Futures Lab - Cutting edge technologies and research influencing Defence

Graedon Crouch, Futures Lab Command Lead for Air, looks at the latest technology news that can help shape Defence thinking.

Vehicle-mounted laser weapon

The Defence Science and Technology Laboratory has demonstrated a laser directed energy weapon (LDEW) mounted on an armoured vehicle. In conjunction with other UK companies, Raytheon’s High-Energy Laser Weapon System (HELWS) was used to neutralise targets at up to 1km. HELWS has been in production for several years and been reported as a 10kW laser, taking 8-15s to down a quad-copter style drone.

LDEWs are becoming an essential part of integrated air defence systems. With the increasing prevalence of cheap drones in conflict zones across the globe, the cost-effective use of LDEWs to counter these threats is essential.

Acoustic drone and missile detection

Engineers in Ukraine have successfully deployed suites of acoustic sensors to reliably detect incoming drones and missiles. The sensors are built cheaply from microphones and mobile phones, and deployed in networks of up to up to 10,000 sensors to detect and triangulate incoming threats. Drones are reported to be detected up to 5km away and missiles, 7km; up to a height of 3km. The sensors cost as little as $500 and claim a location direction of within 5 degrees.

The use of battlefield audio sensing is not a new technology, but has real benefits. The use of microphones is passive, avoiding the need for having radar emitting constantly and alerting the enemy to the radar position. The relatively low cost enables a greater density of sensors, further improving detection capability and accuracy.

Cellular mast navigation

Contributing to efforts to navigate reliably without the use of GPS, researchers have published a paper demonstrating accurate flight navigation using mobile phone tower signals. The US Air Force conducted flights over rural and urban areas, at altitudes of up to 11,000 feet and distances exceeding 100km from base stations. Using and amplifying the carrier phase signals from the base stations, an accuracy of signal digit meters was achieved when compared with on-board GPS.

Though the position localisation was computed after the flight, making use of ubiquitous mobile phone base stations is a useful way to compute location data. Should this be available in real-time with comparable accuracy, this could be a credible alternative to GPS.

Flexible batteries

Researchers at the University of Cambridge have developed flexible batteries inspired from the electric eel and made from hydrogel. Containing over 60% water, the hydrogels are layers of organic polymers that are able to bend and stretch over ten times their original length. Both the Cambridge team and researchers from China have shown the hydrogels to be self-healing, with the strong molecular bonds reforming when broken.

Despite each individual cell producing only 0.1V, flexible batteries could be applied in a variety of scenarios, especially those that involve implantation or powering sensors worn on the skin.

Doom AI game engine

Google and Tel Aviv University have published a paper demonstrating the use of an AI diffusion model to interactively simulate the game Doom. The GameNGen agent is trained to both play the game and to produce the next frame based on past frames and actions. The resultant gameplay running at 20 frames per second is almost indistinguishable from actual gameplay, with human reviewers only correctly selecting real gameplay in 60% of examples. The authors also took steps to reduce the likelihood of hallucination by the AI agent.

This demonstration using AI to predict and render future gameplay that is very close to real gameplay is significant. If combined with AR models for flight training (as announced by the RAF recently), this has the potential to increase the fidelity and scope of training.

Lavender mosquito repellent

Lavender oil is known to be an excellent mosquito repellent, but unfortunately breaks down quickly, especially when exposed to ultraviolet light. Using spider silk fibroin and gum arabic, researchers in China have created tiny capsules containing lavender oil. When attached to cloth, these capsules release the lavender oil slowly, prolonging the mosquito repelling effect. Even after repeated washing the cloth was still effective.

With global deployments, troops require effective anti-mosquito prophylaxis. Current solutions such as DEET can be harsh on the skin and react with synthetic fabrics. This lavender oil approach may be a useful alternative, should it prove commercially viable.

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