Technology Decoded

Look-to-talk

From Wired.com

"The U.S. Navy is field-testing a new short-range communications device called LightSpeed that could soon let sailors talk securely up to two miles away -- just by looking at each other.
The device uses infrared, similar to that of a television remote control, to transmit audio and visual information. To overcome range limits, LightSpeed connects to ordinary binoculars and uses the optical lenses to amplify the signals. Then soldiers on either end can simply plug headphones and a microphone into their binoculars to talk to one another."

Hmm, not sure about this. Must be line of sight and is only available up to 2 miles away. To be honest i don't know what's wrong with encrypted radios as most countries don't have the technological means to hack encrypted naval comms at sea? How are the 2 sailors going to see eachother at night at up to 2 miles away? There seems to me to be enough substitute communications technology for this to be a bit of a gimmick.

Obviously it would be great to have some sort of secure, low power (and therefore relatively invisible) means of communications in the field, especially for the army, but line of sight just isn't practical for them. They'd have to raze everything first to maintain the signal....

I'm struggling to see the business case for this technology. Can anyone enlighten me?

posted by blueboyeddie @ 11:02 am