DARPA funds dozens of new urban-warfare tools
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency late last week awarded 37 contracts for new urban-warfighting technologies.

The agency last June solicited proposals for casualty-reduction technologies; intelligence, reconnaissance and surveillance devices; beyond-line-of-sight weapons; urban command and control tools; and training and simulation systems.

The 37 awards, each worth from $130,000 to $2.7 million for six- to 12-month feasibility demonstrations, are intended to reduce casualties and collateral damage while improving effectiveness of smaller forces, DARPA said in a statement.

The awards went to:

AETC Inc. of San Diego for sound detection devices

Alphatech Inc. of Burlington, Mass., for 3-D situational perception devices

Applied Research Associates Inc. of Raleigh, N.C., for aerial firefight sensors; optical navigation for operations not using the Global Positioning System; and detectors for concealed weapons and explosives

Aptima Inc. of Woburn, Mass., for a culture-based urban modeling environment

BAE Systems North America of Rockville, Md., for millimeter wave exposure to improve recognition; nonstop communications; an infrared situational awareness and threat warning system; and a rational observer system

BBN Technologies Inc. of Cambridge, Mass., for force multipliers and persistent target tracking by 3-D radar

BBNT Solutions LLC, also of Cambridge, for a cultural analysis and learning environment

DEKA R&D of Manchester, N.H., for a rapid vertical mobility concept Draper Laboratory Inc., also of Cambridge, for radio frequency indoor geolocation and precision emplacement

General Atomics of San Diego for Raptor View high-resolution surveillance

Harris Corp. of Melbourne, Fla., for an urban communications environment

ISX Corp. of Camarillo, Calif., for a culturally aware peacekeeping tool set

Lockheed Martin Corp. for force multiplication and stabilization analysis models

Metal Storm USA Ltd. of Arlington, Va., for urban weapons

Omnitech Robotics International of Englewood, Colo., for sensor emplacement methods

Raytheon Co. for active-protection and head-mounted alert systems

Science Applications International Corp. of San Diego for smart-dust sensors, RF predictive propagation models, focused situational awareness and renewed-conflict models

Sandia National Laboratories of Albuquerque, N.M., for air-dropped unmanned ground vehicles and multiplayer wargaming environments

Smart Information Flow Technologies LLC of Minneapolis for cross-cultural training simulations

SRI International of Menlo Park, Calif., for a wall-climbing robot

University of Texas at Austin for low-cost radar sensors for personnel detection and tracking

Wave Technologies of Chantilly, Va., for a rapid urban-warfare training environment.

PPG Industries Inc. of Allison Park, Pa., for nanostructured light-weight armor

PPG Industries, Inc. is a multinational manufacturer with three business segments: coatings, glass and chemicals. The coatings segment supplies a variety of protective and decorative coatings and finishes along with adhesives, sealants and metal pretreatment products for aerospace, industrial, packaging, architectural, automotive original equipment and aftermarket refinish applications. The glass segment supplies flat glass, fabricated glass and continuous-strand fiber glass for residential and commercial construction, automotive original and replacement markets and industrial applications. The chemicals segment supplies chlor-alkali and specialty chemicals products. (They make paints but no armor.)

NextGen Aeronautics Inc. of Torrance, Calif., for small gunships

all

What's that verse from the bible, "professing themselves to be wise, they became utter fools intead" or something like that. Jonathan Kwitney wrote about "Endless Enemies" and this M/I complex overspending. It has its limits; I think we are reaching them.

"For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse: Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools And changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man."
-- Romans 1:20-23

Then again you always have Rummy's little saying.....

"You go to war with the army you have, not the army you might want or wish to have at a later time."

Besides who needs armour "If you think about it, you can have all the armor in the world on a tank and a tank can be blown up, and you can have an up-armored Humvee and it can be blown up."