At war just like in video games, thanks to an iPad

Recently we have seen how iPhone applications are increasingly being used also in the military, to control micro-helicopters used for reconnaissance or to perform simulations that help soldiers familiarize with anti-missile systems.
Therefore, it is natural that the new addition in the Apple family, the iPad, has generated the same attention from military authorities, who have already started several research projects to develop applications that can make life less dangerous for U.S. troops at the front.

An interesting application was developed by Textron, which can be used can keep under control the movements of troops, displaying them on the iPad screen as if they were part of a videogame. The application, called Soldier Eyes, uses augmented reality to detect, in collaboration with the soldiers directly involved in the area, the location of enemy and friendly forces, sending the relevant information back to a control center, which builds up a map in real time.

This map is then sent directly on the iPad, whose users can communicate in real time with soldiers on the front line, giving them the location of potential enemy threats, displayed directly on their smartphones or PDAs. Soldier Eyes achieves this through simultaneous use of a series of small applications that manage the information coming from the field, to provide an overview of the situation.

Once the picture is clear, one can send out two patrols of soldiers to separately attack an enemy position, simply by send them information directly on their iPad or iPhone, so that they can view the location of their target and converge towards the same point from different directions in order to neutralize it.
In short, this is a way to conduct real operations of real war, but making them look almost like a simple video game.

600 hours in only 4 mm on your microrecorder

The occasions when you may need to record conversations, sounds or music, in a discreet way and as invisibly as possible, are countless: a concert, a lesson at school or in college, a meeting in the office or, for law enforcement and private detectives, during a difficult criminal investigation or for a case of marital infidelity.

In such cases, it is important that the hidden recording is done using a tool that can not arise unnecessary attention, which can be easily concealed and, if necessary, can operate autonomously for a long time, by turning on automatically only when absolutely necessary, to avoid wasting time by recording hours of useless background noise.

Therefore, you should use a EM type voice recorder, which is able to achieve all this,in spite of its extremely tiny size. In fact, there are some models that, although sporting a thickness of only 4 mm and a size comparable to that of a credit card, have features such as voice activation sensor and a storage capacity of 4 GB, that is, approximately 600 hours of recording.

With automatic activation, you can record only when necessary, in order to get the most out of your audio surveillance operation or intelligence gathering; this feature guarantees optimization of battery consumption, which is guaranteed to last up to 1 month when in standby mode, or for up to 14 hours of continuous recording.

Thanks to its compact dimensions, it will not be easily visible, and you can retrieve it with ease when no one is watching you. For more details on the operation of digital voice recorders, we recommend that you visit the Endoacustica website, where you will find other miniature models of recorders for all your different needs in this field.

A plane, a helicopter … or both?

As those who read this blog may happen to know, we often find ourselves commenting on the new creations of the big brains at DARPA, a branch of the Department of Defense in charge of research for the military, which plays an important role to ensure that United States of America have a significant technological and strategic advantage over their potential enemies.

Therefore, any innovation that comes from DARPA does not surprise us too much. A mention of honour, however, it certainly assigned to DiscRotor, a VTOL (Vertical Takeoff and Landing) vehicle which represents a sort of hybrid between an airplane and a helicopter, whose rotor blades are mounted on (as the name goes) some sort of disc. Once the vertical take-off is completes, the blades can disappear within the disc, and DiscRotor can fly like a normal plane, using the disc as an additional wing; upon landing, however, it will be possible to use the rotor blades for vertical landing, especially if the operation is carried out in inaccessible areas where there is not enough space to allow landing of a common plane.

This therefore means that, thanks to DiscRotor, the speed of, for example, an evacuation of troops from a harsh environment, would be significantly increased, due to higher cruise speed of DiscRotor compared to that of a conventional helicopter, when it is in plane configuration.

Currently, the project is still in its initial phase, along with thousands of other high-tech projects that DARPA is constantly working on. I wonder if one day we will be able to see this strange object fly over our heads like a normal plane, then suddenly stop, pull out its rotors and gently land, just like a chopper.