Raytheon

Stealth Wind Turbines Avoid Erasing Aircraft From Radar

A Danish company has demoed the first stealthy wind turbine that uses similar materials to stealth aircraft

Wind turbines can be a radar operator's worst nightmare. By scrambling radar waves as blades spin faster or slower, large wind farms are sometimes capable of erasing airplanes from radar screens completely. But a Danish wind turbine company and a UK defense contractor may have found a solution by unveiling the first "stealth" wind-turbine blade last month.

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Google's Android Allows Soldiers to Put Drones on Buddy List

Defense giant Raytheon has turned Google's mobile operating system into a military application

Google's Android operating system for cell phones could allow soldiers to track fellow squad members and even unmanned drones in real time on a map -- as long as the humans and robots are on their buddy list.

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Battlefield Blimp Tracks Low-Flying Cruise Missiles

The Army flies a blimp that can detect cruise missiles up to 300 miles away

Blimps first soared above battlefields in 1794 to spy on Austrian and Dutch troops. Now the U.S. Army wants them as radar platforms for defense against cruise missiles. A Raytheon-designed blimp made its first flight yesterday at Elizabeth City, North Carolina.

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16-Megapixel Infrared Satellite Camera Can Monitor An Entire Continent In a Single Shot


Have you ever been taking pictures of an entire country from space and thought, "you know what, this is ok, but I want to photograph the entire hemisphere at once,"? Well, with Raytheon's new 16-megapixel infrared sensor, you can.

Or, more precisely, the government can. Designed to work as part of a satellite, the sensor uses 4,096 pixel rows and columns to produce what the company calls, "an 'unblinking eye' over an entire hemisphere."

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Military To Mount High-Powered Non-Lethal Ray Gun On Aircraft


Here at Popular Science, we work under the assumption that ray guns are cool. But you know what's even cooler? A flying ray gun. And thanks to an $8 million dollar funding bump from the Air Force, a flying ray gun is closer to production than ever.

The defense company Raytheon unveiled the beam weapon in 2001; back then they mounted the device on a Humvee. Now, the military's Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Directorate has requested an upgrade to the weapon that would allow the JNLWD to attach it to helicopters and other aircraft.

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Video: The XOS Exoskeleton in Action

See a live test of the real-life Iron Man suit

Iron Man's fictional tech may soon become real. Inside a mountain lab, researchers have already built motorized suits that give ordinary people superhuman strength.

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We've told you all about the Raytheon Sarcos XOS exoskeleton, the smart suit of armor that endows its wearer with super-human strength. Now see it in action, and meet the minds behind both Iron Men—real, and imaginary.

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Building the Real Iron Man

While audiences flood theaters this month to see the comic-book-inspired Iron Man, a real-life mad genius toils in a secret mountain lab to make the mechanical superhuman more than just a fantasy with the XOS Exoskeleton

Afghanistan. A hidden bunker. Four men with rifles guard a thick, rusted steel door. Bam! A huge fist pounds against it—from inside. Bam! More blows dent the steel. The hinges strain. The guards cower, inching backward. Whatever's trying to break out is big. And angry.

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The Sonic Fence

Painful sound waves could keep wetsuit-clad terrorists away from ships

Since the bombing of the U.S.S. Cole in 2000, protecting docked ships-both military and commercial-has been a big priority in the fight against terrorism. The Department of Homeland Security has already awarded $489 million to help guard the nation´s ports, spurring a number of innovative ideas, the latest of which is an underwater system that blasts enemy swimmers with painful acoustic waves. Patented by the Raytheon Corporation last October, the system is the brainchild of former Navy and Raytheon acoustics expert Frederick Di Napoli. His scheme is simple: Generate a region of high-pressure, low-frequency sound around the ship, creating a sort of sonic fence that â€shocks†anything that swims through it. Although a diver would probably flee from pain, Di Napoli says, "you could really dial up the pressure and make it lethal if you had to."

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December 2009: Best of What's New

In our December issue, Popular Science names the 100 best innovations of the year: bombproof wallpaper, self-parking cars, the fastest helicopter, and 97 more. Plus inventor profiles and videos.

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