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December 31, 2002

Soldiers have always found ways of adopting new civilian technologies for battlefield use, and the flood of new gadgets in the last few decades has given the troops a lot more to play with. The latest item to interest the infantry are the small, inexpensive wireless webcams. These could help deal with a major problem in urban warfare; watching all the alleys and hallways you've already cleared the enemy from, in case the bad guys return. Battery powered, wireless webcams, using an encrypted signal, give the troops extra eyes. Add motion detection software to alert the guy monitoring the cams that someone, or something, has moved into view, and you can make life a lot more unpleasant for the other side. The U.S. Army already has a lot of sensors, but these are always using technology a generation or two behind what is currently available to civilians. So the troops get to play around, and often come up with something that makes a difference on the battlefield.