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Subject: Woodward's Secret Weapon Posted by: Boldwin - [9820164] Sun, Sep 21, 2008, 07:55 Bob Woodward has hinted at a secret miltary program akin to a 'Manhattan Project' that is actually more responsible for recent successes than 'the Surge'. Amazingly no one has commented on this subject. | |||||||
| 1 | Boldwin ID: 9820164 Sun, Sep 21, 2008, 08:15 |
It may be all of the above. This [early posts in this thread] is my hunch after combing thru hundreds of tech links trying to get a feel for it. Way too much to link to this morning but you can google each aspect up yourself. | ||||||
| 2 | Boldwin ID: 9820164 Sun, Sep 21, 2008, 09:04 |
I'll try and introduce ideas in a brief orderly way. I ran across information that the war had turned into a sniper war [with coalition forces now more spooked by snipers than IED's] and after reading a lot about this I now feel that the Islamist sniping is really a reaction to a tactic being used on them with devastating effect. First let me say that high tech sensors have been around a while. I have heard that 'see-thru-walls' is not unusual in cases of high value targets and that has been around for a few decades, even in the war on drugs. There has been developed tech to analyze the sound of sniper shots to locate the source. That has been demonstrated years ago. Adaptive optics has been used in astronomy for quite some time. Taggants to trace terrorists isn't a new idea. It's one thing to do it for a Tom Clancy movie and entirely another to do it affordably on a scale that would influence the outcome of a war. I am not oblivious to the need to weigh what's feasible against what is merely theoretically possible. The upgrade in capability seems to be in the coordination and refining of these ideas and technologies. The first development I'll introduce is the 'fusion cell'. No not some cold fusion development, but rather an operational team in real time coordinating sensor information streams from all areas of expertise. I don't know for sure but my best guess is that fusion cells are now operating out of mobile platforms near the point of attack tho they could conceivably be all the way back behind the lines as far as regional HQ or the USA. Such a team of experts could include multinational experts in the fields of interrogation, electronic signiture identification of IR and Radar both space-based and horizontal, chemical sensors, taggant tracking. Taggants: imagine instead of just identifying one target, you seed known targets with taggants which he spreads wherever he goes and onto whoever he contacts? Imagine you then can track those tagant locations in real time from space and plane and drone. Imagine following a chain of evidence. After limiting the search to a reasonably small number of buildings you then analyze them from space for unusual concentrations of dense objects and metals, say weapon caches for example. Narrowing the search down further you then at a ground level, 'see-thru-walls' to detirmine floorplans, people's movements, storage areas... Imagine then taking advantage of revolutionary sensor development for sniperscopes. Adaptive optics uses a large number of laser beam shots to diagram out the atmospheric distortions and correct the view thus enabling sniper shots 4-10 times the normal distance. This tech is slightly further ahead of the next development I'll mention... Just as distant astronomical objects can be analyzed thru the gravitational lensing of objects in front of them, work is far along [and probably operational] in using momentary heat lensing combined with computer processing for sniper shots.  A serious problem then becomes proving in court that the sniper shot was a 'righteous kill'. It is probably impossible to convey to a jury the exact clues and analysis that led to a decision to shoot even if you could get around the problem of divulging classified tech. This could explain the current tactic of 'baiting' while sniping. Materials useful to IED bombers is placed out and about, and anyone who picks them up is assumed to be a terrorist...or is that just a cover-story to enable the policeman's alibi 'drop-weapon'? | ||||||
| 3 | Boldwin ID: 9820164 Sun, Sep 21, 2008, 09:08 |
One aspect I forgot to include. Drones now taking daily missile shot inside Pakistan include a black box [sensor package/information analyzer-B] the size of a car battery and so heavy that it often neccsessitates paring down the missile compliment to one instead of the usual two. What does it look at? See previous post. | ||||||
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