The US military is spending millions to build “vanishing” technology that self-destructs on the battlefield, like the tape recorder that goes up in smoke in the Mission: Impossible television show.
The Pentagon’s high-tech research arm has awarded contracts worth more than US$17 million in the past two months to prevent micro-electronic sensors and other devices from falling into enemy hands.
The companies have been tasked to develop “transient” electronics that could be destroyed remotely or crumble into tiny pieces.
In the 1960s series Mission: Impossible, the lead spy always receives top-secret instructions on a reel-to-reel tape recorder, before being told: “This tape will self-destruct in five seconds.”
Now the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is funding a 21st-century version of the recorder, backing experimental projects under the Vanishing Programmable Resources Program.
The use of small, sophisticated electronics in everything from radios to weapons has increased dramatically for US forces, but it is “nearly impossible to track and recover every device,” according to a DARPA contract document last month.
“Electronics are often found scattered across the battlefield and might be captured by the enemy and repurposed or studied,” it said, warning that the US is in danger of losing its technological edge.
The new program aims to solve the problem by creating systems “capable of physically disappearing in a controlled, triggerable manner,” rendering the devices useless to the enemy.
For its latest project, the agency is reinterpreting the idea of a “kill switch,” which dates back to the Cold War.
Unlike ordinary off-the-shelf electronics that can last indefinitely, the agency “is looking for a way to make electronics that last precisely as long as they are needed,” program manager Alicia Jackson said.
The device could be destroyed either by a signal sent by commanders or prompted by “possible environmental conditions” such as a certain temperature, she said.
In the latest contract for the program, announced on Jan. 31, DARPA provided US$3.5 million to IBM for a proposal to use a radio frequency to shatter a glass coating on a silicon chip, reducing it to dust.
The Palo Alto Research Center in California received US$2.1 million to develop devices with dummy circuits that would be triggered to “crumble into small, sand-like particles in a fraction of a second.”
Defense giant BAE Systems was awarded US$4.5 million on Jan. 22 and Honeywell Corporation won a US$2.5 million contract on Dec. 3 for more “vanishing” technology research.
And DARPA announced in December last year a US$4.7 million contract for SRI International to develop “SPECTER” batteries designed to self-destruct.
Far from the violence ravaging Haiti, a market on the border with the Dominican Republic has maintained a welcome degree of normal everyday life. At the Dajabon border gate, a wave of Haitians press forward, eager to shop at the twice-weekly market about 200km from Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince. They are drawn by the market’s offerings — food, clothing, toys and even used appliances — items not always readily available in Haiti. However, with gang violence bad and growing ever worse in Haiti, the Dominican government has reinforced the usual military presence at the border and placed soldiers on alert. While the market continues to
An image of a dancer balancing on the words “China Before Communism” looms over Parisian commuters catching the morning metro, signaling the annual return of Shen Yun, a controversial spectacle of traditional Chinese dance mixed with vehement criticism of Beijing and conservative rhetoric. The Shen Yun Performing Arts company has slipped the beliefs of a spiritual movement called Falun Gong in between its technicolored visuals and leaping dancers since 2006, with advertising for the show so ubiquitous that it has become an Internet meme. Founded in 1992, Falun Gong claims nearly 100 million followers and has been subject to “persistent persecution” in
ONLINE VITRIOL: While Mo Yan faces a lawsuit, bottled water company Nongfu Spring and Tsinghua University are being attacked amid a rise in nationalist fervor At first glance, a Nobel prize winning author, a bottle of green tea and Beijing’s Tsinghua University have little in common, but in recent weeks they have been dubbed by China’s nationalist netizens as the “three new evils” in the fight to defend the country’s valor in cyberspace. Last month, a patriotic blogger called Wu Wanzheng filed a lawsuit against China’s only Nobel prize-winning author, Mo Yan (莫言), accusing him of discrediting the Communist army and glorifying Japanese soldiers in his fictional works set during the Japanese invasion of China. Wu, who posts online under the pseudonym “Truth-Telling Mao Xinghuo,” is seeking
‘SURPRISES’: The militants claim to have successfully tested a missile capable of reaching Mach 8 and vowed to strike ships heading toward the Cape of Good Hope Yemen’s Houthi rebels claim to have a new, hypersonic missile in their arsenal, Russia’s state media reported on Thursday, potentially raising the stakes in their attacks on shipping in the Red Sea and surrounding waterways against the backdrop of Israel’s war with Hamas in the Gaza Strip. The report by the state-run RIA Novosti news agency cited an unidentified official, but provided no evidence for the claim. It comes as Moscow maintains an aggressively counter-Western foreign policy amid its grinding war on Ukraine. However, the Houthis have for weeks hinted about “surprises” they plan for the battles at sea to counter the