Bin Laden Killing Team May Have Used Night Vision Contact Lenses

Jesus Diaz

from: http://gizmodo.com/

Christian at Military.com's Kit Up! has heard an interesting rumor on one of the technologies that Seal Team 6 used to kill Osama bin Laden: Night vision contact lenses! Holy pants, Batman.

I heard a rumor that the Team guys who busted bin Laden might have been wearing "cat vision" contact lenses that literally give the wearer night vision for a limited time without having to wear the bulky, heavy NVGs.

Night Vision Goggles technology has advanced quickly over the last decade. Right now, the most advanced setups are panoramic models that use four 16mm image intensifying tubes, which provide with a 100º horizontal by 40º vertical field of view. They are made by the same company that makes the F-35 demon helmet as well as other manufacturers.

These helmets are still limited, however, especially for special operation teams. While they are better than your standard NVGs, they are quite bulky and heavier and still don't provide with the natural field of view that would be ideal for field operations.

These rumored night vision contacts, however, are almost sci-fi material. People have been speculating about this technology for almost a decade, so perhaps they exist in some hidden Area 51 lab. If anyone has access to these, that would be the SEALs from Team 6. We already know that these guys have access to really advanced, completely unknown technology like their stealth transport helicopters. I wouldn't be surprised if they had other toys like these. [Kit Up]

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Voice Translator Coming to iPhone and Blackberry [VID]

BY Cliff Kuang

Witness the Real-life (Beta) Version of Star Trek's Universal Translator

Sakhr Mobile develops an iPhone app for troops and diplomats that translates Arabic speech into English, and visa versa--and there's video of it, in action.

Fast Company just got a tip about one of the first products of that effort, an iPhone and Blackberry app, created by Sakhr Software and Dial Directions, that does natural language translation. Check out the video of the app, translating sinister-sounding--but all-too-real--phrases like "The prime minister will form a new government":

This is the first product from Sakhr, which has just announced its acquisition of Dial Directions. Sakhr works on devices that scan Arabic words and then offer machine translations, and its customers already include the U.S. Department of Defense, U.S. Department of Homeland Security, and the U.S. Department of Justice. Dial Directions, for its part, creates voice-entry applications.

Creating the app you see above was a matter of combining those technologies--first, the speech recognition part, which transcribes what's being said, and then applying Sakhr's know-how in translating the text that's produced. Zoinks! The future, apparently, is now. And while the military applications are obvious, we can't help but think the commercial applications are far more vast. How cool would it be to have something like this working for you while hiking in the wilds of India, or China, or any other Federation planet?

Of course, who knows how this device might fare in the field--machine language translators are faced with a daunting test, when posed with the sloppiness of real-life language. Just witness how bad Google's translation still is. The field has made tremendous strides in recent years. Will the pace continue?