One very serious problem facing American and other armed forces in the field is the threat of being attacked by rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs). These big guns are difficult to defend against, unless you've got some very fast moving and precise weaponry. So how's a soldier supposed to defend against a volley of one or more RPGs? Well, Control Products' freshly patented idea is to use a serious of smaller low-altitude rockets equipped with Kevlar parachutes form a slow moving curtain, which would reduce add drag to and the speed of the speeding RPG. While this sounds like a good and inexpensive countermeasure, we're not yet convinced by the cocktail napkin patent filing sketches, but hey, that hasn't stopped harebrained government check-writers from funding all other manner of whacked out technologies.

[Via NewScientistTech]

After 15 years in the making, our footsoldiers are finally getting the proper location-based gear that they need. Noah Shachtman, one of the finest experts on military technology out there, has just informed us via his blog, DefenseTech, that one Army battalion will be equipped with a bunch of wearable electronics, known collectively as the Land Warrior. The team leaders of the 4th Battalion, 9th Infantry division (better known as the "Manchus", who are slated to be deployed to Iraq next year) will get the nearly 20-pound getup that includes weapon-mounted sensors, voice communications, GPS, a full-color visual interface via the monocle, and a long-range gun sight on the monocle as well. While only the team leaders will get the whole kit and caboodle for now, every soldier will get a GPS beacon, alerting the higher-ups to their sub rosa whereabouts.

This whole "war on terror" thing sometimes reminds us a bit of that comic "Spy vs. Spy" -- each time we turn around, another company comes out with a way to ratchet espionage tech up a notch. We thought that the Lethal Frisbee UAV was cool, but we just found something that might in fact be a bit sweeter. Meet the "Phantom Sentinel," the latest from VeraTech Aero in Minnesota, which is a boomerang-like device for spying on our crafty foes on the other side. Apparently, as the UAV rotates it becomes nearly invisible in the sky while its cam takes quick snapshots of the scene below, then transmits them back to a soldier on the ground. We're assuming that those crazy goggles the other G.I. is wearing in this photo are able to translate that dizzying number of spinning images to something that a human brain can make sense of.

[Via DefenseTech]