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DARPA has a new piece of backpacking gear for you


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Home Forums Gear Forums Gear (General) DARPA has a new piece of backpacking gear for you

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Viewing 11 posts - 1 through 11 (of 11 total)
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  • #1302365
    Kevin Burton
    BPL Member

    @burtonator

    Locale: norcal

    YouTube video

    #1981813
    Bob Gross
    BPL Member

    @b-g-2-2

    Locale: Silicon Valley

    It seems kind of noisy. I'm a little surprised that the military would want that.

    I've used DARPA inventions in the past, and sometimes they are a little –out there–.

    –B.G.–

    #1981814
    W I S N E R !
    Spectator

    @xnomanx

    Good thing our government is spending money on robot cows instead of providing current technology in classrooms across the nation.

    I teach 180 kids a day and have a single virus-plagued laptop with a separate USB keyboard to replace the stock broken one. I'm still running Windows XP, crash when I try to open PDFs, and can't load a one minute video clip in less than 10 minutes.

    Robot cows. I'll be darned.
    And I thought our country was slipping.

    #1981817
    Luke Schmidt
    BPL Member

    @cameron

    Locale: Alaska

    That bad Craig? To hear some folks whining in Dallas you'd think we had the most stingy district in the world and yet we have plenty of computers (and we don't use them as much as we should).

    Back to the mechanical mule idea, lets just say I'm skeptical. How does this thing help a rifle squad in the real world?

    #1981818
    Bob Gross
    BPL Member

    @b-g-2-2

    Locale: Silicon Valley

    "How does this thing help a rifle squad in the real world?"

    It would surely draw enemy fire away from the humans.

    –B.G.–

    #1981819
    Nick Gatel
    BPL Member

    @ngatel

    Locale: Southern California

    Craig,

    I hear you!

    Or we could transfer DARPA's budget to the FAA so we can get a freak'n airplane off the ground.

    #1981835
    Eric Blumensaadt
    BPL Member

    @danepacker

    Locale: Mojave Desert

    DARPA is always looking for "The Next Great Thing" for military applications, like robotic cars (not remotely controlled), etc. Interestingly most new military gear comes from private industry inventing new goodies.

    EX. The sniping gear that is now being adopted is almost all the result of private initiative, such as Kestrel weather/ballistic meter, Horus reticles, immproved long range cartridges, Barrett .50 cal. rifles, etc. Yes there are some some coming from military solitications, like the recent SOCOM sniper rifle. Usually military solitications wind up being things "designed by a committee" in truth and, unfortunately, in operation. Witness the painful gestation of the Bradley Fighting Vehicle. Aaaaarrgghh!

    My son-in-law worked with DARPA on some research and was given a DARPA "challenge coin". They wanted him full time but he preferred academe. I think he was very smart in that decision.

    #1981848
    Dustin Short
    BPL Member

    @upalachango

    You do realize you're all debating the merits of DARPA funding on the direct descendent of ARPANET, using servers that run a descendent of Multics. Not to mention GUIs being invented by DARPA funded scientists.

    As for backpacking the vast majority of people use a GPS to get to at least the trailhead, if not while hiking.

    They also fund the miniaturization and scaling of cancer diagnostics (as well as other cutting edge medical technologies).

    Sure they're "defense" budgeted and they invest in some crazy ideas but "Defense" has been added and removed from the agency a few times. They're charting unknown technological territory and pushing the boundaries of what is possible, sometimes even transforming the world as we know it.

    Eric, they aren't set up to create standard issue equipment for today's army, but rather to find the technologies that will transform the world (and hopefully our military) in several decades time. Hence the "Advanced Research" name.

    Oh and Nick, the FAA received more money than they requested this year…it's our politicians playing games and refusing to pass a proper budget in years that are grounding airplanes. DARPA is only a $2.8B out of a budget of nearly $4Trillion. If anything it's your social security and medical care that is keeping the planes out of the air ;)

    This is Obama's proposal from 2011, so dated, but still a good breakdown, department by department, of where our money is spent:
    http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/02/13/us/politics/2013-budget-proposal-graphic.html?_r=0

    #1981849
    james
    BPL Member

    @jamesbhikes

    Locale: London UK, Greenville USA

    Take a look at one of the earlier versions ;) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mXI4WWhPn-U

    #1981866
    Erik Basil
    BPL Member

    @ebasil

    Locale: Atzlan

    Why is it "Nick's" social security and medicaid? I mean, we know he's really old and everything, but in reality, he's just a drop in the bucket.

    Oh, sorry about the bucket reference, Nick. Damn.

    #1981868
    Stephen M
    BPL Member

    @stephen-m

    Locale: Way up North

    My wife's used to do research for Darpa, some of the stuff she worked on 10 years ago is now in use in the outdoors.

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