The Times: Tech column - War technology/Iraqi cellphones
By David Rowan
"GIZMO DAN", as we tend to call our gadget-obsessed friend, has lately been taking a rather distasteful delight in chronicling the full high-tech wizardry of American battlefield hardware. War, as Dan likes to point out, is the single greatest spur to technological innovation - and but for the billions of dollars that the Pentagon has been prepared to invest over the years, we might never have enjoyed some of the consumer appliances that we now take for granted. The US military financed the pioneering ENIAC programmable computer as a Second World War project, Dan explains, just as in the Cold War it developed the Global Positioning System to locate submarines and troops. "From the internet to the microwave oven, we have military investment to thank," he says. So what gadgets will the current war eventually send into the shops?
The early consensus, from Dan as well as the professional commentators, is that night-vision goggles will be on Christmas-present wish-lists this year or next. You can already buy basic versions at "spy" shops from about £100, but the third-generation military version - the AN/PVS-7, made by Northrop Grumman - will currently set you back a couple of thousand pounds. Even if the Syrians decide that these are one gadget too risky to buy, the rest of us can soon expect to become familiar with that eerie green glow as prices fall and performance improves. Get ready to do the gardening at 3am.
Another battlefield technology we should be seeing more of at home is the UAV - the "unmanned aerial vehicle", commonly called the drone. In Afghanistan, US forces fitted remote-controlled Predator aircraft with video cameras as well as anti-tank missiles - and in Iraq there are now at least eight types in action, with names such as the Global Hawk and the Dragon Eye. But whereas the Predator is 27ft long, the new "micro-air vehicles" can be as little as six inches in length, yet still able to send home high-quality live television pictures. From traffic police to model-aircraft enthusiasts, the domestic market beckons. Within five years, drones will be in common civilian use, according to Paul Saffo, a director of the Institute for the Future think-tank. "Teenage nerd hobbyists will be able to buy or build UAVs that will be a little larger than a paperback book," he says. "Nobody will be able comfortably to sunbathe topless in their backyards any more."
It's also a safe bet that some time soon you will be loading your PDA with a rather more effective translation tool than those currently on the market. The US Navy has been investing heavily in software that combines voice recognition, speech synthesis and translation algorithms to let combatants talk "live" to the enemy. Already troops are using a device known as the "Phraselator" to communicate in basic Arabic and Kurdish. It might today be limited to phrases such as "Drop the gun!"; but who knows what it could eventually do for you in a Spanish singles bar.
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IT HAD to happen: the latest split between the US and "old" Europe is over the mobile-phone system awaiting a post-Saddam Iraq. With fellow outcasts North Korea and Afghanistan, Iraq is one of the last three major states, says a UN survey, without a proper cellular network.
Now a Republican US Congressman, Darrell Issa, is gathering support for a Bill that would stop Congress funding a network adopting the dominant GSM technology, which he dismisses as an "outdated French standard", in favour of the rival CDMA system. CDMA has been developed by the US company Qualcomm, based in Issa's California constituency. The problem is that GSM is used not just across Europe but by about 70 per cent of the world's mobiles - and the two systems are incompatible.
(The Times, April 1 2003)
"GIZMO DAN", as we tend to call our gadget-obsessed friend, has lately been taking a rather distasteful delight in chronicling the full high-tech wizardry of American battlefield hardware. War, as Dan likes to point out, is the single greatest spur to technological innovation - and but for the billions of dollars that the Pentagon has been prepared to invest over the years, we might never have enjoyed some of the consumer appliances that we now take for granted. The US military financed the pioneering ENIAC programmable computer as a Second World War project, Dan explains, just as in the Cold War it developed the Global Positioning System to locate submarines and troops. "From the internet to the microwave oven, we have military investment to thank," he says. So what gadgets will the current war eventually send into the shops?
The early consensus, from Dan as well as the professional commentators, is that night-vision goggles will be on Christmas-present wish-lists this year or next. You can already buy basic versions at "spy" shops from about £100, but the third-generation military version - the AN/PVS-7, made by Northrop Grumman - will currently set you back a couple of thousand pounds. Even if the Syrians decide that these are one gadget too risky to buy, the rest of us can soon expect to become familiar with that eerie green glow as prices fall and performance improves. Get ready to do the gardening at 3am.
Another battlefield technology we should be seeing more of at home is the UAV - the "unmanned aerial vehicle", commonly called the drone. In Afghanistan, US forces fitted remote-controlled Predator aircraft with video cameras as well as anti-tank missiles - and in Iraq there are now at least eight types in action, with names such as the Global Hawk and the Dragon Eye. But whereas the Predator is 27ft long, the new "micro-air vehicles" can be as little as six inches in length, yet still able to send home high-quality live television pictures. From traffic police to model-aircraft enthusiasts, the domestic market beckons. Within five years, drones will be in common civilian use, according to Paul Saffo, a director of the Institute for the Future think-tank. "Teenage nerd hobbyists will be able to buy or build UAVs that will be a little larger than a paperback book," he says. "Nobody will be able comfortably to sunbathe topless in their backyards any more."
It's also a safe bet that some time soon you will be loading your PDA with a rather more effective translation tool than those currently on the market. The US Navy has been investing heavily in software that combines voice recognition, speech synthesis and translation algorithms to let combatants talk "live" to the enemy. Already troops are using a device known as the "Phraselator" to communicate in basic Arabic and Kurdish. It might today be limited to phrases such as "Drop the gun!"; but who knows what it could eventually do for you in a Spanish singles bar.
++++
IT HAD to happen: the latest split between the US and "old" Europe is over the mobile-phone system awaiting a post-Saddam Iraq. With fellow outcasts North Korea and Afghanistan, Iraq is one of the last three major states, says a UN survey, without a proper cellular network.
Now a Republican US Congressman, Darrell Issa, is gathering support for a Bill that would stop Congress funding a network adopting the dominant GSM technology, which he dismisses as an "outdated French standard", in favour of the rival CDMA system. CDMA has been developed by the US company Qualcomm, based in Issa's California constituency. The problem is that GSM is used not just across Europe but by about 70 per cent of the world's mobiles - and the two systems are incompatible.
(The Times, April 1 2003)
posted by David Rowan at Tuesday, April 01, 2003
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