Soldier of the Future

Each equipped with $48,000 worth of GPS components, electronic maps, and wearable computers, troops of the Army's 5th Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division are heading to Afghanistan as part of the resurrected Land Warrior program. The Army is hoping the revised, eight-pound set of gear will be more beneficial than when the $500 million program was canceled in 2006.

The perfect cloak of Frodo Baggins is still far off, if not impossible, but DARPA-funded researchers are working on a new kind of camouflage that would fall only a few steps short of elvish magic. According to Philip Moynihan, a NASA engineer who published a paper on the subject in 2000, so-called adaptive camouflage would visually merge soldiers with their surroundings—whether that’s an urban backdrop or dense jungle brush. The basic principle is simple: Cameras would capture the scene behind the uniform while embedded displays would reproduce the image on its front.