Ask HN: Secret military technology as groundbreaking as the tank and airplane were

[themenace]

Reporter Bob Woodward (whose reporting led to Nixon's resignation) claims that the US military has a new secret technique that's so revolutionary that it's on par with the tank and the airplane.

Here's the relevant quote from his interview with Scott Pelley on 60 Minutes last night:

Woodward: This is very sensitive and very top secret, but there are secret operational capabilities that have been developed by the military to locate, target, and kill leaders [in Iraq].

Pelley: What is this? Some kind of surveillance, some kind of targeted way of taking out just the ... leadership?

Woodward: ... It is the stuff of which military novels are written.

Pelley: Do you mean to say that this special capability is such an advance in military technique and technology that it reminds you of the advent of the tank and the airplane?

Woodward: Yeah.

Quoted from the 60 Minutes video starting at 7 minutes 55 seconds: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/09/04/60minutes/main4415771.shtml

I'd like to ask the readers here what they think this groundbreaking technology might be? I'll start off with these two guesses which might be feasible today:

(1) facial recognition by satellite or high-flying aircraft

(2) wholesale tracking and transcription of all cell phone calls

[gaius]

Facial recognition by satellite is probably impossible. The Rayleigh formula states :

    angular resolution = (1.22 * wavelength) / diameter of lens. 

Now I don't know what altitude a spy satellite is at, so let's say 100 miles == 160,000 metres. Let's also say that you need a resolution of 1cm in order to recognize a face (probably you actually need better than that). Wavelength of light, to make the maths easy, 5x10^-7m.

    tclsh[1]% / [* 1.22 5e-07] [atan [/ 0.01 160000]]
    9.760000000000012

So that's a 10m lens, assuming you could make an optically perfect lens that big and get it into orbit. If you wanted a 1mm resolution, you would need a 100m lens. And you would probably want the entire spectrum of visible light. And I've probably guessed the altitude way too low as well...

Oh, and your subject would need to be looking straight up at the moment your satellite passed overhead on a perfectly clear day :-)

[evgen]

A 10m mirror in orbit is not a big issue if it was done as a segmented mirror (e.g. what is planned for the Webb telescope) but to get to the "really cool" stage I would say that they would have had to deploy some sats that can work together to perform long baseline optical interferometry to get the same results as that 100m lens.

[gaika]

Now there are super-resolution techniques that allow you to see beyond the diffraction limit.

[gaius]

Feel free to post the relevant maths :-)

[gaika]

That's not a joke http://www.google.com/search?q=super+resolution

[noonespecial]

FTA: "I'd love to go through the details, but I'm not going to," Woodward replied. The details, Woodward says, would compromise the program.

This clearly indicates that it is not like the airplane and tank. The difference is that with the airplane and tank, even when you know the enemy has them, you're still hosed. If knowing about this "secret" is all it takes to stop it from working, then its not very revolutionary at all.

[gaika]

Tracking people by their shadows :) http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1052250/Could...

[utnick]

Large scale satellite video recording of the major parts of Iraq?

So lets say a car bomb blows up at somewhere, you can then rewind and track the driver of said car bomb over the past couple of months.

[michael_dorfman]

(3) an exaggeration of massive proportions by Woodward and/or his sources

[justthinking]

Small Micro sized remote controlled devices (air & ground based) that can provide both video and audio surveillance. The video and audio can be collected, stored and processed. A single voice can be isolated in a crowd; a single face in group; Multiple targets tracked. The technology already exists to this and more ...

[gojomo]

I shudder to think of the prize for guessing right.

[menloparkbum]

sharks with laser beams attached to their heads?

[gojomo]

Iraq has so little coastline, they're probably using landsharks.

[hopeless]

Rabbits with lasers -- they'll overrun any country in a Hitchcock-esque nightmare within months (assuming either the lasers are genetic or they're super smart).

[anonymous17]

(3) 'Active' optical camo for stryker vehicles which gives them near invisibility — SF and scout platoons can creep up to an enemy location and then just sit, waiting for maximum kill opportunity.

[anonymous17]

(3) 'Active' optical camo for stryker vehicles which gives them near invisibility — SF and scout platoons can creep up to an enemy location and then just sit, waiting for maximum kill opportunity.

[hopeless]

Actually, it's probably more along the lines of the Future Soldier initiative -- maybe a viable exoskeleton or an advance in materials towards that end.

[hs]

Despite these military improvements, the largest empire ever was built on bow+arrow ... and such barbaric nation lasted for centuries

[delackner]

We can only hope it is not space-based, as China, Russia, and the US are already dangerously close to a new arms race into orbit.

[DanielBMarkham]

Let's not.