Sipsey Street Irregulars: Night-Vision System for Army Soldiers Demands Unusual Collaboration Between Industry Archrivals

Thursday, November 12, 2015

Night-Vision System for Army Soldiers Demands Unusual Collaboration Between Industry Archrivals

The Army is poised to invest more than a billion dollars over the next decade in a James Bond-like targeting technology for infantry troops. A riflescope wirelessly transmits video to a night-vision goggle, allowing a shooter to kill a target without having to bring the weapon up to eye level.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...: 1992. They called it "land warrior" and have ALREADY sunk SEVERAL BILLION dollars into what has become one of the biggest military boondoggles in history.(F-35 anyone?) Problem is that like the 25MM "space gun" it is far more "eye of Mordor" propaganda than it is a real "system". But like they say in congress; "A trillion hear and a trillion there and soon you are talking about real money"--Ray; November 12, 2015 at 9:19 AM
Chiu ChunLing said...: The only thing unusual about this kind of collaboration between industry rivals is the Army recognizing that interoperability matters before soldiers are dying from the lack of it.

In any other industry, the customer demand for interoperability would be weighed against the advantages of proprietary technology performance and the market would decide (generally heavily in favor of more compatibility). Rival tech companies get together to draft compatibility standards all the time, revealing some of the advantages of their proprietary tech in exchange for more influence setting standards which allow those advantages to be exploited fully. The fact that this allows competitors a baseline to reverse-engineer aspects of their technology is an accepted price for an early lead in gaining a good reputation with satisfied customers.; November 12, 2015 at 10:12 AM
luagha said...: This was extensively described in roleplaying games in the late 1980's early '90s.; November 12, 2015 at 4:19 PM
Anonymous said...: Very easy to do. However there are multiple problems. Any wireless tech can be jammed.
Batteries... You need lots and lots of batteries. Field of vision. You only see what is on the camera. It is not hard for an enemy to hack your video feed and remove objects he dosent want you to see Or add a few hundred imaginary enemy troops or tanks or whatever he may want to. I can go on and on and on about all the possible fails.; November 12, 2015 at 4:45 PM
l2a3 said...: So you mean like a IR laser and NODS?; November 12, 2015 at 7:16 PM
Anonymous said...: Hey Ray,
The phrase is: "A trillion here (not hear) and a trillion there". "Here" is the opposite of "there". "Hear" refers to an ear receiving a sound.; November 13, 2015 at 7:05 AM

"Progress made under the shadow of the policeman's club is false progress."

I believe that liberty is the only genuinely valuable thing that men have invented, at least in the field of government, in a thousand years. I believe that it is better to be free than to be not free, even when the former is dangerous and the latter safe. I believe that the finest qualities of man can flourish only in free air – that progress made under the shadow of the policeman's club is false progress, and of no permanent value. I believe that any man who takes the liberty of another into his keeping is bound to become a tyrant, and that any man who yields up his liberty, in however slight the measure, is bound to become a slave. -- H.L. Mencken

"The Fate of Unborn Millions. . ."

"The time is now near at hand which must probably determine, whether Americans are to be, Freemen, or Slaves; whether they are to have any property they can call their own; whether their Houses, and Farms, are to be pillaged and destroyed, and they consigned to a State of Wretchedness from which no human efforts will probably deliver them. The fate of unborn Millions will now depend, under God, on the Courage and Conduct of this army-Our cruel and unrelenting Enemy leaves us no choice but a brave resistance, or the most abject submission; that is all we can expect-We have therefore to resolve to conquer or die." -- George Washington to his troops before the Battle of Long Island.

"We will not go gently . . ."

This is no small thing, to restore a republic after it has fallen into corruption. I have studied history for years and I cannot recall it ever happening. It may be that our task is impossible. Yet, if we do not try then how will we know it can't be done? And if we do not try, it most certainly won't be done. The Founders' Republic, and the larger war for western civilization, will be lost.

But I tell you this: We will not go gently into that bloody collectivist good night. Indeed, we will make with our defiance such a sound as ALL history from that day forward will be forced to note, even if they despise us in the writing of it.

And when we are gone, the scattered, free survivors hiding in the ruins of our once-great republic will sing of our deeds in forbidden songs, tending the flickering flame of individual liberty until it bursts forth again, as it must, generations later. We will live forever, like the Spartans at Thermopylae, in sacred memory.

-- Mike Vanderboegh, The Lessons of Mumbai:Death Cults, the "Socialism of Imbeciles" and Refusing to Submit, 1 December 2008

"A common language of resistance . . ."

"Colonial rebellions throughout the modern world have been acts of shared political imagination. Unless unhappy people develop the capacity to trust other unhappy people, protest remains a local affair easily silenced by traditional authority. Usually, however, a moment arrives when large numbers of men and women realize for the first time that they enjoy the support of strangers, ordinary people much like themselves who happen to live in distant places and whom under normal circumstances they would never meet. It is an intoxicating discovery. A common language of resistance suddenly opens to those who are most vulnerable to painful retribution the possibility of creating a new community. As the conviction of solidarity grows, parochial issues and aspirations merge imperceptibly with a compelling national agenda which only a short time before may have been the dream of only a few. For many Americans colonists this moment occurred late in the spring of 1774." -- T.H. Breen, The Marketplace of Revolution: How Consumer Politics Shaped American Independence, Oxford University Press, 2004, p.1.

Sipsey Street Irregulars

Thursday, November 12, 2015

Night-Vision System for Army Soldiers Demands Unusual Collaboration Between Industry Archrivals

6 comments:

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