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DARPA's PowerSwim, in living (but muddy) color

Official photographic evidence of the future of swimming.

Mark Rutherford
The military establishment's ever increasing reliance on technology and whiz-bang gadgetry impacts us as consumers, investors, taxpayers and ultimately as the defended. Our mission here is to bring some of these products and concepts to your attention based on carefully selected criteria such as importance to national security, originality, collateral damage to the treasury and adaptability to yard maintenance-but not necessarily in that order. E-mail him at markr@milapp.com. Disclosure.
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Mark Rutherford

In a piece headlined "Rube Goldberg meets Aquaman" a few weeks ago, we wrote of something called PowerSwim--a contraption developed by DARPA that would allow Navy SEALs and others to swim 150 percent faster and with less effort than they would with regular fins. In describing it, we had to rely on an illustration done by Popular Mechanics. Apparently PM never saw the thing either, because it looks nothing like that picture. Here, thanks to the understanding and generous folks at DARPA, is the real deal: The photo's a little muddy but, after all, it's under water.

DARPA