This also works almost as well. You won't know if someone is in the next room but it won't matter if they were anyway.
Posted on 01/03/2006 4:23:08 PM PST by SandRat
WASHINGTON, Jan. 3, 2006 – Troops conducting urban operations soon will have the capabilities of superheroes, being able to sense through 12 inches of concrete to determine if someone is inside a building.
The new "Radar Scope" will give warfighters searching a building the ability to tell within seconds if someone is in the next room, Edward Baranoski from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's Special Projects Office, told the American Forces Press Service.
By simply holding the portable, handheld device up to a wall, users will be able to detect movements as small as breathing, he said.
The Radar Scope, developed by DARPA, is expected to be fielded to troops in Iraq as soon as this spring, Baranoski said. The device is likely to be fielded to the squad level, for use by troops going door to door in search of terrorists.
The Radar Scope will give warfighters the capability to sense through a foot of concrete and 50 feet beyond that into a room, Baranoski explained.
It will bring to the fight what larger, commercially available motion detectors couldn't, he said. Weighing just a pound and a half, the Radar Scope will be about the size of a telephone handset and cost just about $1,000, making it light enough for a soldier to carry and inexpensive enough to be fielded widely.
The Radar Scope will be waterproof and rugged, and will run on AA batteries, he said.
"It may not change how four-man stacks go into a room (during clearing operations)," Baranoski said. "But as they go into a building, it can help them prioritize what rooms they go into. It will give them an extra degree of knowledge so they know if someone is inside."
Even as the organization hurries to get the devices to combat forces, DARPA already is laying groundwork for bigger plans that build on this technology.
Proposals are expected this week for the new "Visi Building" technology that's more than a motion detector. It will actually "see" through multiple walls, penetrating entire buildings to show floor plans, locations of occupants and placement of materials such as weapons caches, Baranoski said.
"It will give (troops) a lot of opportunity to stake out buildings and really see inside," he said. "It will go a long way in extending their surveillance capabilities."
The device is expected to take several years to develop. Ultimately, servicemembers will be able to use it simply by driving or flying by the structure under surveillance, Baranoski said.
This is old news...my wife knows what I'm doing no matter how thick my walls are, and no matter what they are made out of...if I knew it was important to Darpa, I would have hooked her up...
Just curious but if a group of old men (who are most likely on the take of special interests groups) approved a resolution granting warrantless searches, you'd welcome it? How about if the parties involved were not charged with a crime but instead were deported?
Well, there's been a (at least)60 year movement to bypass probable cause and warrants in general. They invented "no expectation of privacy" and other madness that's certainly not footnoted after the Bill of Rights in invisible ink. You cannot sidestep the Constitution with regular law. It takes an Amendment or a formal suspension of civil liberties, like martial law. If they want to have searches without warrants, then they need to have to jump through the hoops to make and Amendment. It's difficult to do and was intended to be difficult. I don't want a new Amendment. But if they want warrantless searches, that's what it's going to take. People here don't want dems to have powers like that. I agree, and I don't want Republicans to have those powers, either.
No, I would fight it tooth and nail. But at least it would be honest. Changing the Constitution is preferable to sidestepping it and thereby weakening all of the Bill of Rights.
Keep the Clintoons away from it or the Red Chinese will be fielding one of their own before very long.
An EE you arent'. Any wave penetrating 12" of concrete isn't simply going to refelect off of tinfoil. Running on you assumption though. You alternate between using the radar and the microwaves. Terrorists in the foil enclosed houses would be "Fun to pop".
The 'rats aren't the only people who have "a problem" with this. This is just fine for military use, but you know that the cops are going to want to use it too.
They bloody well better need a warrant, and even more bloody well better prosecuted for violation of civil rights under colour of the law if they use it without one.
I'm getting creeped out nearly every month with what I'm reading in Wired magazine.
Technology against the enemy is great as long as you aren't considered the enemy. The world and what is considered "privacy" is going to look a lot different in less than ten years.
But who gets it first, our troops overseas, or the local cops looking to see what you may own?
This will be the death of the Fourth Amendment and any pretense of personal privacy.
No SARC tag, I mean it.
"I believe I've read about you before" - About me? I'm neither rich nor famous [not even notorious] enough to be written about. Must be some namesake.
"Must be some namesake."
It was an attempted joke about you being a tinfoiler.
"Terrorists in the foil enclosed houses would be "Fun to pop"
Jiffy-Pop Jihad.
A small handheld device, such as the one described, would not be powerful enough to pop anything. And one does not even need to reflect the wave - just attenuating it and dissipating a lot of its energy ought to be enough. Besides, one might use thicker foil, or even sheet metal.
Leave your head-gear out of this ;-)
Cheers!
Hey, Bill already wants his own private version for personal use to .... well you know.
And some police force will start using these things soon as well. I wonder what the shielding is for something like this?
This technology has been around about 5 years. Google micropulse radar.
Dang,... and BJC thought they'd finally perfected those XRay glasses in the back of the Comic Books.
The bit about "fun to pop" was a joke. Your not getting it might indicate that you really are an EE. In which case, you would know that attenuating the radar wave has much more to do with matching a harmonic of the wave's length with a section of metal, acting as a dipole. This is how a handful of fiber/foil can have the radar cross section of a 747. It is also why a truck load of the stuff cut at the wrong length will have very little RCS. Covering your house with tinfoil might or might not have that effect. There's just one way to know. I recommend that you buy the Reynold's Wrap in the 200' rolls.
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