This is fascinating. Anyone have a clue what it might be?

[8ballrollin]

Or maybe it's a c130 gunship with "Laser Beams" coming out of its eyes.

http://www.defense-update.com/newsca...1207_laser.htm

[8ballrollin]

Ok, here is a good find...This is a rundown on the biometric tagging, tracking and thermal fingerprinting...

Skin Spectral Emissivities Measured
Thermal Fingerprints Determined
“Target” Reacquired 90 Minutes Later

http://blog.wired.com/defense/files/...Continuous.pdf

[SteelBlue]

Originally Posted by MikeWaters

based on the results so far, no.

Or will it?

http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/asiapc...led/index.html

[SoCalCoug]

Maybe it's that gay bomb the Air Force was working on a few years ago. They turn all the terrorists gay with the gay bomb. The terrorists then all dress up in sequins and leather and have a big parade. Then they're easy pickings for a few well-placed missile attacks.

[Jeff Lebowski]

Originally Posted by MikeWaters

Since my mind is like a steel trap when it comes to such things:

It is technology to identify headquarters and safe-houses for Al Qaeda. Real-time imaging combined with computer algorithms identifying movements likely to be associated with terrorist activity. Suspect buildings are placed under surveillance. Attacks made. The end.

I don't have any source that tells me this. It's simply what makes sense.

Highly unlikely. AI like this is horribly difficult and unreliable.

[MikeWaters]

Originally Posted by Jeff Lebowski

Highly unlikely. AI like this is horribly difficult and unreliable.

Hence, the Manhattan project.

How hard would it be to track the ingress and egress of every home, using software? It hardly sounds impossible, if you have the images.

[Jeff Lebowski]

Originally Posted by MikeWaters

Hence, the Manhattan project.

How hard would it be to track the ingress and egress of every home, using software? It hardly sounds impossible, if you have the images.

It's the "identifying movements likely to be associated with terrorist activity" part that I am skeptical about.

[MikeWaters]

Originally Posted by Jeff Lebowski

It's the "identifying movements likely to be associated with terrorist activity" part that I am skeptical about.

Ingress and egress of vehicles from out of neighborhood/city.

Ingress and egress at night.

If you have the data, I think you can form probabilities, esp. based on prior observations.

How do you nail someone? You find the pattern that predicts what he is going to do, or predicts where he will be. Pattern identification is what I think is at the heart of this.

[SteelBlue]

Found this during a google search today:

http://www.weeklystandard.com/weblog...et_killi_1.asp

On Tuesday, a senior U.S. military intelligence officer provided me with the following skeptical analysis of Woodward’s claims:

I have been asking around to a lot of people in military circles who are in a position to know about Woodward’s claims ever since his book officially came out. To make a long story short, none of these people, many of whom served in Iraq during 2006, 2007, and 2008, and are still there, have even the slightest idea what he is talking about when he compares whatever he thinks JSOC and SOCOM did in 2007 to the Manhattan Project during World War II. Without getting into any specifics, the techniques that we use to hunt down and kill HVTs [high-value terrorists] did not change significantly between June 2006 when we killed Zarqawi and January 2007 when Operation FARD AL-QANOON began. I am somewhat perplexed at this point as to just who told Woodward this that led him to adopt this view with such fervor, since it is nothing short of a mystery to many of the people involved with either the Awakening or the surge, which were the two major shifts by US and Iraqi forces on the ground that allowed for a reduction in violence.
Given that a lot of what passes for serious discussion on Iraq in the US popular perception is a mixture of misunderstanding, kabuki, and domestic political tribalism, I’m not too surprised that many policy-makers misunderstand the reasons why violence went down or the dynamics behind them. That said, I really do hope that no politician or prominent analyst starts adopting the position that the reduction of violence has less to do with the counterinsurgency theories of David Galula or the Awakening leadership but were instead due to the utilization of some magical new weaponry by our special ops teams. There are very dangerous consequences to such lines of thought, particularly when we are talking about how to deal with the situation in Pakistan.

[Indy Coug]

This quote is absolutely priceless!

Given that a lot of what passes for serious discussion on Iraq in the US popular perception is a mixture of misunderstanding, kabuki, and domestic political tribalism, I’m not too surprised that many policy-makers misunderstand the reasons why violence went down or the dynamics behind them.