Troops in Afghanistan Will See Through Walls in 2010

[redqueen]

Soldiers can’t leap tall buildings in a single bound, yet. Seeing through walls — that’s a different story. Later this year, American troops fighting in Afghanistan will begin to get gadgets designed to peer inside buildings and detect the heartbeat of people buried under rubble. It’s not exactly Superman’s x-ray vision. But it’s not that far way from it, either.

These Eagle handheld scanners, which look “like a cross between a video game controller and an oversized cell phone,” according to Defense News, work by sending out low-power, wideband radio-frequency signals toward a target, and measuring how the signals bounce back. A signal coming from a person will return differently than one from dirt or concrete, which will return differently than a signal bouncing off of concrete a few feet further away.

The handheld receiver decodes these signals, and displays the image it saw on the screen of the device, creating a picture of what’s happening on the other side of the wall, or 10 feet underground. The device also has a wireless connection to a computer, so it can immediately send the image for processing and analysis.

(snip)

They’re not a bird, or a plane, but the Eagle sensors could be critical in hostage or disaster relief situations, in locating leaks and tunnels underground, or in gaining a tactical advantage through a previously impenetrable wall. The sensors will be rolled out to soldiers sometime this year, and may be wider-used shortly after that.



Read More http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2010/02/troops-in-astan-will-see-through-walls-in-2010/#ixzz0eOgO2eWD

[Fumesucker]

1. Six months later your local police department will have them..

Say buh bye to privacy..

[qazplm]

2. that is a good example

of using something for three different purposes, one evil (police and privacy), one good (searching for hostage/disaster situations), and one, arguably, neutral (allowing Soldiers to see through walls during combat).