Worlds MOST FEARED DARPA Technology for US Military (Message to world) 2016

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[Music] what if American warfighters could stop a rocket-propelled grenade spot the enemy with binoculars in the sky March all day with superhuman strength swim twice as fast with half the effort sound impossible one shadowy US agency is making all this and more DARPA the agency that's America's secret weapon US forces it's a dangerous world out there but the American warfighter has someone watching his back even though he may never have heard the name drive past this complex on a street near Washington DC and it looks like any other office building there's no logo on the outside no hint to who works here DARPA the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency it's the R&D arm of the Defense Department DARPA enables the game-changing military breakthroughs that others dismiss as impossible if I have an idea for a new tank DARP is not going to be interested in that they're gonna say go to a company that makes tanks but if I have an idea for a hover tank or an invisible tank and I can show a reasonable scientific plan to get to that end goal DARPA is the one who's gonna fund that DARPA has granted National Geographic filmmakers unprecedented access to closely guarded labs remote proving grounds and underwater test areas at DARPA headquarters we surrender our cell phones at the visitor control center edge of edge then we are escorted to the only room where interviews can be conducted sometimes our questions hit a brick wall you know I don't go down that road the security reason don't want to tell you the secret sauce um yeah can i no talk about that let's not talk about that fun for now from developing ways to spot hidden threats in Iraq to designing hypersonic jets that can fly more than five times the speed of sound DARPA tackles what they called DARPA hard problems a problem it's really difficult you just say that's too hard to do and if you if you answer the question like that then it's a DARPA heart problem the highest risk possible is when you put resources on something and you have no idea whether it's going to happen those are DARPA heart problems the problems that are too hard to solve DARPA hard we kill them the world faces a new kind of terror that has transformed the nature of combat America's war fighters have an urgent need for new weapons and defenses to fight a hidden enemy whose attacks are unexpected and deadly case in point how to defend our troops against rocket-propelled grenades in Iraq RPGs are a leading cause of combat death they are cheap to make fast RPGs can be fired from anywhere and raced to their targets in seconds a seemingly unstoppable threat DARPA solution a revolutionary technology called Iron Curtain Iron Curtain was developed to protect lives lives of people in armored vehicles lion armored vehicles against threats such as rocket pelegrin aids many RPGs are so powerful they can penetrate a concrete wall or a foot of solid steel it takes an RPG about a tenth of a second to travel 15 yards to its target DARPA steam has to develop something fast and powerful enough to detect track and destroy it in a split second just inches from the vehicle itself but can it be done at a remote site on the Utah Salt Flats scientists prepare to test the iron curtain system on an armored Humvee it's about to be subjected to an attack by simulated RPG fire as the RPG is flying in the first sensor that sees it is the radar this is the radar antenna so they can track the RPG as it comes in the second sensor that sees it is there's all along here there's an optical sensor and as the RPG flies underneath we're able to select at the exact aim point the countermeasure then has an effect on the exact point that you want it to now since we can't have explosive countermeasures on the test that we're doing out here today we use instead a system that we call the diode gun and we set the lights in sequence so that they travel down at the exact same speed that the countermeasure would be going so we can see then with the high-speed camera that's operating at about 30,000 frames per second we can see precisely where the countermeasure would have hit the RPG today's test will require pinpoint radar detection of the incoming threat and an instant trigger of the countermeasure system before the test the equipment must be calibrated they aim the air cannon precisely using a laser okay that's good a little bit to the right that looks good we have an autonomous system that's GPS guided the guide system around the track so that we can conduct our experiments completely unmanned in three two one go [Music] all right let's watch the high-speed only by examining the data can technicians tell if Iron Curtain worked in the critical time frame required footage shot by their high-speed camera indicates that the sensors detected the incoming RPG threat the countermeasures would have effectively been deployed in time to stop the RPG in about 1/10 of a second [Music] the Utah test of the iron curtain system using simulated RPGs is a success but can Iron Curtain stop deadly live RPG fire in the case of Iron Curtain we have had several occasions where the system didn't work as planned and the RPG did go high order and destroyed all of our apparatus and you just pick up the pieces in this case literally pick up the pieces and you push on in June 2008 the iron curtain system is tested again with live fire we had a lot of confidence in the system although I won't say that my heart wasn't up here we took a shot we detected with the radar the optical system went on told our countermeasure where to shoot we shot it held our breath and sure enough we've done at the RPG when over wiped the RDX that explosive off the vehicle and congratulate ourselves and on that particular Humvee we only had 3/8 inch armor which is as much and we shot five RPGs at it so you can see impact points of five RPGs on that vehicle and we've obviously we doubted them all we still have our vehicle what exactly is the countermeasure dropping to disable the RPG that remains DARPA secret and behind-the-scenes DARPA found a way to give our warfighters a futuristic helping hand on patrol in Iraq America's soldiers can fall prey to sniper fire to shield themselves our war fighters must rely on 30 pounds of body armor for protection with the rest of their gear they must shoulder as much as 125 pounds to give them the extra strength they need DARPA goes to a place where fact meets science fiction scientist Steve Jacobson at raytheon-sarcos and is working to create a new breed of soldier with superhuman powers his creation the exoskeleton combines a man and a machine to offer extraordinary strength if you put 200 pounds of body armor on somebody right now they're gonna walk about 300 feet if you put 200 pounds of body armor on somebody wear an exoskeleton they can walk all day the exoskeleton mirrors the human body a computer network serves as its nervous system hydraulic valves and actuators function as muscles and its skeleton is made of aluminum the challenge of putting a person inside a machine is a daunting one know when you put a machine around person there's all sorts of places where it interferes with an emotion it may have braids your skin when you first put it on and it's not powered up it feels very heavy because you're wearing a 200 pound robot which is a lot of weight already to power up power up as soon as they power it up all that weight goes away and suddenly you feel like Rex Jamison where's what it's probably the most advanced design currently being tested by a human operator the risk is that it's extraordinarily fast and extraordinarily strong so if it decides to do something you know I can't fight it the exoskeleton is designed to amplify the operators movement without blocking it to read his motion enhance it and make him stronger the superhuman stamina of the exoskeleton makes it a priceless military asset it will allow a soldier to lift 100 pounds with no more effort than lifting 10 when I'm lifting heavy things with the exoskeleton it's surprising you look at the object in your brain thinks you can't pick that up you don't feel any stronger than exascale them but then then you reach out and pick it up and there's no effort at all and it continually surprises me it feels like I'm looking a problem how much load are you filling it pulling 200 pounds moving things is one of the large forgotten jobs in the military and the exoskeleton is designed to help an individual soldier move boxes all day long without getting tired 35 pound ammunition can you know a normal man can lift without much problem but after lifting 20 of them they're gonna get really tired and it requires no effort on my part so I could do it forever basically by reducing fatigue the exoskeleton can enhance the combat performance of the warfighter and the exoskeleton is more than strong it's light on its feet the fun part for me about operating excellent are the speakers like a punching bag and the soccer ball it's very quick and very precise and surprising given how much power it has how I can follow you so quickly the exoskeleton is the best robot in the world right now because there's no other robot in the world that you can climb in to move really do work and not get tired one of the joys of the exoskeleton is watching someone's face who sees it for the first time because to them this has been science fiction but all of a sudden science fiction is real they see a machine on a person and they know tomorrow's here the army is adapting the exoskeleton for supply handling to help our troops bear the burdens of war but strength and stamina are not enough a war fighters survival depends on locating the enemy a new DARPA breakthrough answers that need for our troops survival means spotting an enemy sniper on a rooftop before he spots you when Iraq started it was very clear in the urban area and that what people really wanted was surveillance but they didn't want from ten miles away they just wanted to know what was on the next block DARPA solution the wasp it's no bigger than a toy but looks can be deceiving the thing I think that makes wasps so unique is it has all the same features that are found in a full-size airplane it has an altimeter it has a gyro it has GPS it has a magnetometer all of these things that are found in full-size airplanes are found in a package less than 26 inches and weighs at less than a pound each stage or block of the wasp produced by the Aero vironment corporation was supervised by DARPA program manager Leo Christodoulou this is the block 3 production aircraft this aircraft has multiple capability with modular payloads such as this one which is a high-resolution camera but he could also have a night-vision camera or indeed he could have an extra battery to give it increased endurance think of it as airborne binoculars for the infantry it has the capability to accomplish complex missions with high degree of autonomy in cases where it loses communication and has no instructions you will go to a rally point it will go to a specific location in wait for you there the wasp has already proved effective on covert combat missions where it can be used to help detect snipers or terrorist hideouts one of the key design objectives of the wasp was the ability for a single warfighter to quickly efficiently and easily assemble it and fly in in very short order what I have in the backpack here is a micro air vehicle that a single man can operate here's the air vehicle itself this is a night camera and this is the camera we use for flying in the day this is the controller I use to view the video and control the aircraft in Wilson flight and this is the RF unit which sends up the command to the aircraft and then receives video I'm here at a test range in California we're gonna send this armored vehicle somewhere out on the range way out there and I'm gonna find it with this the target vehicle doesn't stop until it's far beyond his line-of-sight lost in the distance okay I've done the pre-flight system checks are good and we're gonna launch the vehicle and go find that guy powered by an electric motor the wasp block three can travel at a speed of up to 40 miles per hour it's capable of flying for forty-five minutes to a distance as far as three miles away from its operator so I'm looking down the road here yeah we're just seeing where he might have gone or look at the side left right and I'll just keep looking around I'm inside view camera here and I'm just looking to see if we can find him there is there's the vehicle we were able to find the vehicle even more surprising than how well the wasp flies is the way it lands when the wasp lands it's designed to break apart in order to absorb air and energy very much like a NASCAR is designed to break apart when they crash that's the way we design our UAVs such that when they break apart the energy of the door the piece parts may fall apart but then you can pick them up and you can put the airplane right back together again and it's ready to fly [Music] [Applause] [Music] not only was it darker hard technologically but he was DARPA fast in terms of getting it into the hands of the operators we needed to turn this aircraft into a robust tough little bird that could take everything that they were fighting my family with the wasp DARPA helps put the element of surprise on our side and surprise has always been part of DARPA DNA since a day that shook the world DARPA was founded when one of our enemies took us by surprise 50 years ago we had Sputnik launched by the mother Russians which greatly surprised this country we never believed that they were going to get to space first tarp is primary mission from the very beginning this would be an agency whose job is to prevent technological surprise to the United States over the years we have found that the best way to prevent technological surprise is to create it so we have gone out and created surprise and in order to prevent it from happening to us DARPA gave America the high-tech edge with breakthroughs like the Saturn moon rocket that began as a DARPA program and stealth technology the reason you have a GPS receiver the reason you have cellphones so small because DARPA created the technology many years ago many other innovations that DARPA helped to pioneer from the computer mouse to the Internet have transformed our lives has been involved from the very beginning in enabling technologies if we could have a sticker it would say DARPA inside and and that sticker would go to every high-technology product there probably is DARPA is quest for advanced technology ratcheted up after the deadly attacks of 9/11 suddenly we faced a determined and elusive enemy who posed an unnerving new threat I actually worked in the Pentagon at the time and after 9/11 word came down that it was imperative that we had systems that could get places fast over long distances DARPA envisioned a game-changer that could fly over 4,000 miles per hour twice as fast as the fastest jet many times there's targets of opportunity and you have very little time to deal with those targets the system that can fly four thousand miles per hour from the continental United States has the ability to engage those targets in a very brief amount of time in less than two hours this extraordinary aircraft is fly 9,000 miles to carry a 12,000 pound payload to the enemy but is such a revolutionary aircraft even possible to find out DARPA chose as one of its partners Lockheed Martin a company that has developed many secret aircraft including the u-2 spy plane and the sr-71 blackbird first aircraft to fly over 2,000 miles per hour their facility called skunk works is famous for its innovation and also for its secrecy the access we're offering here today is really unprecedented this facility has well over a million square feet in just a few windows the reason for that is we want to prevent physical access from people looking inside the windows but also to prevent sounds from being transmitted that sounds could oscillate through the windows and transmit classified or sensitive conversations occasionally we have security areas that require supplemental security protection in this case we have white noise being piped in to prevent classified or highly sensitive discussions from being overheard by a casual passerby few discussions at skunkworks cover subjects as sensitive as this one a bold new aircraft concept design known as the HTV 3x Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne has the formidable challenge of developing the scramjet engine a scramjet is purely a supersonic combustion ramjet to put that in perspective it's almost like trying to keep match lit in a hurricane because the speed of the air blowing past it is in fact supersonic instead of being restricted to a launch pad like a missile the HTV 3x will have the game-changing capability to take off and land from any regular runway offering strategic flexibility in a national emergency to take off and land safely on runways calls for a relatively large wing but to fly at very high speeds demands a much smaller wing can we make the control services larger how to create one aircraft to do both poses a double edge design problem we recently returned from the Lockheed Martin low-speed wind tunnel where we tested our low speed aerodynamics for the HTV 3x low speed testing for the falcon program is part of making Falcon an airplane as opposed to a missile an aircraft must take off and land gracefully which means it must fly at low speeds to use existing runways and so therefore low-speed testing of these high-speed configurations is critical let's get back together two days and let's see what we got we bought from there the details of the Falcon project remain a closely guarded secret and DARPA scientists intend to keep them that way [Music] while DARPA enhances our potential for hypersonic flight they also set their sights on helping our combat swimmers these war fighters often swim long distances to shore before entering combat and risk arriving too exhausted to safely complete their mission in the animal world there are some extremely efficient swimmers and we started looking at those animals to learn how they swim and see if we can transfer the methods that they use over to people this is a pretty close copy of a penguin way elliptical in profile it was actually a failure didn't work at all in this case this wing is very similar to what you'd find on the back of a whale on his tail very efficient very hard to manufacture so we actually designed it out finally this wing has the aspect ratio of the whale's tail wing without the bumps on the front this is our finished wing our finished product here is something easy to produce but performs just as well as a nature inspired wing the resulting device called power swim harnesses human muscle for swimming as never before with swim fins a combat swimmer burns 400 calories an hour but with power swim he burns less than 100 DARPA program manager J Lowell shows how the power swim device operates the way this works is you buckle this into your leg you have these Springs that help maintain the angle of attack of the wing appropriately in this back stabilizer foil which gives your use something to kind of push against with your lower part of your leg and you're essentially going to bend your knees and drive this spar away from and towards your body when you're doing that the foils are catching the water it propels the whole device forward at the Naval Surface Warfare Center in Maryland J Lowell has set up a speed comparison test a diver using power swim against a barefoot diver and one with swim fins the three swimmers move into position for the race an underwater signal serves as the starting button like a shot is taken from the start the diver with power swim finishes first the one with swim fins is left behind and the barefoot one isn't even close the reason we feel that the power swim device is a very significant advance that perhaps the most significant propulsion advance since the swim fin is that we've managed to improve the efficiency of that diver from 10 percent to 75 percent efficient anything that we can give the Marine that will get him to shore 50% faster while we're reducing his workload 50 percent is going to ensure that he is completely mission capable when he reaches that shore power swim allows combat divers to swim up to twice as fast and four or five times farther than before without getting tired it means they can be dropped off at greater distances from shore so they're less likely to be detected by the enemy but this creates another problem because they're farther out at sea combat swimmers face a higher risk of getting lost and it's imperative they know exactly where they are at all times to solve this new DARPA hard problem the agency developed another breakthrough the tactical underwater navigation system or tons the tons unit combines an advanced compass and depth gauge with a state-of-the-art sonar system giving the warfighter his exact position at all times the thing that's nice about DARPA is is there's no limits to what you can try the sky's the limit and no idea is a stupid idea and so all that does is set all these projects up for success in the long run because they listen to everybody DARPA innovations enable our combat swimmers to steer a safe course through hostile waters and in Iraq DARPA is helping our war fighters to face their deadliest threat improvised explosive devices or IEDs have killed over 1,700 Americans and wounded many more they can be buried by the side of the road hidden in ordinary objects and triggered by cellphones IEDs pose an invisible and ever-present danger the DARPA heart problem locate these explosive devices without setting foot inside the deadly blast radius DARPA solution the math for micro air vehicle when the Mavs successful flight test was first publicized I got a call from a warfighter currently deployed who said we need that now the MAV was developed to have a unique hover and stair capability they really needed something that would allow them to see over the next hill or around the next corner the ability to go to a target area and persistently stare at that area and give them situational awareness weighing only four pounds the Mavs remarkable motor delivers as much power as a 25 pound lawnmower engine and literally sucks the MAV through the air air is sucked into that duct by this fan that's creating the aerodynamic lift the ducted fan air vehicle configuration provides vertical flight capability plus it has no exposed moving parts for safety around soldiers Marines and airmen it can actually fly backwards forwards anything it needs to do to compensate for the wind and to put its sensor on on its target the MAV sensors include a camera that can detect and recognize man-sized targets at more than 800 feet in daylight and more than 400 feet at ninth but today Honeywell program manager Vaughn Fulton and his team will determine whether the MAV can locate a much smaller target a concealed simulated ie D in a nearby control center technicians monitor the mass data we're gonna simulate there's a suspicious device [Music] using its heat sensitive infrared camera the math can detect the temperature differential between the ground and an alien object in the dirt [Music] they spot their target the mavs infrared camera detects what the naked eye the [Music] [Music] [Music] man brings a game-changing technology to the battlefield something the enemy has not seen before and a capability they're not ready to combat our troops face another deadly threat and unlike IEDs this one's not man-made with temperatures in Iraq and Afghanistan that can reach 120 degrees Fahrenheit sometimes the environment itself is the enemy thousands of our troops have suffered from heat exhaustion DARPA likes to support projects that will be game changers in other words give us a real advantage and if you talk to any soldier who has been deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan you ask them what is the major limiting factor for their activities over there they'll say heat heat can limit physical performance and hamper judgment and unless the body is quickly cooled heat stroke can lead to brain damage or death at a Stanford University lab scientists dennis grande and craig heller have developed a remarkable breakthrough we have to be able to run experiments under realistic conditions we're not in Iraq so we have a hot room and then we simulate battle conditions by the clothing that is worn a biological chemical warfare suit heavily insulated for protection offers the worst case scenario for overheating in battle now what this is is going to be a device that will measure your body temperature at the level of your heart because all blood coming back from all regions of the body comes to the heart so that's the best integrated temperature of your body so when you get this all the way up your nose the end of it is going to be right at the level of your heart and for good measure how about a helmet okay so now we're gonna go into the hot room and hot room is at 42 centigrade that's about a hundred and eight Fahrenheit so a nice cool day in the desert okay Steve we use the treadmill here on the Left treadmill up to a 13% grade now pretty good workout well we have Steve exercising in the heat and we're leave him in there exercising until his core temperature gets up to 39 degrees that's about a hundred and two Fahrenheit so would represent a healthy fever when his core temperature reaches 102 degrees Fahrenheit he is even more heavily insulated okay Steve we've now simulated a full biological chemical warfare gear by insulating your hands which would normally be covered with gloves your face and head which would be covered by gas masks goggles helmet and your feet which would be covered by boots how do you feel miserable huh Steve is left to rest in the hot room but his temperature still hovers at a feverish 102 degrees Fahrenheit okay Steve times up so let's let's make you feel a little bit better Craig will cool Steve off using a revolutionary device they call it the glove the gloves are activated so now we can see how much heat we can actually suck out of your hands all right the cool water which is perf using this metal cylinder is going to take heat away from your hands the hot blood is coming into your hand it's being distributed in this big network of blood vessels just under the palm and that heats being transferred to the metal cone the cool blood is going right back to your heart and being distributed through the core of your body feels good even though he is heavily insulated as the cool water circulates through the glove Steve's temperature immediately starts to drop and will soon reach a safe level the glove that can protect warfighters from heatstroke can also save the lives of those suffering from extreme cold including combat swimmers who sometimes spend eight hours in freezing water to perform a mission [Music] how are you feeling at this point feeling a little bit cold Dennis Kron is testing whether he can stop research assistant Tim Wolfe from shivering even in the chill of an ice bath that simulates the extreme cold a combat swimmer must survive let me see your hands here yeah you can feel they've pretty much closed down let's take a look at the palm on the infrared here your face is cooling off pretty well your nose definitely shut down can you reach over and feel your ears compared to this rest of the skin temperature and they're very much colder your core temperature is starting to fall down now and you can see it's a pretty decent decline so I think that it's about time to start putting some heat in and see what happens with that plane will that work for you the way we're gonna do it is stick your hand into this little device here that creates a slight negative pressure what that does is it draws blood into your hand and so you've got your arterial blood flow out through here being warmed up in these heat exchangers then going right back to your body core where it's circulating around and the heart delivers it to the core organs okay and you look on the infrared you can see little spots on your arms are starting to warm up like right there and your elbow region superficial veins are starting to light up as the warm blood returning to the heart is warming the tissues as it passes it only took about 30 seconds in a minute before I started to feel a lot more comfortable I feel a little cold still but I'm not sure right which is a good thing I think that this was a real situation and I was really stuck in cold water like this that these things will be a real lifesaver as dangerous as the physical stress of extreme environments is the mental stress of combat there too DARPA readies the warfighter to step into harm's way [Applause] to help our troops prevail in a second-by-second ordeal of combat DARPA experts have developed a remarkable innovation in mission rehearsal you're being transported out to the area on the way there you open up your laptop and now you see a full 3d recreation of the area you're going to be in you've never been there before it's been built up for actually accurate data so that when you land on on the ground it feels like you've already been there before the real world 3d simulation combines the latest satellite data ground photographs and drone footage for a depiction of the combat site so accurate the warfighter can rehearse his mission as never before just the ability to be able to travel the terrain in a mission set in a virtual environment is invaluable walking training never seen before has its own hazards but if I could have just the rehearsal of walking the terrain that's tremendous the real-world 3d simulation gives the warfighter an extra edge to avoid deadly surprises in combat another critical operation for troops is intelligence gathering through surveillance missions but flying over enemy territory is extremely dangerous a recent DARPA breakthrough the a 160 can conduct surveillance at high altitude over long distances without placing a human life at risk the a 160 does not have a pilot in the traditional sense the people in the ground control station including myself have control over the bird through a data link where we give it air speed heading velocity commands the pilotless a 160 can hover at 20,000 feet and has set a world record for a helicopter of its size flying 18.7 hours without refueling a 160 is is clearly a game-changer its ability to take off and land vertically and it's very very long endure since high altitude operation gathers together a set of capabilities that no other aircraft has ever had before today at a secure landing field in Victorville California the a1 60 will be tested carrying a payload that is itself a breakthrough a radar system called Forrester the Foresters most impressive capability is the ability to see through a number of layers of tree foliage single double canopy will go through that like a hot knife through butter so any place where people can hide in foliage we can find today's flight test will assess whether the a 160 can safely rotate the massive forest or antenna can the a 160 deploy the antenna for radar detection at various angles without endangering its stability in flight the aircraft is towed into positions the technicians await the take-off command shadowed by a chase helicopter the a 160 carrying the Forester antennae who climbs to its programmed altitude for the test to begin altitude 5000 feet can the pilotless aircraft remains stable as it deploys the radar antenna for the first time subjecting the aircraft to maximum torque it's time to find out the radar antenna is deployed the test director delivers the official verdict the antenna was rotated a full plus minus 180 degrees and we flew the antenna out at 90 degrees as well so a lot of good data was captured today's flight completed a lot of the unknown territory and questions we had with the antenna installed on the a1 60 we're very very pleased with the performance the flight test determined that the a 160 could safely deploy the forrester antenna at any angle without endangering the aircraft stability the a 160 can be operated in the fully autonomous mode where we give it a mission plan and then it goes through and execute those commands with no input from the operator capable of flying complex missions without a pilot the a 160 can carry a thousand pound payload weapons supplies and more it has the potential to go in and perhaps rescue somebody from a situation that you wouldn't be able to get a person out of otherwise the aircraft could fly an autonomously perhaps get that person out and bring them back to safety no matter how complex the technology the a 160 like many DARPA innovations as a simple goal to save lives for 50 years no idea has been dismissed as impossible if it could protect America's war fighters and keep surprise on our side in the next 50 years the people who know DARPA secrets can only hint at the surprises to come there are many game changes that we're working on some are as as dramatic as having aircraft that stay up for five years what I see happening in the future is that you'll take precision bring it down with us to the level of a bullet where you actually guide a bullet through flight and change course to the target aircraft which which reconfigure themselves in flight they do it automatically perhaps little bird like they changed their winger configuration they can maneuver in ways that we've not done it in the past many of the things darker works on a classified so we can't tell you what they are but what I can tell you is many of those developments are gonna change our lives in the past 50 years among its many breakthroughs DARPA helps bring us the Internet GPS and stealth technology today in the high-stakes struggle between nations DARPA is still an agency with a mission to make sure that we reach the future first several occasions where the system didn't work as planned and the RPG did go high order and destroyed all of our apparatus and you just pick up the pieces in this case literally pick up the pieces and you push on in June 2008 the iron curtain system is tested again with live fire we had a lot of confidence in the system although I won't say that my heart wasn't up here we took a shot we detected with the radar the optical system went on told our countermeasure where to shoot we shot it held our breath and sure enough we've done at the RPG when over wiped the RDX that explosive off the vehicle and congratulate ourselves and on that particular Humvee we only had 3/8 inch armor which isn't much and we shot five RPGs at it so you can see impact points of five RPGs on that vehicle and we've obviously we've done at the mall we still have our vehicle what exactly is the countermeasure dropping to disable the RPG that remains DARPA secret and behind the scenes DARPA found a way to give our warfighters a futuristic helping hand on patrol in Iraq America's soldiers can fall prey to sniper fire to shield themselves our warfighters must rely on 30 pounds of body armor for protection with the rest of their gear they must shoulder as much as 125 pounds to give them the extra strength they need DARPA goes to a place where fact meets science fiction scientist Steve Jacobson at raytheon-sarcos and lockheed ii is working to create a new breed of soldier with superhuman powers his creation the exoskeleton combines a man and a machine to offer extraordinary strength if you put 200 pounds of body armor on somebody right now they're gonna walk about 300 feet if you put 200 pounds of aren't body armor on somebody wearing an exoskeleton they can walk all day the exoskeleton mirrors the human body a computer network serves as its nervous system hydraulic valves and actuators function as muscles and its skeleton is made of aluminum the challenge of putting a person inside a machine is a daunting one know when you put a machine around person there's all sorts of places where it interferes with emotion it may have braids your skin when you first put it on and it's not powered up it feels very heavy because you're wearing a 200 pound robot which is a lot of weight already to power up power up as soon as they power it up all that weight goes away and suddenly you feel like Rex Jamison where's what is probably the most advanced design currently being tested by a human operator the risk is that it's extraordinarily fast and extraordinarily strong so if it decides to do something you know I can't fight it the exoskeleton is designed to amplify the operators movement without blocking it to read his motion enhance it and make him stronger the superhuman stamina of the exoskeleton makes it a priceless military asset it will allow a soldier to lift 100 pounds with no more effort than lifting 10 when I'm lifting heavy things with the exoskeleton it's surprising you look at the object and your brain thinks you can't pick that up you don't feel any stronger than exascale them but then then you reach out to pick it up and there's no effort at all and it continually surprises me it feels like I'm lifting a problem how much load are you fill in and pulling 200 pounds moving things is one of the large forgotten jobs in the military and the exoskeleton was designed to help an individual soldier move boxes all day long without getting tired 35 pound ammunition can you know a normal man can lift without much problem but after lifting 20 of them they're gonna get really tired and it requires no effort on my part so I could do it forever basically by reducing fatigue the exoskeleton can enhance the combat performance of the warfighter and the exoskeleton is more than strong it's light on its feet the fun part for me about operating extra filament are they speed moves like punching bag and soccer ball it's very quick and very precise and surprising given how much power it has how I can follow you so quickly the exoskeleton is the best robot in the world right now because there's no other robot in the world that you can climb in to move really do work and not get tired one of the joys of the exoskeleton is watching someone's face who sees it for the first time because to them this has been science fiction but all of a sudden science fiction is real they see a machine on the person and they know tomorrow's here the army is adapting the exoskeleton for supply handling to help our troops bear the burdens of war but strength and stamina are not enough a war fighters survival depends on locating the enemy a new DARPA breakthrough answers that need for our troops survival means spotting an enemy sniper on a rooftop before he spots you when Iraq started it was very clear in the urban area and that what people really wanted was surveillance but they didn't want it from ten miles away they just wanted to know what was on the next block DARPA solution the wasp it's no bigger than a toy but looks can be deceiving the thing I think that makes wasps so unique is it has all the same features that are found in a full-size airplane it has an altimeter it has a gyro it has GPS it has a magnetometer all of these things that are found in full-size airplanes are found in a package less than 26 inches and weighs at less than a pound each stage or block of the wasp produced by the Aero vironment corporation was supervised by DARPA program manager Leo Christodoulou this is the block 3 production aircraft this aircraft has multiple capability with modular payloads such as this one which is a high-resolution camera but he could also have a night-vision camera or indeed he could have an extra battery to give it increased endurance think of it as airborne binoculars for the infantry it has the capability to accomplish complex missions with high degree of autonomy in cases where it loses communication and has no instructions you will go to a rally point it will go to a specific location in wait for you there the wasp has already proved effective on covert combat missions where it can be used to help detect snipers for terrorist hideouts one of the key design objectives of the wasp was the ability for a single warfighter to quickly efficiently and easily assemble it and fly in in very short order what I have in the backpack here as a micro air vehicle that a single man can operate here's the air vehicle itself this is a night camera this is the camera we use for flying in the day this is the controller I use to view the video and control the aircraft in Wilson flight and this is the RF unit which sends up the command to the aircraft and then receives video I'm here at a test range in California we're gonna send this what if American War fighters could stop a rocket-propelled grenade spot the enemy with binoculars in the sky March all day with superhuman strength swim twice as fast with half the effort sound impossible one shadowy US agency is making all this and more DARPA the agency that's America's secret weapon for US forces it's a dangerous world out there but the American warfighter has someone watching his back even though he may never have heard the name drive past this complex on a street near Washington DC and it looks like any other office building there's no logo on the outside no hint to who works here DARPA the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency it's the R&D arm of the Defense Department DARPA enables the game-changing military breakthroughs that others dismiss as impossible if I have an idea for a new tank DARPA is not going to be interested in that they're gonna say go to a company that makes tanks but if I have an idea for a hover tank or an invisible tank and I can show a reasonable scientific plan to get to that end goal DARPA is the one who's gonna fund that DARPA has granted National Geographic filmmakers unprecedented access to closely guarded labs remote proving grounds and underwater test areas at DARPA headquarters we surrender our cell phones at the visitor control center badge then we are escorted to the only room where interviews can be conducted [Music] sometimes our questions hit a brick wall you know I don't go down that road the security reason don't want to tell you the secret sauce um yeah can i no talk about that let's not talk about that fun for now from developing ways to spot hidden threats in Iraq to designing hypersonic jets that can fly more than five times the speed of sound DARPA tackles what they called DARPA hard problems looking at a problem that's really difficult you just say that's too hard to do and if you if you answer the question like that then it's a DARPA heart problem the highest risk possible is when you put resources on something and you have no idea whether it's going to happen those are DARPA heart problems the problems that are too hard to solve DARPA hard we kill them the world faces a new kind of terror that has transformed the nature of combat America's war fighters have an urgent need for new weapons and defenses to fight a hidden enemy whose attacks are unexpected and deadly case in point how to defend our troops against rocket-propelled grenades in Iraq RPGs are a leading cause of combat death they are cheap to make fast RPG armored vehicles somewhere out on the range way out there and I'm gonna find it with this the target vehicle doesn't stop until it's far beyond his line-of-sight lost in the distance okay I've done the pre-flight system checks are good and we're gonna launch the vehicle and go find that guy powered by an electric motor the wasp block 3 can travel at a speed of up to 40 miles per hour it's capable of flying for 45 minutes to a distance as far as three miles away from its operator so I'm looking down the road here and we're just seeing where you might have gone or look at the side left and right and I'll just keep looking around ever inside view camera here and I'm just looking to see you if you can find him there is there's the vehicle we were able to find the vehicle even more surprising than how well the wasp flies is the way it lands when the wasp lands it's designed to break apart in order to absorb air energy very much like a NASCAR is designed to break apart when they crash that's the way we design our UAVs such that when they break apart the energy of the zorb the piece parts may fall apart but then you can pick them up and you can put the airplane right back together again and it's ready to fly [Music] [Applause] [Music] not only was it darker hard technologically but he was DARPA fast in terms of getting it into the hands of the operators we needed to turn this aircraft into a robust tough little bird that could take everything that the warfighter my family with the wasp DARPA helps put the element of surprise on our side and surprise has always been part of DARPA DNA since a day that shook the world DARPA was founded when one of our enemies took us by surprise 50 years ago we had Sputnik launched by the Russians which greatly surprised this country we never believed that they were going to get to space first darphus primary mission from the very beginning this would be an agency whose job is to prevent technological surprise to the United States over the years we have found that the best way to prevent technological surprise is to create it so we have gone out and created surprise in order to prevent it from happening to us DARPA gave America the high-tech edge with breakthroughs like the Saturn moon rocket that began as a DARPA program and stealth technology the reason you have a GPS receiver the reason you have cellphones so small because DARPA created the technology many years ago many other innovations that DARPA helped to pioneer from the computer mouse to the Internet have transformed our lives DARPA has been involved from the very beginning in enabling technologies if we could have a sticker it would say DARPA inside and and that sticker would go to every high-technology product there probably is DARPA is quest for advanced technology ratcheted up after the deadly attacks of 9/11 suddenly we faced a determined and elusive enemy who posed an unnerving new threat I actually worked in the Pentagon at the time and after 9/11 word came down that it was imperative that we had systems that could get places fast over long distances DARPA envisioned a game-changer that could fly over 4,000 miles per hour twice as fast as the fastest jet Mini's can be fired from anywhere and race to their targets in seconds a seemingly unstoppable threat DARPA solution a revolutionary technology called Iron Curtain an Iron Curtain was developed to protect lives lives of people in armored vehicles line armored vehicles against threats such as Rockapella grenades many RPGs are so powerful they can penetrate a concrete wall or a foot of solid steel it takes an RPG about a tenth of a second to travel 15 yards to its target darphus team has to develop something fast and powerful enough to detect track and destroy it in a split second just inches from the vehicle itself but can it be done at a remote site on the Utah Salt Flats scientists prepare to test the iron curtain system on an armored Humvee it's about to be subjected to an attack by simulated RPG fire as the RPG is flying in the first sensor that sees it is the radar this is the radar antenna so they can track the RPG as it comes in the second sensor that sees it is there's all along here there's an optical sensor and as the RPG flies underneath we're able to select at the exact aim point the countermeasure then has an effect on the exact point that you want it to now since we can't have explosive countermeasures on the test that we're doing out here today we use instead a system that we call the diode gun and we set up the lights in sequence so that they travel down at the exact same speed that the countermeasure would be going so we can see then with the high-speed camera that's operating at about 30,000 frames per second we can see precisely where the countermeasure would have hit the RPG today's test will require pinpoint radar detection of the incoming threat and an instant trigger of the countermeasure system before the test the equipment must be calibrated they aim the air cannon precisely using a laser okay that's good a little bit to the right that looks good we have an autonomous system that's GPS guided the guide system around the track so that we can conduct our experiments completely unmanned in three two one go [Music] all right let's watch the high-speed only by examining the data can technicians tell if Iron Curtain worked in the critical time frame required footage shot by their high-speed camera indicates that the sensors detected the incoming RPG threat the countermeasures would have effectively been deployed in time to stop the RPG in about 1/10 of a second [Music] the Utah test of the iron curtain system using simulated RPGs is a success but can Iron Curtain stop deadly live RPG fire in the case of Iron Curtain we have had

Info

Channel: haze eagle

Views: 2,280,265

Rating: 4.474206 out of 5

Keywords: ROBOTS, CHEETAH ROBOTS RUNNING, ROBOTICS, ROBOTS THE FUTURE, technology, future, usa, russia

Id: rM5UCCOwtyc

Channel Id: undefined

Length: 62min 8sec (3728 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 19 2018

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