got geoint?

Last week, Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta proposed cutting the budget by $487 billion over the next decade. According to the Washington Post, the cuts would result in slower production of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter and fewer purchases of the new Littoral Combat Ship and the Joint High Speed Vessel. Though the Pentagon is aiming to protect spending for building unmanned systems and is even looking to develop new ones. Further underscoring the move towards the expanded use of UAVs, Wired Danger Room recently did a post about a Congressional Research Service report that showcases how “almost one in three U.S. warplanes is a robot.”

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Every week, DARPA seems to be coming out with new innovations that will fundamentally change the way we gather intelligence and deal with the enemy on the battlefield. Last week, we covered DARPA’s new innovations that allow U.S. military helicopters to pinpoint enemy fire coming from the ground. And, this week, we found a story about DARPA developing a new system that would use complex algorithms and advanced computing techniques to essentially replace HUMINT when it comes to collecting on-the-ground intelligence. In addition, DARPA’s “Rapid Eye” caught our attention as well, which based on placing a folding drone inside the nose cone of an intercontinental ballistic missile. This folding drone will then be launched and can reach a distant target within an hour. To read more DARPA news, and check out a video of “Rapid Eye,” we recommend that you check out the rest of this post.

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Recently, we covered a story that Wired’s “Danger Room” broke about DARPA’s “Transparent Underground”, which creates real-time 3-D maps that display “the physical, chemical and dynamic properties of the earth down to 5 kilometer depth.” Cool stuff, no doubt. But, it seems that someone had someone has beaten DARPA to the punch on this one. Since 2005, Geospatial Corporation has been using a proprietary gadget called ‘Smart Probe’ to map deep earth via underground pipes. According to Wired’s “Danger Room,” the company’s probe can be inserted into pipes as small as 1 1/2 inches, and then travel their length while taking super-speedy coordinates — 800 per second — and saving them onto a USB key. The probe is removed, the data extracted, and a 3D map of the underground region is created. The probe can travel through pipes that are empty, or contain fluid or gas. And, it seems to be taking off. Check out this press release announcing Geospatial Corporation’s partnership with Tom Ridge’s firm, Ridge Global. Bigger takeaway: Geospatial Corporation was ahead of the curve…or perhaps they got luck with the timing? What do you think?

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