"Dean Ing - Firefight Y2K" - читать интересную книгу автора (Ing Dean)

began as engineers and physicists; in my case, in preliminary design of rocket systems.

The steering committee wisely avoided holding a checkrein on our thinking. Once the ground rules were
clear, they sprinkled us into three groups and hauled us back into plenary sessions for awhile every day
to compare notes. By the end of this three-day skull-bump we had zeroed in on some small arms
weapon systems that looked very likelyтАФone in particular that embodied several subsystems proposed
by each group. Just for fun, I'll tag some of those subsystems after first mentioning them, with "TAKE
NOTE," and outline the full system last.

Each concept group focused on one of three broad fields: Target Acquisition, Energy
Transmission/Storage, and Effects. By the end of the first day, each group was pumping out concepts
that were hard to swallow on first bite. And yet, recent researches in very unlikely areas made some of
the oddest notions seem more palatable. The Target Acquisition group was typical, beginning
straightforwardly and adding some very advanced ideas.

How can targetsтАФenemy troops and their assetsтАФbe identified quickly and differentiated from your
own so that you know what to zap? Well, we can force the enemy's characteristics to give him away. We
already use infrared (IR) and image enhancement scopes. We already have radar. How long before we
combine IR, radar, and visual light into images that are displayed on a combat infantryman's helmet visor?
The Air Force is already well on the way with its "Heads-Up Display" for fire control and navigation. We
adapted the HUD to the battlefield. If it's stifling, we can air-condition it. If our man wants a zoom
display, he can bloody well ask for it because his helmet computer will understand his spoken
commands. TAKE NOTE.

Among our biggest problems in Vietnam were the mazes of tunnels dug by the enemy. With luck, skill,
and deep-penetration bombs we cleared out some of those tunnels at great expense. Surely there must
be some way to develop a more subtle weapon that will find the tunnels and then go inside after live
targets. What, then; a robot?

Someone put previous researches together. After the work of Von Frisch with bees, scientists learned
how to "talk" to them by using a dummy bee. Evidently, a worker bee's "language" is literally built in to its
nervous system. In other labs, gene-splicing and restructured DNA show promise of modifying a bee's
nervous system. Insects already have the best chemical detectors in the world, for mating and
food-gathering. And bees have made hives in caves for a long, long time. Well?

The panel proposed an insect like a killer bee, bred for lethal sting and aggressiveness, and programmed
to seek certain chemicals common to the enemy, but not to our own troops. It might avoid the smell of
U.S. fatigues, while zeroing in on someone who smells of enemy rations. The bee would have a life span
of a couple of weeks, perhaps less (workers have short life spans as it is). Drop a few packages of those
sterile workers into a region honeycombed with enemy tunnels, and wait for your little live weapons to
acquire targets in the tunnels. If you have pheromone sensors to track the bees from a distance, you can
even locate the tunnel entrancesтАФa great advantage in itself.

This "tailored hornet" concept seems less and less weird, the more we study it. We're not really making
the insects do anything that they don'talready do. We're just nudging them to do it exclusively against the
enemy.

A firefight can overwhelm the footsoldier with too much sound, light, odor, and touch. But if we encase
him in full body armor (TAKE NOTE), he will need some way to use information he gets through his
various sensors. For some years now, experimenters have been improving gadgetry that translates images