u.s

Rewiring the Army for the future

Go ahead, call it a boondoggle--you wouldn't be the first. The U.S. Army's massive, ambitious Future Combat Systems project aims to create a fully networked military force of robotic aircraft, hybrid-engine ground vehicles, ultra high-tech weapons systems, and battlefield sensors to bring soldiering into the 21st century. Faced with the Herculean effort of getting everything together for deployment in the middle of the next decade (maybe), the Army is just now starting some low-level spin-outs of some of the technologies it's been working on for years now already. Yes, it's costing a lot of money.… Read more

High tech doesn't really help with oil spills

Just under two weeks ago, I was sitting at my desk here at CNET when I saw a bulletin online that a ship had hit the Bay Bridge. The bulletin was very short and to the point, and really just said that there was no structural damage to the bridge. We laughed about it for a few minutes and moved on.

I didn't think more about it until the next morning when I logged onto SFGate. There, I read that, in fact, the damage that had been done by the so-called Cosco Busan accident had been to the extremely … Read more

Air Force fighter to use speech recognition

The next U.S. Air Force maverick may be talking to her plane instead of looking at its dash for updates.

The F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter, which the Air Force plans to roll out in 2008, will be the first U.S. fighter to respond to voice commands, the Air Force announced Wednesday.

The Air Force Research Laboratory's Human Effectiveness Directorate has been working on the idea for some time, trying out different systems from a variety of companies.

After years of testing, it now has a speech-recognition system that works from a microphone within a pilot'… Read more

Cell carriers fined over missed e911 deadlines

Federal regulators late on Thursday slapped three wireless firms, including No. 3 operator Sprint Nextel, with a total of $2.83 million in fines for not meeting a long-passed deadline for equipping subscribers with enhanced 911 service.

The Federal Communications Commission had set a December 31, 2005 date by which all mobile carriers had to ensure that 95 percent of their subscribers had location-sensitive handsets--that is, those that allow emergency responders to pinpoint a caller's location upon connection to the 911 switchboard.

Sprint Nextel and large regional operators Alltel Corp. and U.S. Cellular Corp. "failed to meet … Read more

Navy seeks 'kamikaze' robot to clear mines

Today, sussing out bombs on land and from the air is a routine chore for robots in Iraq and Afghanistan. Now the U.S. Navy wants a smart class of robo-fish to do the same in some of the world's most dangerous waterways.

One contender for that task is the Transphibian, a 3-foot-long autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) created by Durham, N.C.-based Nekton Research. The Transphibian is designed to identify mines and map the seabed by swimming and crawling through places where troops or ships are likely to follow. Soon, the company hopes to field a type of &… Read more

Yachts are so 2006--enter the luxury sub

Sure, a multimillion-dollar yacht is OK, especially if it has multiple bars on board. But the true seagoing sybarite needs a luxury submarine.

That's why some very wealthy adventurers are apparently flocking to U.S. Submarines of Portland, Ore., a company that builds custom models "for the eccentric billionaires who want mysterious and secret subs," according to Luxurylaunches. It says there are 100 luxury subs now in the water with unidentified owners. (Does DHS know about this?)

The price of covert underwater travel is predictably high, ranging from $12 million to $80 million. But you can get … Read more

Photos: The Airborne Laser goes to Washington

The bulbous nose on this modified 747 is an early sign of progress in a weapons system that one day may fulfill the goals of the Pentagon's Airborne Laser program. The aircraft recently made its first cross-country flight, landing at Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland--just as Congress is debating funding for the program as part of the overall defense budget for fiscal 2008.

Find out what a "megawatt-class chemical oxygen iodine laser beam" is when you click here for more on the Air Force and the U.S. Missile Defense Agency's plans for applying the … Read more

Why America needs foreign students

Here's one more reason to give green cards to foreign graduate students.

They are the only ones in school.

U.S. citizens outnumber foreign nationals in undergraduate electrical engineering programs in U.S. universities by a wide margin, according to a report form the Engineering Workforce Commission of the American Association of Engineering Societies.

U.S. kids accounted for 89 percent of the undergrads in these programs in 2006.

But 51 percent of the students in masters programs in EE in U.S. universities were foreign nationals last year. Only 49 percent come from the states.

In PhD programs, … Read more

Photos: Army touts top tech inventions

In 2004, then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld famously told a National Guardsman serving in Iraq, "As you know, you have to go to war with the Army you have, not the Army you want." The soldier had been inquiring about the readiness of Humvees for combat conditions--specifically, the need to "up-armor" the vehicles to provide better protection against enemy fire.

But even if a nation's military has to do the best it can with the gear it has, it can also plan ahead for the gear it knows it will need. That's the dual … Read more