By Kristel Halter, Columbia News Service
NEW YORK -- One device can translate the phrase “Everyone stop talking” into 53 languages. Another can purify one gallon of sewage water with a mere pen. And a special suit can power legs up a staircase or over endless miles of desert, minimizing muscle work.
Inventors are developing gadgets worthy of a James Bond movie to help the U.S. military wage war on new terrain. While designers of military gear always seek to be on the cutting edge in thinking up new creations, their task has grown more urgent as the U.S. military faces an unpredictable enemy in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Aside from actual weaponry, much support technology is being developed to help soldiers cope with survival matters like extreme temperatures, disease and heavy loads.
“We never know what the future is going to hold,” said Janet Walker, a spokesperson for the Defense Department’s research and development agency.
With a $2.8 billion budget for fiscal year 2004, the agency brings technologies from laboratories into the hands of the military, a turnover that can take three months to more than 10 years, depending on the relevance and complexity of the invention.
“When the United States goes into a conflict, like Operation Iraqi Freedom, we look at ongoing programs and see if we might be working on something that could be used and quickly matured,” Walker said.
Among the futuristic technologies that recently made their debut on the battlefield was a cooling-heating vest that regulates body temperature in the most severe climates. The vest, which has fluid-carrying tubes that push water through a small cooling-heating unit, is worn mostly by soldiers sitting in sweltering tanks.
And now Special Operations forces can wear helmets that allow them to communicate without a suspended microphone or headset. A dime-sized sensor inside the helmet picks up sounds, allowing soldiers to communicate with their comrades while at the same time hearing everything that goes on around them.
The Army has also started using a bandage that helps stop hemorrhaging, a leading cause of death among soldiers. The HemCon bandage uses chitosan, a shrimp-based product, that causes blood to clot rapidly, and so gives medics extra time to rush a wounded soldier to a hospital.
The Defense Department also plans to deploy a new ground-based laser technology that can locate snipers within a six-mile range by picking up on their gunshot-generated shockwaves and calculating the wave’s source. “We’re continuing work on that effort,” Walker said.
Other inventions actually were inspired by Hollywood science fiction, such as the so-called exoskeleton, which aims to allow soldiers to move three times faster while carrying more than double their current loads.
“We first saw the technology in “Aliens” and “Predator” movies and said, ‘We need that!’” said Jean-Louis DeGay, an equipment specialist with the U.S. Army Soldier Systems Center in Natick, Mass.
The exoskeleton, which fastens around the feet and waist, sports pistons and a small internal combustion engine that allow it to mimic movements of the legs. The suit’s added power means soldiers use up to 40 percent less energy. “If I want to climb up stairs, all I do is put my foot on the stair and make the climbing motion,” DeGay said.
Weapons and ammunition are fastened to the suit rather than a soldier’s body, lightening their load. The first exoskeleton has just been produced under a $50 million contract, and the device is expected to be introduced to the infantry between 2012 and 2015.
As for those with limited lingual skills, hand-held “phraselators” the size of handheld computers can communicate roughly 15,000 phrases in 53 languages. Phrases are organized into modules addressing specific missions. For example, the module for military police holds a different set of phrases than, say, the one for humanitarian relief.
About 800 to 1,000 of the devices have already been distributed to American soldiers, who often use the force protection phrase module, said Shannon Dooman, a spokesperson for VoxTec, the Annapolis, Md.-based company contracted by the Defense Department to manufacture the technology.
Sample phrases include: “Come out with your hands up,” and “Show me your identification.”
Protecting one’s health is always a big concern when in the field, so Marines are now using water purification pens the size of a small flashlight that can disinfect up to one gallon of water per application, and can be used on up to 300 liters of liquid. Water purification technology has been around for some 20 years, but the equipment was too large, said Katie Bolek, the marketing director of MIOX, the Albuquerque, N.M., company contracted by the Defense Department to manufacture the pens.
Soldiers can now scoop up filthy water and soon make it potable. “It can treat the most horrible water, like sewage,” Bolek said. The pen’s special solution takes about 15 minutes to kill ordinary bacteria, and about four hours to wipe out more resistant parasites that even chlorine and iodine tablets cannot destroy.
Last fall, 1,000 pens were distributed to the Marines. The Defense Department then ordered an additional 7,000 pens for the Navy, Air Force and Army, and orders continued to roll in, Bolek said.
Some of the technology is available to civilians as well -- “phraselators” sell for $2,300 and purification pens for $129.95. But developers stress that the main aim of their work is to help U.S. forces win at battle.
“These technologies are helping today’s soldiers transition into the future force,” said DeGay. “We will take individual soldiers, strip them down, and build them into an F-16 on legs.”