There seems to be no end to the weird and king-sized structures populating China’s desert — or to the explanation for these megaprojects.

Take the giant jigsaw-like grids that started the latest wave of interest in these mysteries of the Gobi. Some suggest they are hoaxes perpetrated on the Google Earth-obsessed. Jonathan Hill, a research technician at the Mars Space Flight Facility, notes that the grids can be viewed from space. So maybe they’re used to calibrate China’s spy satellites. In an interview with Life’s Little Secrets, Hill cites this white cross, which was created in the 1960s in Casa Grande, Arizona, by the U.

Read more...

The military’s newest digital training system is gonna open a can of whoop-ass on new recruits. And maybe a sonic blaster, too.

The use of gaming technology, from first-person shooters to virtual worlds, is quickly becoming the military’s mode of choice for training the troops of this generation. But those digital proving grounds come with one major disadvantage: They just don’t hurt enough. That could be about to change, according to a new request for proposals issued by the Army last week, which calls for technology to “create an impulse force that simulates the feel of debris… or bullet strikes.”

The request, called “Haptic Feedback for a Virtual Explosion,” certainly sounds like fodder for a new videogame blockbuster.

Read more...

By the time Sgt. Ryan Begin obtained his medical marijuana card last March, he’d already hit rock bottom.

During his second deployment to Iraq in 2004, Sgt. Begin was evacuated to Maryland’s Bethesda Naval Hospital after enduring an IED attack that left him with a stump for a right arm. The years that followed were a haze of prescription drugs, arrests, overdoses and stints in several mental institutions.

“My life went downhill from the moment I came back from Iraq,” Begin, now a 31-year-old veteran, tells Danger Room.

Read more...

Updated 5:02 pm

The internet lost its collective mind earlier this week, when a Reddit user stumbled across “what appears to be a monumental military/science experiment going on in a Chinese desert, visible on Google Earth.” But the strange and massive box of jagged lines wasn’t the only odd structure carved into the ground — and this week’s swarm of Google-spotters weren’t the first ones to take an interest in the region.

As former CIA analyst Allen Thomson notes, turning on the DigitalGlobe coverage layer in Google Earth shows all the various times the imaging satellite has been asked to inspect that part of the desert. (Here’s a screenshot, above.) “Starting in 2004, somebody has ordered many, many satellite pictures of it,” Thomson tells Danger Room. “Can’t have been cheap.

Read more...

The threat of drone attacks was all that protected CIA agents in the early years of the Agency’s continuing efforts to take out al-Qaeda operatives in Somalia. The thing is, the threat was a hollow one. The drones weren’t there.

That’s just one of the surprising revelations in the latest installment in Army Times reporter Sean Naylor’s investigation of U.S. intelligence operations in Somalia and Kenya.

Read more...

runMobileCompatibilityScript('myExperience1275354483001', 'anId'); brightcove.createExperiences();

Today’s robots move about as fast as your grandma’s morning mall-walking group. Tomorrow’s robots will move as fast as Usain Bolt — all thanks to limbs modeled on ostrich legs.

That’s exactly the point, according to the Darpa-funded researchers behind a collaborative effort underway at MIT and the Florida Institute of Human and Machine Cognition (IHMC). Only one year into a four-year research contract, the team is showing off stunning results that are expected to produce the fastest, most agile ‘bot ever.He’s called FastRunner, and he’ll zip along at 10 times the speed of a standard mobile robot, which clocks a mere 3 miles per hour.

Read more...

It’s an open secret: For years, hackers and feds have been strange bedfellows in the mission to defend military networks. Three-letter agencies set up recruiting booths with schwag at security conferences likeBlack Hat, and feds party it up with the computer nerds at the so-called “underground hacking conference”DefCon after enlisting intelligence help.

Darpa, with the help of former hacker Peiter “Mudge” Zatko, wants to find a way for the government make that alliance even easier. With an eye on hacker-minded researchers who operate on small budgets and in their free time, Darpa is awarding small, short-term contracts to those who have a knack for discovering holes in network defenses. It’ll harness some of the creativity brewing at hacker-conferences and experimental hacker-spaces — which, incidentally, already underpin some of the multi-million, multi-year defense contracts being inked.

The program is calledCyber Fast Track.

Read more...

This is crazy. New photos have appeared in Google Maps showing unidentified titanic structures in the middle of the Chinese desert. The first one is an intricate network of what appears to be huge metallic stripes. Is this a military experiment?

They seem to be wide lines drawn with some white material. Or maybe the dust have been dug by machinery.

Read more...

It’s the latest edition of the military’s eternal quest for “A Thingamajig that Solves All Terrorism.” This time, the Army wants a portable gadget that can detect American foes, liars and other delinquent characters with near-perfect accuracy, and do it without ever making physical contact. Yeah, good luck with that, boys.

In the Pentagon’s latest round of research proposal requests, which offer small businesses cash money in exchange for lofty innovation, the Army is after ideas for a gizmo they’ve dubbed “The Standoff Counter Human Deception Detection Device.” Right now, military interrogators depend largely on the same tools used by law enforcement agencies or Jerry Springer “Is Your Brother Her Lover?” infidelity episodes.

Read more...

It’s January 2012. A convoy of SUVs ferrying American diplomats to a meeting with Iraqi politicians runs over a roadside bomb. Several of the passengers inside are seriously injured. They need to be rescued, now.

But the U.S.

Read more...