I am not condoning war.
It is just the strange equation of it.
No Peace without War.
From War comes Peace.
A lot of good and bad inventions that aid or destroy mankind came
out major conflicts. The technology that produce the atomic bomb
also provides us the knowledge to produce tremendous amount of
energy and harness it for peacetime uses.
Nations could choose to come out with offensive weapons
Tomahawk -
Long range, subsonic cruise missile used for land attack warfare,
launched from surface ships and submarines) for retaliation.
Or they could build defensive systems
Patriot Air Defense System -
Long-range, all-altitude, all-weather air defense system to counter
tactical ballistic missiles, cruise missiles and advanced
aircraft.
In the current conflict-laden & terror-filled days, should
Singapore jump onto the bandwagon and invest in producing offensive
/ defensive systems / material along with the investment in
Biotechnology?
* * * * * *
Army uniforms that help tell friend from foe in the dark.
These may be lean economic times, but there is brisk demand for
scientists who work on military projects. Scientists are working on
attire that can help the wearer do this, protect him from chemical
and biological weapons, and even heal injuries.
One project is the US$50 million (S$88.4 million) contract the
Defence Department gave earlier this year to researchers from the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
The goal is to build a sort of exoskeleton that, among other
things, is supposed to give soldiers superhuman strength, protect
them from biological and chemical weapons, and even help heal their
injuries.
One of the researchers on the project is MIT assistant professor
Yoel Fink.
Using, in part, technology he created, Prof Fink and his team aim
to embroider the super-soldier fighting uniform with polymer
threads that - by reflecting or absorbing different wavelengths of
light selectively - would silently flash an optical bar code.
That way, for example, troops wearing specially tuned night- vision
goggles would be able to distinguish between foe and friend during
a night firefight.
The super-soldier project, officially known as the Institute for
Soldier Nanotechnologies, has special meaning for Prof Fink, who
grew up in Israel and served in the army there.
'I spent three years of my life in the infantry,' said Prof Fink,
who is now 36 years old.
'It absolutely hits close to home because I know how vulnerable
infantry soldiers are.'
If two recently issued patents are any indication though, his
ambitions extend beyond the battlefield.
Last month, he and several colleagues were granted a patent for a
fibre that steers light beams efficiently over long
distances.
The technology is being developed by OmniGuide, a start-up that
Prof Fink co-founded and which recently secured US$10 million in a
second round of financing.
In August, he received a more fundamental patent which broadly
covers the use of certain polymers as photonic crystals - an
innovation he hopes will one day revolutionise optics the way the
semiconductor revolutionised electronics.
Of his work, he said he 'wanted to do with photons what people have
been doing for years with electrons - to manipulate the flow of
light in materials'.
Photons are the smallest known units of light, with both particle
and wave properties. Photonic crystals allow for the manipulation
of light.
Prof Fink says the first application to come out of his research is
likely to be a light-transmitting fibre for a highly secure
military communications network for the military.
OFF THE BATTLEFIELD
Uses of photonic crystals:
Fashion mavens might leave the house in a turquoise outfit in the
morning and reconfigure the same outfit to tangerine when they go
out to dinner.
Optical communications systems might someday be woven into our
clothing, making cell phones and hand-held devices obsolete.
The innards of computers might rely as much on optics as on
electronics.
- The New York Times