Self-Guided Bullets

Precision guided ammunition has it roots going all the way back to World War II. The Germans were first to develop steerable munitions, using radio control or wire guidance. The U.S. tested TV-guided,semi-active radar-guided, and infrared-guided weapons. In 1962, the US Army began research into laser guidance systems and laser-guided weapons did not become commonplace until the advent of the microchip. They made their practical debut in Vietnam in 1972. The first large-scale use of smart weapons came in 1991 during Operation Desert Storm. Some of these "smart" weapons over the years have included bombs, missiles and rockets.

We all know about guided Tomahawk missiles and drones but now smart bullets are about ready for action as in the future U.S. military snipers might not have to worry about missing. Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico has nearly completed a self-guided bullet that aims to kill every time.

Each self-guided bullet is around 4 inches in length. At the tip is an optical sensor, that can detect a laser beam being shone on a far-off target. Actuators inside the bullet get intel from the bullet’s sensor, and then “steer tiny fins that guide the bullet to the target.” The bullet can self-correct its navigational path 30 times a second, all while flying more than twice the speed of sound.

Even with an ace marksman, researchers found that a typical unguided bullet  operating in real world conditions that might include crosswinds or changes in air density would miss a target that was a half-mile away. A guided bullet, however, could get within eight inches of that same target. While the current testing has focused on gun-lased targets, lasing could also be accomplished from one or more unmanned aerial vehicles.  Using  pre-flight range-finding information, a bullet's targeting algorithms could correct around a lased obstacle (say a tree), and be strung around to the next lased target. a researcher speaking to the BBC said that improved ground munitions would be extremely useful to troops, allowing them them not just to hit the bad guys better, but to avoid civilians. If you can be sure your bullet will go exactly where you’re aiming it, you can take the shot and not worry about a pocket of turbulent air nudging your bullet into the house next door.

Smart weapons will only keep evolving and the applications they are used for will keep growing as The Sandia engineers now hope to take the patented design and create a second-generation prototype, by collaborating with partners in the private sector. These four-inch bullets would likely be very expensive and require special hardware to fire, so they’ll be a specialty item for some time most likely.

Eyes in the Sky

In the near future you may start seeing drones over your head as all the pieces appear to be lining up for the eventual introduction of routine aerial surveillance in everyday life. Drones small enough to fly around your window or large enough to hover far above the earth, out of site but watching over miles of land will be used in a variety of ways from surveillance to marketing purposes. Police enthusiasm for military weaponry (and a drone industry salivating over a new market) is driving a rapid spread of domestic law enforcement drones, which are already being used by border agents. In February, the FAA was directed to lay out guidelines opening up airspace for commercial and civil drones by 2015, at the latest; the technology is likely to be embraced by property companies, paparazzi, and totally random people who want to spy on others. (There are also many positive uses, like helping track wildfires or oil spills.)

Would you feel observed, regardless of how or whether the information was actually used? Well I have found a list of spy technologies and surveillance programs, military and civilian, that can take to the air on drones within the next few years.

WiFi and phone hacking: The Wireless Aerial Surveillance Platform (WASP) can break into WiFi networks and hack cell phones. Plus, its antennas mimic cell phone towers, allowing the machine, allegedly, to tap into cell phone conversations and access text messages.

NYPD sensor that sees through clothes: The NYPD, which is not known for its cautious approach to the use of surveillance, announced recently that it was perfecting a sensor that uses radiation to reveal weapons hidden under a person's clothes. I could see them attaching these sensor to drones.

Biometrics: Advances in facial recognition, iris scans and other identifying biometric markers are speeding along, with both police departments and federal agencies. Biometrics like facial recognition (and eventually iris scans) are a natural fit for aerial vehicles, as camera zoom and image quality continue to improve. Meanwhile, government databases are collecting more biometric information from more people, making the technology increasingly useful as an identification and tracking tool. The logical outcome: a zoom lens on a drone could zero in and snap a picture that can be scanned and run through a number of databases.

Video analytics:
Private companies, government agencies and academic institutions are working to improve cameras that can hone in on specific objects or people, figure out location, or pick people out of a crowd.

Sense-through-the-wall (STTW) technology: For about a decade various branches of the military have been working to create sensors that can penetrate walls. DARPA's Visibuilding project is working on "surveillance capabilities to detect personnel within buildings, to determine building layouts, and to locate weapons caches and shielded enclosures within buildings.

These are just some of the uses for the drones that will be cluttering our airspace soon. How do you feel about drones being used more in the civilian sector? Safer? Regardless of what we may think or feel about them, the eye in the sky will be watching.

Mind Set Daily with Joe Dunn

My new podcast, Mind Set Daily has begun and this bite sized mini-cast is now airing twice a week on Tuesday and Thursdays on the Mind Set Central network. I'll be splitting the hosting duties with Mind Set Central's Gareth Davies and am looking forward to doing the shows! Mind Set Daily, broadcasting bite sized alternative news and thoughts for a fast paced world. Check it out and subscribe to the show for free today!
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Laser Guided Lightning

Lightning is a fascinating but dangerous atmospheric phenomenon and for years people have experimented with its power in order to harness and control it. Lightning has already been triggered by launching lightning rockets carrying spools of wire into thunderstorms. The wire unwinds as the rocket ascends, providing a path for lightning. Imagine however if you could harness and control lightning with a laser and redirect it to strike the same place over and over! New research reveals that brief bursts of intense laser light can redirect these high-power electrical discharges.

In a series of new experiments, a French research team sent a laser beam skimming past a spherical electrode to an oppositely charged electrode. Using an experimental apparatus reminiscent of a classic Frankenstein movie, French researchers coaxed laboratory-generated lightning into striking the same place, not just twice, but over and over by using pulses of laser light to create a virtual lightning rod out of a column of ionized gas. This is the first time that these laser-induced atmospheric filaments were able to redirect an electrical discharge away from its intended target. Since lightning tends to follow the path of least resistance, it would preferentially strike the nearest object; in nature, that would be the tallest object. Without the laser, the discharge obeyed this rule and always struck the taller, pointed electrode. With the laser, however, the discharge was redirected, following the filaments instead. This occurred even after the initial path of the discharge began to form.

This is a major development for science and now we are that much closer to harnessing and controlling the power of lightning. Imagine the benefits of what targeted lightning could provide. What are some uses you can think of? Perhaps a benefit is to target lighting from storms to a specific location to prevent damage. Maybe all energy from the lightning could be targeted to a generator and used for power or charging stations. Let's take this deeper and suggest that maybe this harnessed lighting would be used by military forces as a potential weapon. Regardless of how it is used in the future, the potential and benefits of using harnessed lightning is unlimited. Are we one step closer to controlling nature? According to this story, it appears that we are...

What Your Video Game Console Knows About You

We all love our entertainment and media devices such as game consoles. Though we surrender lots of our time to games is it really all fun and games? Think about all the information and data your game console already knows about you which is stored away in some massive database. Who cares right as long as we are having fun? After all entering all our personal information into an online gaming network sounds just fine to me as long as I can access all the latest fun and virtual entertainment right? Well here is an example of what a gaming console can learn about you.

There is a wave of concern over the privacy implications of our increasing reliance on Facebook and Google. What most people don’t realize, however, is that these issues are dwarfed by the potential for privacy invasion that’s presented by a gaming platform and lets consider the Kinect.

People choose to post personal information on Facebook and Google. Game platforms like the Kinect, by contrast, continuously observe your nonverbal behavior. Movements and gestures may seem harmless to share with others, but decades of psychological research demonstrate that the way you move is more revealing than what you say.

Though it’s designed for gaming, the Kinect can be modified to track other behaviors as well. Scientists at the University of Southern California have already used devices much simpler than the Kinect to diagnose classroom behavior. A system examining nonverbal behavior in real time could use this data to automatically diagnose kids in school. Other scientists have developed applications for detecting behavior in the home. Let's take this deeper and perhaps this technology could be modified to be used in police cameras to observe and analyze your behavior.

It just illustrates how something as harmless such as an entertainment device can evolve to into so much more...

Supermoon Event

"Supermoon Event"


An extremely rare lunar event on the night of Jan. 4, 1912, may have set in motion history's most infamous iceberg: the one that, three and a half months later, would collide with the Titanic, plunging the ship along with 1,500 passengers and crew into the icy waters of the North Atlantic.


The gravitational forces between the Earth and the Moon cause some interesting effects. The most obvious is the tides. The Moon's gravitational attraction is stronger on the side of the Earth nearest to the Moon and weaker on the opposite side. The effect is much stronger in the ocean water than in the solid crust.


Astronomers David Olson and Russell Doescher say they have discovered that a "supermoon" event coincided with spring tide and on or around the same January night one century ago. Together, these events caused extreme tides that could have dislodged icebergs and flung them into southbound ocean currents. By Apr. 14, one of these bergs could have dipped just southward right in time to intercept the Titanic's maiden voyage.


Though the ultimate cause of the deadly shipwreck was the failure of the Titanic crew to respond to warning messages about the icy conditions that night, "the lunar connection may explain how an unusually large number of icebergs got into the path of the Titanic," Olson said. Do you think the moon's gravity had an effect on the Titanic and it's destiny?

Firefighting Robots

Robots are becoming more human like everyday and they are increasingly taking on jobs and tasks that used to be done by humans. Can you see where this could be leading? A robot filled society perhaps? We already depend heavily on technology in our daily lives and our dependency on it is growing all the time. Are robots the next the step? They certainly make our lives easier by doing mundane tasks that we are to busy to be bothered with, maybe like cleaning a house for example. More complex tasks range from building our cars to fixing space shuttles and satellites out in space. The point here is that they benefit people in many facets of society already and that it is only evolving. Of course the military has their uses for them as well and in fact much of the time new technologies are used and tested in military applications first before making their way into the population. Think of a robotic soldier for instance and one day those same robotic soldiers could be converted to work on your local police force. How does that sound, robots patrolling the streets? Or how about in this case a robotic firefighter.

Well you can add another lifelike robot to the military’s rapidly expanding android army. This one is, of all things, a mechanical firefighter. And not only can it climb ladders like its flesh-and-blood counterparts, it’s designed to interact with human handlers in a kind of human/robot bucket brigade. The U.S. Navy's firefighting robot "Autonomous" or (SAFFIR) for short. The robot utilizes a system called "force control" which allows its A.I. to tell its motor to exert a specific amount of force in a certain direction. This combined with titanium springs designed to simulate a human tendon.

The Autonomous Firefighting Robot, there's more to it than just its legs. They intend to develop algorithms that will help this robot to move and make decisions autonomously, while still being able to understand directions and hand signals. I have to ask, if it can make its own decision why does it need to take directions? Firefighting robots in the Navy? It won't be long now before they are fighting the fires in our cities. Although the robot is still a ways off from being used in real world situations though a significant test will take place late 2013.