And Now: The Killer Drones that Can See Through Walls
September 21st, 2008Via: Slate:
Both reports focus on “detecting and identifying humans enclosed in building structures.” “Through-the-wall sensing is currently a topic of great interest to defense agencies both in the U.S. and abroad,” says the April report. “The U.S. Army Research Laboratory (ARL) has been active in all these fields of investigation, approaching these issues both through hardware design and radar measurements and through computer simulation of various STTW scenarios.”
STTW has been around for a while. A 2006 report from the National Defense University mentions a DARPA system that can “detect the presence of personnel within rooms (stated to be successful through 12 inches of concrete),” as well as a commercially developed system with a “30-foot standoff capability.” The next step, to protect U.S. personnel, is to put the technology on “unattended” mobile devices. Since the initial context is urban warfare, the pioneering client is the Army, and the introductory platform is unmanned ground vehicles. But the goal is to increase “standoff distance” and spread the technology to other platforms.
