Kyle Stanbro ’s a crowing dude . When he had to strap on all his gear , specially the communications gear that patched him in to the alert drones overhead , he tote up another 120 pounding .
In the early years of the Afghanistan war , much was made of how commandos on horseback call in airstrikes from the middle of nowhere . But the gear used for doing so was hardly ideal . Strapped onto Stanbro was a “ coffee can ” antenna and a receiver “ the size of a bread box , ” he recalls . And if you need to see the telecasting from a drone or a spy woodworking plane , you were in for a treat : you had a ToughBook attached to your chestplate , and you ’d search down at the laptop computer screen for see a potential prey . Since you might very well be persist and shooting while view drone footage – the ToughBook smacking you in the chest as you moved – you had to face forth from the Talib spraying you with AK ardor .
So when Stanbro retired from the military in 2004 , he put his vigour into shrinking everything down and making it light and more physically visceral . It lead him to build something called the MOVER - IV . The footlong mordant push - push equipment looks like a standard radio . In fact , it ’s a liquidator for real - meter picture that patches into an eyepiece to display the feed . Weighs just three pound . He ’s sell over 100 of them to the U.S. Special Operations Command .
If that sounds intimate , it might be because you read Danger Room ammonia alum Nathan Hodge ’s piece for the Wall Street Journal about ranger ’ access to digital imagination during the Osama bin Laden raid . “ [ T]roops may have bear small , portable telephone receiver that allowed them to watch the television provender being shoot by an aircraft overhead , ” Hodge indite . “ Some of those pass catcher face something like a broken iPad ; others can be wear , with pocket-size monocular cover that snip onto helmets . ”
Stanbro ( pictured , above ) was n’t part of the Abbottabad mission . So he ca n’t say how the SEALs ascertain picture from thestealth bourdon overhead . But that ’s pharynx - clearing . “ coincidently , ” he say proudly , “ that sounds very similar to this scheme right here . ” His Galaxy pill provides another display for the footage , one that can be velcro’d onto a fomite dashboard .
For days , U.S. troops have been outfitted with a system shout ROVER , which was supposed to allow infantrymen watch overhead footage on a pill computer . In practice , the thing were often too fleshy and too fussy in the heat to bring on patrol . MOVER does n’t have those issues . But it does partake a flaw with ROVER – and the whole drone - video - to - the - ground construct , as currently assembled . The television provender are sent in the exculpated , unencrypted . Which mean the footage could be intercepted by a cunning adversary . ( The next gen of MOVERs should provide a partial solution . It ’ll be year before all the drones get encrypted transmitters , though . )
The ocular Stanbro pick out for the MOVER - IV is the Vuzix Tac - Eye , a lightweight gamey - resolution screen that attach to a helmet and fits neatly over your non - dominant center . ( You want to keep your dominant eye free for shooting . ) Stanbro gestures to his partner , Clark Dever of Vuzix , who hooks up a camcorder to another MOVER - IV and starts filming a hall in the Tampa Convention Center , where the Special Operations Forces Industry Conference is in full effect . Stanbro hooks up the Tac - Eye to his MOVER - IV through a standard six - pin connector and pass on it to me .
As Dever act the camera around , I see a group of businessmen behind me , chew the fat someone up on the virtues of their own defense - related product . They show up as dense , obscure objects on a green blind . My other eye is free to see ahead of me , and my peripheral vision out of both eyes is clear . This may have been what it was like to keep one center on the inside of bin Laden ’s compound and the other on whatever the stealth drone pick up outdoors .
It works with more than drones . If there ’s a manned spy plane overhead , the MOVER - IV just ask the frequency or the band over which it securely broadcasts to receive the video feed , a cognitive process of pressing two buttons on the equipment . “ Personal experience ” got him several of those frequencies , he says .
beat having a ToughBook on your chest . Or anything that would get in the way of your parachute opening .
photograph : Coastal Defense , Spencer Ackerman
Drones
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