By David Crane david (at) defensereview (dot) com March 31, 2016 Last updated on 4/01/16. DefenseReview (DR) has been running a Direct Action Gear (DAG) Dust Heavy Duty Small Tactical Backpack in Hyde Definition Pencott-Badlands arid digital combat camouflage pattern for the last 6-8 months, but it actually became our favorite day pack immediately. We really love it (pack AND camo pattern), …

By David Crane david (at) defensereview (dot) com Image(s) Credit: Lucas Film December 29, 2015 The Washington Post (WaPo) recently published the mother of all “artificially-intelligent-robots-may-very-well-destroy-us-(humankind)” articles with quotes by everyone from philosopher Nick Bostrom to astrophysicist Stephen Hawking. The piece coincides nicely with, and perhaps even validates, DefenseReview’s (DR) recent piece discussing the subject, titled Rise of the Robot …

By David Crane david (at) defensereview (dot) com Image(s) Credit: DARPA, Hemdale Film Corporation, Orion Pictures and Jim Channon December 18, 2015 Last updated on 12/19/15. It would appear that the DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) and the DoD (Department of Defense) are well on their way to developing “Terminator”-like robotic warfighters and UAS/UAV/drone aircraft, along with a Skynet-type system …

By David Crane david (at) defensereview (dot) com Photo(s) Credit: Huazhong University of Science and Technology and Business Insider November 12, 2015 Last updated on 11/12/15. As if we didn’t already have enough to worry about with the Chinese, lately. Defense One just published a piece on a new Chinese “stealth material breakthrough” that has the potential to create some …

By David Crane david (at) defensereview (dot) com Images Credit: DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) September 24, 2015 Last updated on 9/25/15. In the last two days, a couple of articles have come out on new military-grade laser weapons coming to fruition, specifically manned and unmanned aircraft-mounted laser weapons. The first piece, published by Defense One discusses General Atomics …

By David Crane david (at) defensereview (dot) com Images Credit: Boeing and “bird-man”, Newgrounds September 20, 2015 Last updated on 9/21/15. As long as we’re on the subject of Predator-type adaptive camo (camouflage)/visual cloaking tech, we might as well discuss a little Star Trek tech, as well. A Boeing engineer and senior research fellow named Brian J. Tillotson was awarded …

By David Crane david (at) defensereview (dot) com Photo Credit: Berkeley Lab September 19, 2015 Here we go again with more Predator tech. Just 10 days ago, DefenseReview (DR) reported on a UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering (JSE) research team designing and developing a new adaptive camouflage/visual cloaking technology in the form of an “extremely thin dielectric metasurface …

By David Crane david (at) defensereview (dot) com Image(s) Credit: University of California-San Diego (UCSD) Jacobs School of Engineering) September 9, 2015 Last updated on 9/10/15. As if armed/weaponized UAS/UAV/drone aircraft operated by law enforcement agencies on U.S. soil isn’t dystopian and scary enough, Inverse magazine just published a piece on University of California San Diego (UCSD) Jacobs School of …

By David Crane david (at) defensereview (dot) com June 24, 2015 Torrey Pines Logic (TPL) recently introduced some of the coolest little combat optics DefenseReview (DR) has seen in awhile at NDIA SOFIC 2015 (Special Operations Forces Industry Conference 2015). They’re all part of the TPL T10 Mini Thermal Imager family, and include the T10-M (50° FOV, 30Hz video), T10-N …

By David Crane david (at) defensereview (dot) com June 21, 2015 Last updated on 6/24/15. Speaking of IR (InfraRed) light tech at NDIA SOFIC 2015 (Special Operations Forces Industry Conference 2015), DefenseReview (DR) ran across some very interesting flexible 3D camouflage that’s multispectral, so it also works in the thermal/IR and near-IR/night-vision light spectrums, not just the visible light spectrum. Developed by …