Journal BWJones's Journal: DARPA funded geek projects 6

Global Security is running a news item on recent DARPA symposium covering projects designed to assist soldiers in urban battlegrounds such as the current battlefield in Baghdad and Tikrit. Projects of note include acoustic antenna that help localize snipers (I seem to remember hearing of a project like this years ago in Los Angeles) and possible networks of sniper scopes designed to help snipers work together. Other interesting problems of note include how to identify folks with explosives or how to get soldiers into and on top of buildings using exoskeletons that assist soldiers in climbing up just like Spider Man.

I suppose potential solutions to the explosive identification could be an airborne analysis of "skin plumes" or even low field magnetic resonance imaging combined with as the article mentions low power microwaves. Vehicles going through checkpoints could even be subjected to higher energy probes (once evacuated of course) that may help identify multi-spectral or chemical fingerprints of explosives. I am sure that anybody coming up with a good solution and can write a grant could find the funding climate quite good for such things.