Herald and Weekly Times, THE Pentagon is planning to deploy an experimental laser in Iraq to create a “virtual microphone” capable of detecting and homing in on sniper fire, a senior defence official said today.
Development of that and other exotic technologies is being accelerated by a cutting edge Pentagon research agency to be tried out against discreet but deadly problems facing US forces in Iraq, like roadside bombs and sniping.
“One of the problems we're having is that people in Iraq can almost do anything they want, and get away with it. We don't have a good way to respond,” said Anthony Tether, the director of the Defence Advance Research Projects Agency (DARPA).
“So what we're trying to do is come up with technology that will at least make people hesitate,” he told reporters.
He said the laser, which DARPA plans to send to Iraq in three of four months, is being developed in Torrance, California, by Mission Research Corportation, a defence contractor, to pick up the sound of gunshots much the way radar detects moving objects.
Beams from a ground-based laser form a “virtual microphone” in the atmosphere by sensing the movement of particles as they are compressed by the shockwave caused by a bullet.
“It has various detection elements,” Tether said. “You can determine by time differences where the sound came from and work backwards where it had to be on the ground.”
He said the laser, which will have a range in the tens of kilometres, will probably be set up near Baghdad.
It will first be tested with live gunfire at Camp Pendleton, California.
Originally it was developed to detect ground vehicles hiding behind hills, Tether said.
“But also there is no reason why it can't detect snipers, or gunshots,” he said.
He said DARPA also will be testing in Iraq other techniques using acoustics and electromagnetics to detect sniper fire.
The agency also is working on ways to detect improvised roadside bombs before they explode by sensing electronic transmissions from cellphones or pagers that often are hooked up to the bombs so they can be detonated from a distance.
“It's not very good in the middle of the city, because everybody has a cellphone, but if you get in a convoy going across the desert or something like that and you started sensing electronics over to the right on the road a hundred yards ahead of you, that would be a great tip off,” Tether said.
Other DARPA projects that would be of use in Iraq are radars capable of detecting people moving on foot, tiny unmanned air vehicles or robotic vehicles that could escort convoys.
In March, the agency is holding a “grand challenge” with a $US1 million prize going to the inventor who comes up an “autonomous vehicle” capable of driving itself from Barstow, California to Las Vegas in 10 hours.
Entrants, who will set off their vehicles four minutes apart, have submitted designs ranging from modified Humvees to self-propelled balls, Tether said.
US troops already are using hand-held translating devices supplied by DARPA that translate into Arabic or 15 other languages simple English phrases like “put up your hands” and “drop your weapons”.
A two-way translating device is about a year away from being fielded, Tether said.
“It seemed to us either we had to have every American (soldier) learn 16 different languages or we had to find something,” he said.
“I mean if you're a soldier in a country where you can't talk, having something that says 'put up your hands and drop your weapons' and have it in the language of the country is a little thing, but it's so valuable.”
