Posts tagged radar

An unusual discovery of mammoth bones on a rural Oskaloosa farm has experts studying prehistoric life excited about scientific discoveries that may lie with the massive beast.

The find is rare because it appears to include much of the animal’s skeleton undisturbed. That allows scientists to gather pollen and other plant evidence at the dig site that could reveal details about Iowa’s environment more than 12,000 years ago.

Scientists from the University of Iowa plan to scan the area with ground penetrating radar on Friday to see if they can determine how much of the mammoth remains underground. Excavation will continue throughout the summer.

Bones were first found two years ago by the landowner. He wants his name and location of the farm to remain confidential to protect the site.

(Source: futurenow321)

Boeing recently announced it successfully tracked and shot down an unmanned aerial vehicle with a laser weapon. Actually, it shot down five UAVs at various ranges with the trailer-mounted Mobile Active Targeting Resource for Integrated eXperiments (MATRIX).

Developed at the request of the Air Force Research Laboratory, MATRIX integrates with standard test-range radar, focusing a single energy beam on moving aerial vehicles and blasting them out of the sky. It’s the future of aerial seek and destroy, defending against always orbiting unmanned craft, and Boeing isn’t the only one testing this technology.

(Source: futurenow321)

If you’re a soldier suspecting an ambush, you probably don’t have much time to spare, and you definitely can’t afford to be carrying any unnecessary weight. That’s why so much military tech involves shrinking whatever’s portable, and why, now, a company has thrown its radar in a backpack into the ring.

The SpotterRF M600C weighs four pounds, uses just 10 watts of energy, and looks like the headrest on the driver’s seat of a jalopy (which is a good thing). If ambusher or otherwise comes within 150 acres, the system tracks it, no matter what the weather conditions are.

Besides the weight advantage, it’s also simple. There are no moving parts on the M600C, and manufacturer SpotterRF claims a soldier can learn to use it in 30 to 60 minutes.

If you ever end up in a “Most Dangerous Game” type situation, the radar backpack kit would be a worthy investment. It comes with two of the M600Cs important, since each mini-radar unit only tracks within a 90-degree angle. It can connect to Google Earth, FalconView, or RaptorX via an Android tablet to follow the radar feed, and the kit comes with the tablet, a battery, network hub, cables, backpack (of course), and a tripod for setting it all up.

Total weight? Less than 20 pounds.

(Source: futurenow321)