robotic garb that will clearly be de rigeur in the 2030’s military - then punches a few buttons on a wrist mounted screen to choose a UAV and its target GPS waypoints…
(via One Per Cent: Loitering airships could dispense drones on demand)
(via emergentfutures)
DARPAs vision of the future of warfare - Warrior Web
DARPA program seeking to build the Crysis Nanosuit?
OK maybe not quite a CryNet Nanosuit, but DARPA’s new ‘Warrior Web’ program is seeking technology to build a lightweight undersuit capable of reducing injuries and ‘augmenting positive work done by the muscles’, while using less than 100 Watts of power.
The ultimate program goal is a lightweight, conformal under-suit that is transparent to the user (like a diver’s wetsuit). The suit seeks to employ a system (or web) of closed-loop controlled actuation, transmission, and functional structures that protect injury prone areas, focusing on the soft tissues that connect and interface with the skeletal system.
In addition to direct injury mitigation, Warrior Web will have the capacity to augment positive work done by the muscles, to reduce the physical burden, by leveraging the web structure to impart joint torque at the ankle, knee, and hip joints.
A Warrior Web suit system is not intended to interfere with current warfighter “soldier systems,” such as external body armor, rather it aims to augment them to improve warfighter effectiveness.
(via 8bitfuture)
![futurescope:
Combat Exoskeleton Marches Toward Afghanistan Deployment
Lockheed appears to be on track for deploying combat versions of the HULC exoskeleton into Afghanistan in early 2013 or even late in 2012.
The HULC can assist speed marching at up to 7 mph reduces this somewhat; a battery-draining “burst” at 10mph is the maximum speedA soldier with a pack would normally go at 3 mph maximum and cover 10-12 miles in a day. Exoskeleton Soldiers could also carry lightweight foldable electric scooters on their exoskeleton that would enable 60-100 mph on roads. If the bike had motocross like capabilities it could still go about 30-60 mph on rougher terrain.
[read more @wired @nextbigfuture]](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m4ir9qjUoB1r08k60o1_500.jpg)
Combat Exoskeleton Marches Toward Afghanistan Deployment
Lockheed appears to be on track for deploying combat versions of the HULC exoskeleton into Afghanistan in early 2013 or even late in 2012.
The HULC can assist speed marching at up to 7 mph reduces this somewhat; a battery-draining “burst” at 10mph is the maximum speed
A soldier with a pack would normally go at 3 mph maximum and cover 10-12 miles in a day. Exoskeleton Soldiers could also carry lightweight foldable electric scooters on their exoskeleton that would enable 60-100 mph on roads. If the bike had motocross like capabilities it could still go about 30-60 mph on rougher terrain.[read more @wired @nextbigfuture]
(via futurescope)
In our Future Tech page we have combined, from various sources, broad and specific areas of technological advancement to monitor, warfare is one of those categories.
Today, we examine cyberwarfare, as the new arena for conflict. From independent groups like Anonymous to government sponsored hacks against other governments.
“Cyberwarfare refers to politically motivated hacking to conduct sabotage and espionage. It is a form of information warfare sometimes seen as analogous to conventional warfare[1] although this analogy is controversial for both its accuracy and its political motivation.
Government security expert Richard A. Clarke, in his book Cyber War (May 2010), defines “cyberwarfare” as “actions by a nation-state to penetrate another nation’s computers or networks for the purposes of causing damage or disruption.”” - Wikipedia
The clip below looks at the stuxnet worm cyber attack that affected Iran´s nuclear program:
The infographic below examines the history of cyberwarfare (by Lewis University):
Ever since the first man grabbed a stone and killed another with it, warfare has been a driver in advancing technology. From explosives to radar to spaceflight, these have all had their roots in war - as do countless other technological advances, though often the connection is unseen.
In our Future Tech page we have combined, from various sources, broad and specific areas of technological advancement to monitor, warfare is one of those categories. Its subcategories are:
- Cyberwarfare
- Metamaterial Cloaking
- UAVs (Unmanned Arial Vehicle)
- Exoskeletons
- Robotics - Though this is a separate broad category by itself.
- Space - particularly with regards to spacecraft like the X37-B of Boeing.
The clip of P.W Singer (a Senior Fellow and Director of the 21st Century Defense Initiative at the Brookings Institution) looks at the future of warfare, particularly with regards to the use of robotics.
The infographic below, of the United States Future Force Warrior program is an example of government funding towards the future soldier today:
Infographic by Column Five Media
There has been an increase in the use of UAVs (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle) not just in warfare (Though the have seen much operational action in Iraq and Afghanistan), but also in law enforcement, journalism, the notorious and much discussed tacocopter and even here in Groningen an art gallery offering aerial shots of the area using an octocopter.
UAVs are also known as drones and are controlled remotely. Though these robotic drones are in vogue now, the first attempt at creating drones occurred in 1916. And saw true operational use after being developed by the Israeli Defense Force after the 1973 Yom Kippur war. Subsequently the US military started buying them from Israel in the 1990s.
Though mostly used for military purposes, these drones have numerous uses for photography, surveillance, research, exploration as well as search and rescue.
“In 2007 a team of 8 students from the University of Adelaide School of Mechanical Engineering designed and manufactured a UAV named iSOAR. The iSOAR aircraft was specifically designed for civilian applications such as bushfire monitoring, shark spotting, and traffic surveillance.” - As seen in this clip:
This clip gives more background on AUVs and UCAVs and their military uses:
One of the most used and most familiar UAVs in use currently is the Predator drone:
Innovation news daily´s superb infographic on UAVs:
