Former US Navy lieutenant Christopher Dorner was fired from the LAPD in 2008 for lying about a fellow officer accused of misconduct and he is now seeking revenge by “killing officers and their families,” according to his Facebook page. He has already shot and killed the daughter of a former LAPD captain, as well as her fiance. He was also involved in a shootout with police shortly thereafter, wounding one of the officers at the site.

Dorner is now thought to be hiding out in the San Bernardino mountains near Los Angeles as the plans to “utilize every bit of small arms training, demolition, ordinance and survival training” he’s been given as he prepares to “bring warfare” to the LAPD. As a result, a task force of 125 officers are continuing their search for Dorner in the mountains, but they realize that searching on the ground is “like looking for a needle in a haystack.”

The drone or drones being used don’t appear to be carrying any lethal weaponry. Instead, they have thermal imaging cameras that the task force hopes will be able to locate Dorner in the snow-capped mountains. Dorner is now the first human target for a remote-controlled UAV on US soil, at least officially. Does this create for a slippery slope for future, potentially dangerous situations? Dorner says that he is prepared to use a shoulder-mounted surface-to-air missile to “knock out” any helicopters to pursue him, so in the interest of protecting the officers in this chase, perhaps the drone is the safest option?

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You were a backpack that houses a glorified vacuum cleaner and this is then attached to a couple of suction pads for your hands. These pads “stick” to the wall or whatever vertical surface you want to climb and that’s about it. The demonstration also makes use of some specialized footwear to let you feet get a decent hold on the wall too.

Each of the suction pads looks to be quite large–about the size of a legal file folder–but that’s probably not where you’ll find the biggest hurdle. The vacuum, unsurprisingly, is quite loud, so don’t expect to go on any stealthy superhero missions with Peter Parker. I’m pretty sure the bad guys will hear you coming.

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The robot has wheels that are larger than its chassis and it has a gyroscopic stabilization system that keeps it steady while in the air. This helps it recover from the inevitable impact after jumping and tumbling onto the new surface. The jump itself is achieved by way of a carbon dioxide-powered piston and the jump is accurate enough to get the Sand Flea through a second story window.

The application here is primarily for the military, especially since the Sand Flea is capable of sending video back to its operator up to 650 yards away. This is fantastic for getting over walls and into buildings, offering the military much safer recon work. I imagine the military would replace the white wheels for black ones for better camouflage, but this 11-pound design looks seriously solid and versatile.

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NASA is mostly interested in exploring things beyond this planet, but many of its innovations have found their way into our everyday lives. The latest development is a special chip that houses 32 nanosensor bars, reacting to a myriad of stimuli from the environment. It could diagnose cancer and measure blood sugar levels in diabetics with nothing more than a breath.

The implementation being demonstrated by Jing Li of NASA Ames has it as a cell phone case, looking very much like it would latch onto an iPhone. It could just as easily be adapted for other devices, of course. In a nutshell, there are 32 nanosensor bars on a chip about the size of a postage stamp. Each of these bars is composed of different nanostructure material, reacting to different chemicals in different ways and providing real-time monitoring.

Going back to the previous examples, there is a correlation between lung cancer and nitrous oxide. If the nanosensor bars detect elevated levels of nitrous oxide in a person’s breath, they could detect the cancer way ahead of time. Similarly, the level of acetone in a diabetic’s breath is correlated with their blood sugar level. No more need for those nasty finger pricks?

Naturally, NASA is exploring all sorts of other options too, including military applications. It was used on the International Space Station to monitor air quality and check for formaldehyde. The DoD is funding an application where soldiers could be outfitted with real-time detection of chemical threats. From a big brother perspective, the Department of Homeland Security could take a “big picture” look from the cell phones of citizens to assess the chemical threats in an area following some sort of disastrous event. The possibilities are endless.

And it looks close to production ready too. Who said science couldn’t be fun?

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The technology that guides Tomahawks and big missiles to sharp hits is likely to arm the next generation sniper.

New Mexico-based Sandia National Laboratories is on its way towards perfecting a sniper bullet which incorporates the self-guiding capabilities which was so far reserved for big missiles. The prototype bullet has shown promising results according to Sandia and the lab is looking for private funding to complete its research and make a practical prototype that could be mass produced.

Snipers and sharpshooters, purists as they are, might say that the new technology will take away the romance of approximations and mental calculations normally associated with their profession.

Hollywood movies have immortalized snipers in action battlefields: wiping the sweat off their brows, controlling the heartbeat, checking and rechecking the scope, using mental math to visualize the trajectory to make minute adjustments, before letting it rip.

The new technology will definitely take away the sweat off a sniper’s brow and they are not likely to complain, after all they are in the business for accurate shots, not near misses.

The bullet is a technological marvel as it has managed to overcome the difficulties of using a guiding technology in a small projectile which is tough to control as it gets affected by the wind and other peripherals much more than a large missile.

Sandia’s four-inch-long bullet has an optical sensor in the nose to detect a laser beam on a target. The sensor sends information to guidance and control electronics that use an algorithm in an eight-bit CPU to command electromagnetic actuators which steer tiny fins on the bullet skin that guide it to the target.

Traditional bullets have grooves that make them spin when they leave the barrel to make it more accurate. Sandia’s bullet is different as it is designed not to spin so that its trajectory is easier to tweak during mid flight.

“To enable a bullet to turn in flight toward a target and to simplify the design, the spin had to go,” says Sandia researcher Red Jones.

“The bullet flies straight due to its aerodynamically stable design, which consists of a center of gravity that sits forward in the projectile and tiny fins that enable it to fly without spin, just as a dart does,” he adds.

Computer modeling shows the design would improve accuracy, said Jones. The company’s patent for the smart bullet says that simulations showed an unguided bullet under real-world conditions could miss a target more than half a mile away (1,000 meters away) by 9.8 yards (9 meters) while a guided bullet would get within 8 inches (0.2 meters).

Check out the bullet in trajectory in the video below.

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It makes sense that the military wants to have eyes in the sky for surveillance, but when you’re that far away from your target, it can be pretty tough to really see what you want to see. You need more pixels, gigapixels perhaps, and in the case of the US Army, they’ve opted for 1.8 of them.

The A160 Hummingbird was recently unveiled with a new imaging system. Remember that 1.8 gigapixels is 100x more detail than what you’d get with your 18MP digital camera, and it’s usually only with multiple shots that we regular folk can stitch together a gigapixel photo. The kicker is that this hovering aircraft can send back real-time video streams at 10 frames a second too.

When hovering at an altitude of 20,000 feet, the camera has a field of view of almost 65 square miles. The army can then simultaneously track up to 65 targets within this field of view without having to decide which target is the priority. “If you have a bunch of people leaving a place at the same time, they no longer have to say, ‘Do I follow vehicle one, two, three or four,’” said program manager Brian Leninger. “They can say: ‘I will follow all of them, simultaneously and automatically.’”

The drones use the Autonomous Real-time Ground Ubiquitous Surveillance Imaging System (ARGUS-IS) first deployed last year. The first generation drones were manufactured by Boeing, but the military is holding a “full and open” competition for the second generation contract.

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They, however, believe it’s a virus of the type that steals log-in and password data from people who gamble online or play games like Mafia Wars. But really, the Pentagon is showing reluctance in talking about any computer security breach at all, and this virus infection isn’t any different. They have been known to consider common clean-up of worm invasions as classified missions and give them according names like “Operation Buckshot Yankee”.

Unlike other times when the situation has been hushed, the drone virus has received so much publicity that the military could not keep a lid on it any longer. So they what they do is release a press release in which they call the infection “more of a nuisance than an operational threat”.

It is believed that the virus got spread by portable hard drives that they use to transfer data with, but that’s not the only angle they’re approaching, refusing to say which other ways the virus could have gotten in the system. Which inevitably would have come from a human.

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A unique military kit has been released by Coolfire Solutions, and this could really bring out the MacGyver in you. For soldiers who work in field intelligence, they’ll be able to replace the standard 160-pound terminal used by SATCOM with an iPhone and the Scout Observer’s Toolkit. The size and weight of the six-pound Scout Observer makes it an excellent accessory for furtive operations carried out by the military.

When the Scout Observer is connected to the iPhone, the device becomes a spectrum analyzer, multi-meter, power meter and Low Noise Block Downconverter (LNB). This allows you to locate and verify signals from the satellite, including signals from other mobiles. It also lets you measure the signal strength, and gives you approximate GPS location. The iPhone is placed in a sealed-up compartment and the internal battery pack keeps the signal finder.

It is about 27 times lighter than the SATCOM terminal, so it is more convenient to bring along. If you are into some covert activities as well, you can use this but make sure that you employ the toolkit for legal purposes only! The toolkit is now open for pre-orders and should ship in the fourth quarter of the year. The company hopes to release some versions for other phones as well in the future.

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This is positively astounding technology if it really does work. For centuries, mankind has been dreaming of the day when they can have an invisibility cloak and, well, this is pretty darn close. It’s called Adaptiv and it’s a technology developed by BAE.

Basically, your tanks and other vehicles are wrapped up in these hexagon-shaped panels. The vehicle also has 360-degree cameras that capture the surroundings in real time. The panels then act as a skin, mimicing not only the visual, but also the temperature information of the surrounding area. In effect, it blends into the background… but only at night and only when someone is looking at you with infrared.

Infrared is used pretty much universally for night missions in the military, so this could be a very viable solution for a true stealth attack (or patrol or whatever else). What’s cool is that Adaptiv can be used to cloak, sure, but it can also be used to disguise one vehicle as something else. That scary tank could turn into a civilian Jeep in the eyes of the infrared-viewing enemy.

The individual panels can be replaced as they are damaged too, making this solution much more cost-effective than one where the whole body has to be replaced. Nifty stuff. Check out the video and see for yourself.

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