Here Is The Coolest (And Scariest) Military Tech of 2019

HELIOS concept image. Lockheed Martin

Futurism: The Coolest (and Scariest) Military Tech of 2019

This year birthed some of the most mind-bending military tech we've ever seen.

PUTTING ASIDE our personal feelings on the nature of war and what it is or isn’t good for, the fact is that it’s a terrible reality of life. It’s also, often, where technological development advances at several paces beyond every other sector even remotely like it. These are some of literature’s best (and most dystopian) ideas, fully realized. And 2019 especially boasted some of the most mind-bending military tech the world’s ever seen.

From an invisibility cloak to a sonic gun that vibrates a target’s brain, military researchers really pushed the limits of what we thought was scientifically possible this year, no doubt at least partly thanks to their sometimes astronomically high budgets — looking at you, America.

Without further ado, here is The Coolest (and Scariest) Military Tech of 2019.

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WNU Editor: I would love to know what this tech is .... Retire Top U.S. General: Technology Exists That Could Transport A Human Anywhere On Earth Within An Hour. (December 13, 2019).

The U.S. Army WAnts A Device To See Through Walls

Sgt. Christopher Phelps awaits maneuver commands during an urban operations demonstration as part of Rapid Trident 2019 at Combat Training Center-Yavoriv. (Army)

Army Times: This device could help soldiers see through walls in the urban fight

Since the dawn of urban warfare, one of the most terrifying aspects of the fight has been not knowing what’s on the other side of the wall a soldier is facing.

The Army recently awarded a prize to a company that has developed a “wall-penetrating radar” that is designed to help soldiers and first responders see through those walls to identify people and potential threats.

Lumineye, Inc. has fielded their equipment to first responders from firefighters to police and search and rescue teams.

While it’s mostly been used in civilian applications, the Army and Marine Corps are preparing for urban combat scenarios that could see soldiers and Marines facing cluttered battlefields and maze-like obstacles of buildings to search.

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WNU Editor: Half the battle is knowing where your enemy.

Protecting American Combat Technology

A real-size mock of F-35 fighter jet is displayed at Japan International Aerospace Exhibition in Tokyo, Japan November 28, 2018. REUTERS/Tim Kelly

Austin Bay, Strategy Page: On Point: Protecting American Combat Technology: The Turkish F-35 Saga

The desire to ensure technological reliability and, ultimately, combat superiority, guided the Trump administration's mid-July decision to terminate U.S. plans to sell the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter to Turkey.

Give Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan his due. On the global diplomatic stage, Erdogan can display power-player skills diplomats can admire, no matter what they tell reporters. For example, like President Donald Trump, Erdogan uses the perception of tumult and impulsiveness to gain political and diplomatic advantage. Surprise agitates; the unexpected momentarily boggles. Erdogan says something -- anything -- provocative and sensational, waits four beats (or tweets) as adversaries react and semi-credentialed talking idiots pontificate, and then shifts rhetorical fire and nation state-empowered ire to his real diplomatic target.

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WNU Editor: A good explanation on why the U.S. had to cut Turkey out of the F-35 deal. Read the whole thing.

U.S. Army Is Set To Test Its First Augmented Reality System Sometime In 2019

Popular Mechanics: U.S. Troops to Test Augmented Reality By 2019

The device, called, HUD 3.0, will project critical data onto a soldier’s field of view.

The U.S. Army is set to test its first augmented reality system sometime in 2019. The system, called HUD 3.0, will allow soldiers to quickly figure out where they are, where the rest of their unit is, and where the enemy is. The heads-up display (HUD) is designed to allow soldiers in combat to orient themselves in the fight and rapidly come up with a plan to defeat their enemies.

According to Breaking Defense, the U.S. Army is developing a helmet-mounted system designed to project important data onto a soldier’s field of view. The augmented reality concept is based on the heads-up display used on fighter planes. Introduced in the late 1970s, HUDs project key information such as speed, altitude, heading, radar mode, and available weapons onto a fighter pilot’s field of view, allowing the pilot to keep his or her eyes on the skies.

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WNU editor: What has only been seen in science fiction movies and shows will soon be an integral tool for US soldiers when they are deployed to conflict zones in the next few years. This will definitely make commanders aware on what is happening on the ground and the position of their forces .... while having a better understanding on the who/what/and where the enemy is (at least in theory). For more details on this tech go here .... HUD 3.0: Army To Test Augmented Reality For Infantry In 18 Months (Breaking Defense).

Emerging Technological Threats In 2017

Bulletin Of The Atomic Scientists: Neuro, cyber, slaughter: Emerging technological threats in 2017

Nuclear weapons have threatened humanity for more than 70 years. Anthropogenic climate change, though largely unrecognized until recent decades, had its beginnings in the 19th century. Wouldn’t it be nice if advances in technology stopped throwing new problems at the world? No such luck. Several emerging technological threats could—soon enough—come to rival nuclear weapons and climate change in their potential to upend (or eliminate) civilization.

In 2017, the cyber threat began to seem very serious and real. Experts in artificial intelligence pounded an ominous drumbeat about decision-making weapons and bloodless machines with superbrains. Researchers in biotechnology reported that advances in their field could lead to the deliberate, efficient spread of disease, among a host of mind-boggling dangers. Such thoughts aren’t very cheery this holiday season. But when it comes to treating emerging threats as seriously as their more established cousins, no time beats the present. The Bulletin’s work is to reveal where danger lurks and illuminate paths to safety. In 2017, the articles listed below cast a powerful light.

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WNU Editor: The development of “Slaughterbots” is one of those under-reported stories that the above post fortunately examines.

Is The U.S. Military About To Lose Its Technological Edge To China?

Aircraft CF-02, an F-35 Lightning II Carrier Variant attached to the F-35 Pax River Integrated Test Force (ITF) assigned to Air Test and Evaluation Squadron (VX) 23 completes a flyover of the guided-missile destroyer USS Zumwalt (DDG-1000). US Navy Photo

Defense News: The next Sputnik: Here's why US stands to lose technological edge to China

SIMI VALLEY, Calif. — As defense companies struggle to balance the interests of the military customers with those of shareholders, the Pentagon needs to rethink how it buys or else risk sacrificing its technological edge.

The Pentagon can’t shut its eyes to the fact that a healthy bottom line for defense companies is in the best interest of the military and essential to ensure future capabilities, said Navy Secretary Richard Spencer, speaking on a panel at the Reagan National Defense Forum Saturday.

“I am an unapologetic capitalist and free marketeer,” said Spencer, who worked on Wall Street for 16 years. “One thing we need to be responsible for is the health of the industrial base. It’s a dance that has to be done. You’re out there with a fiduciary responsibility to buy the best gear in the most efficient, best way you can. Now you add in, ‘I have to help an industry in a certain area,’ or ‘I have to make the capital investments myself’ — it flies in the face of full and open competition. But we have to live with that to get gear.”

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WNU Editor: The U.S. is still the world's leader when it comes to military R&D .... U.S. Is Still The World Leader When It Comes To Military R&D (November 15, 2017). But I can see the day when China will be on par with the U.S. .... China is catching up to the US on science and engineering spending, report finds (The Verge).

U.S. Army Invents New Earplugs That Will Enhance Hearing

Popular Mechanics: The U.S. Army Is Rolling Out Superhuman Hearing to Soldiers

Wearable tech also saves troops' hearing from the din of war.​

Now, the U.S. Army's PEO Soldier program has come up with the best of both worlds. TCAPS is $2,000 pair of earbuds designed to limit battlefield noise exposure, cutting off noise that reach a set decibel threshold. The wearer can still hear gunshots and estimate their direction, but the noise is dampened to a non-damaging level thanks to microphones that detect the noise, and internals that use sound canceling technology to modify it for a wearer's ears.

At the same time, the decibel cap allows TCAPS-equipped soldiers to hear the voices of others around him, including through radios and other communications equipment.

Not only is TCAPS a safety device, it's also an acoustic sensor: The same microphones the system uses to constantly detect and screen noise can be turned up to detect sounds even the naked human ear would have trouble finding.

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More News On The U.S. Army Inventing New Earplugs That Will Enhance Hearing

US Army Distributes Smart Earplugs That Dial Down Loud Sounds And Amplify Quiet Noises -- Tech Times
The US Army is deploying smart earplugs that block out loud noises and enhance quiet ones -- Tech Crunch
The US Army’s new earbuds give soldiers tunable hearing, protection from loud noises - Digital Trends
The US Army Has Invented a Simple Way to Get Superhuman Hearing -- Tech.Mic
The US is rolling out superhuman hearing for its soldiers -- ZME Science

Rating The Best New U.S. Combat Gear

The Nighthawk computer system, above. Jennifer Gunn / Army

Soldiers Rate The Best New Combat Gear -- Army Times

Army Times asked soldiers from Alpha Company, 1st Battalion, 29th Infantry Regiment, to evaluate the gear tested during the Army Expeditionary Warrior Experiment in Fort Benning, Ga.

Soldiers rated the gear on a five-star scale, with five stars as the top rating. None of the items got a one-star rating.

Here’s the gear, and what soldiers said about it:

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My Comment: There is a lot of impressive stuff here. Go and look at each of them.

Hat Tip: Bring the heat. Bring the Stupid.

How Advances In Technology Are Keeping Our Soldiers Safe

Lockheed Martin's HULC exoskeleton provides an energy boost for troops and helps prevent injuries during a battle. HULC

Ten Technological Advances Designed To Keep Our Soldiers Safer -- FOX News

When you send young men and women to war, you owe it to them and their loved ones to keep them as safe as humanly possible. Or, in the 21st century, beyond-humanly possible. Here's a look at ten new technologies the military is exploring to keep U.S. troops safer, including robot drones, exoskeletons … and even chemical injections that deliver extra energy to soldiers.

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My Comment: This blog has covered dozens (if not hundreds) of technological advances in the military. But the ten that FOX news has listed in the above post are cool and deserve special recognition.

Super-Small Microphone Detects Motion Of Air Particles To Pinpoint Gunfire In Battle

The Microflown via Dvice

From Popular Science:

Wait, don't call it a microphone -- it's an acoustic vector sensor.

Between the yelling of sergeants, the rumble of jet engines, and the deafening pop of gunfire, a soldier's sense of hearing rapidly deteriorates in the heat of battle. Luckily, the Dutch company Microflown has designed a special microphone that can do a soldier's listening for him. By measuring the mechanical movement of individual air particles, as opposed to sound waves as a whole, the device can not only pinpoint the origin of sniper fire or approaching aircraft, but detail their make and model, as well.

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My Comment: This is one way to pinpoint the snipers .... before they pinpoint you.

Army To Launch Technology Blog

From Military.com:

ABERDEEN PROVING GROUND, Md. - The Army is launching a new blog to help Soldiers and the public discover a little-known side of the Army: the research, development, engineering, testing and evaluation that goes into the technologies that make Soldiers safer and more effective.

The U.S. Army Research, Development and Engineering Command will launch Army Technology Live Nov. 2. It will join the growing family of Army blogs hosted by the Department of Defense's DODLive blog hosting service. The Web address will be http://armytechnology.armylive.dodlive.mil/.

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My Comment: I guess DARPA is not the only game in town.

Gulags, Nukes And A Water Slide: Citizen Spies Lift North Korea's Veil

Click to Enlarge
Pyongyang, the capital of North Korea, as seen from Google Earth with an outline of Beijing’s Second Ring Road in light blue. Image from The Weifang Radish.

From The Wall Street Journal:

With Sleuthing and Satellite Images, Mr. Melvin Fills the Blanks on a Secretive Nation's Map

SEOUL -- In the propaganda blitz that followed North Korea's missile launch last month, the country's state media released photos of leader Kim Jong Il visiting a hydroelectric dam and power station.

Images from the report showed two large pipes descending a hillside. That was enough to allow Curtis Melvin, a doctoral candidate at George Mason University in suburban Virginia, to pinpoint the installation on his online map of North Korea.

Mr. Melvin is at the center of a dozen or so citizen snoops who have spent the past two years filling in the blanks on the map of one of the world's most secretive countries. Seeking clues in photos, news reports and eyewitness accounts, they affix labels to North Korean structures and landscapes captured by Google Earth, an online service that stitches satellite pictures into a virtual globe. The result is an annotated North Korea of rocket-launch sites, prison camps and elite palaces on white-sand beaches.

"It's democratized intelligence," says Mr. Melvin.

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My Comment: The "democratization of intelligence" .... this is one cool article.

Satellite Images Used To Create Better Camouflage

Images gathered from cameras on drones and satellites are used to make a mesh that serves as camouflage for military vehicles. The product, Photo-Veil is from Military Wraps.

From Live Science:

The art of concealing troops and their vehicles has come a long way from the first "camouflage" division formed in France in 1915. The French army called in artists to help prepare colors and designs; the Americans later used the same idea, calling on artists like Grant Wood, the painter of the "American Gothic."

Today, Photo-Veil from Military Wraps is a mesh material that uses images gathered from cameras on drones and satellites to camouflage military vehicles. The lightweight, customizable, foldable, portable and waterproof mesh material is also able to mask thermal and infrared output, making it ideal for blinds and ghillie suits. (At least until your invisibility cloak is ready.)

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Nanotechnology Goes To War

Coloured scanning electron micrograph (SEM) of microcogs forming a microgear mechanism. Photograph: David Parker/Science Photo Library

From The Guardian:

Wouldn't it be handy if everything we needed to build the next generation of portable devices and robots were available on a microchip? You could just plug in a navigation system, a radar sensor, cryogenic cooling system, or even a miniature power unit. For laboratory applications, there would be micro versions of everything from mass spectrometers to magnetic sensors. The Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa), the Pentagon's extreme science wing, aims to provide all this, and more, in handy "matchbook size" electronic packages.

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My Comment: A good review of this emerging field. I expect more articles on this topic to be published in the near future.

Update: Battlechips: Darpa's Next-Gen Micromachines -- The Danger Room

DARPA Developing A Device That Stops Internal Bleeding Using Ultrasounds

(Image from Device Daily)

From Device Daily:

When I hear about an interesting technology project, I’m always thinking that DARPA is involved as there guys always come up with the best of things which is absolutely normal due to the enormous funding coming from tax payers. DARPA’s latest project is called DBAC, or Deep Bleeder Acoustic Coagulation, and it consists of a device which stops internal bleeding almost instantaneously.

Internal bleeding is very dangerous and it’s very important to cure soldiers wounded in battle, but also for people who suffer car or other accidents. Irreversible hemorrhagic shock can be caused by internal bleeding which can kill soldiers, and now DARPA is trying to develop a portable device that will detect and stop the bleeding using ultrasounds.

DARPA has contracted the University of Washington’s Centre for Industrial and Medical Ultrasound and Texas A&M to develop the DBAC cuff which should be semi-automatic and any soldier with minimal training will be able to operate it.

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My Comment: This is going to save a lot of lives. The focus of this tech is on soldiers, but its applications can be used everywhere.

New Tech Results In New Apps For Terrorists

Spy Fears: Twitter Terrorists, Cell Phone Jihadists -- The Danger Room

Could Twitter become terrorists' newest killer app? A draft Army intelligence report, making its way through spy circles, thinks the miniature messaging software could be used as an effective tool for coordinating militant attacks.

For years, American analysts have been concerned that militants would take advantage of commercial hardware and software to help plan and carry out their strikes. Everything from online games to remote-controlled toys to social network sites to garage door openers has been fingered as possible tools for mayhem.

This recent presentation -- put together on the Army's 304th Military Intelligence Battalion and found on the Federation of the American Scientists website -- focuses on some of the newer applications for mobile phones: digital maps, GPS locators, photo swappers, and Twitter mash-ups of it all.

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My Comment: Twitter is a cool app. I enjoy using it, and I can easily see how it can be used by terror groups, militants, and criminal organizations.

How Defense Research Is Making Troops More Effective in Wartime

From the Washington Post:

When Army patrol leaders in Iraq prepare to go out on missions in Baghdad, their last stop at headquarters is a computerized map on which they outline the area where they will operate. Then they watch as icons emerge, showing, in grim detail, the lurking dangers.

By clicking on those, they can bring up not only sites of past hostile action but also photos and background on local leaders -- some to see and others to avoid -- videos of hostile and safe places, and reports from previous patrols, says Brian Slaughter, a retired Army first lieutenant who served as an armored platoon leader in Iraq in 2004. Slaughter took part in developing the computerized Tactical Ground Reporting System (TIGR).

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My Comment: The development of new technologies and implementing them quickly on the battlefield is having an enormous and pronounce effect in favor of those forces that are using them. Like the ancient Roman Army of the past who knew how to use new discoveries in waging war, the U.S. Arm Forces have raised this level of expertise to an unprecedented level.

When the Iraq War started in 2003, the military pundits were predicting mass casualties (American dead was projected to be 15,000) and that the battle for Baghdad was to be like the battle for Stalingrad.

The great battle never happened. Instead, American forces were effective in isolating Iraqi units loyal to the Saddam Hussein, and to then be in a position to surgically wipe them out with minimum coalition losses. In the past, such a battle with this precision could not happen. In todays world, new technology is not only making it possible to isolate and wipe out the enemy quickly, but to also do it from the comfort of a room thousands of miles away.

As the U.S. continues to develop these new technologies, a certain tipping point will be reached in which almost all military organizations will then realize that to fight the U.S. Arm Forces ..... even a guerrilla war ..... will in the end only result in their defeat. Like the Roman Empire in the past, all of Rome's enemies learned very quickly that it was not in their interest to wage war against Rome when it was at its peak as a super power.