US Military Gears Up For Cyborg Soldiers With New DARPA Project

Cyborg soldiers could be part of the U.S. military soon as the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is working on creating an implantable chip that can connect a human brain to a computer to facilitate data delivery.Cyborg soldiers could be part of the U.S. military soon as the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is working on creating an implantable chip that can connect a human brain to a computer to facilitate data delivery.

In the case of the U.S. military, this could mean faster information acquisition on enemy position and swifter relay of instructions on the field.

DARPA formed the Neural Engineering System Design (NESD) program to come up with a neural interface, a system that connects biological nervous systems with digital devices, creating "unprecedented signal resolution and data-transfer bandwidth" between the two.

NESD program manager Phillip Alvelda pointed out that the best of today's brain-computer interface systems are similar to two supercomputers trying to communicate with each other through an old 300-baud modem. Currently, approved neural interfaces have just 100 channels, each responsible for compiling signals from thousands of neurons at the same time, resulting in not just imprecision but noise as well.

"Imagine what will become possible when we upgrade our tools to really open the channel between the human brain and modern electronics," he said.

Think of the neural interface DARPA is developing as a translator that could turn electrochemical language from the brain into digital signals that a device can understand, and vice versa. The NESD is looking at developing a system capable of communication so efficient that it can handle signals from up to a million neurons within any part of the brain.

Given what it is trying to accomplish, the NESD program will require the expertise of scientists from different fields, such as medical device packaging, low-power electronics, synthetic biology, photonics and neuroscience. To translate biological signals into digital ones, scientists will have to use advanced neuro-computation and mathematical techniques.

The U.S. military is hopeful that industry leaders will partner with DARPA to further research for the NESD program through manufacturing and prototyping services, as well as intellectual property.

DARPA will be hosting a meeting from Feb. 2 to 3 in Arlington, Virginia to gather potential participants in the NESD program. Over the course of four years, the agency anticipates that its investment in the NESD program will reach up to $60 million.

US Military's New Laser Gun Zaps Drones

 Boeing's High Energy Laser Mobile Demonstrator (HEL MD).                  

The U.S. military is now one step closer to having a laser gun that can shoot down enemy drones in the blink of an eye.

Boeing recently announced that its mobile laser weapon, dubbed the High Energy Laser Mobile Demonstrator (HEL MD), successfully shot down more than 150 drones, rockets and other mock enemy targets in a third round of tests. The trials prove that the laser weapon is reliable and capable of consistently "acquiring, tracking and engaging a variety of targets in different environments," according to Boeing.

The most recent demonstration of the 10-kilowatt, high-energy laser took place at Eglin Air Force Base in Florida. The laser was installed on a military vehicle, making it the first mobile, high-energy laser built and demonstrated by the U.S. Army, according to Boeing. [7 Technologies That Transformed Warfare]

Directed-energy technologies like the HEL MD could soon be used by the military to augment what are known as kinetic strike weapons, such as missile interceptors, that don't contain explosives but destroy targets by colliding with them at extreme speeds.
Kinetic strike weapons are expensive, and the HEL MD could offer "a significant reduction in cost per engagement," Dave DeYoung, Boeing's directed-energy systems director, said in a statement.

This push for laser weaponryis part of the U.S. military's Ground-Based Air Defense Directed Energy On-the-Move (GBAD) program. The goal of the program is to provide what officials from the Office of Naval Research call an "affordable alternative to traditional firepower," to guard against drones and other enemy threats.
The recent demonstration of Boeing's mobile laser weapon is just a prelude of things to come. By 2016, the military plans to have a 30-kilowatt laser gun ready for testing, according to the Office of Naval Research.

And Boeing isn't the only defense contractor working with the military to develop high-powered laser weapons. In August, the Office of Naval Research awarded Raytheon an $11 million contract to build a vehicle-mounted laser device capable of shooting down low-flying enemy targets. The system will reportedly generate at least 25 kilowatts of energy, which will make it more than twice as powerful as the laser recently tested by Boeing.
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