only one problem, please no flash photography while the vehicle is in use.

"Within nanoseconds?" Bullshit. We don't have computers on this planet that work that fast. Microseconds? Sure. No problem. A nanosecond is one billionth of a second. I defy anyone to produce a computer program that can accept a signal, compare it to a database of any significant size, and determine if the signal is due to an explosion or not within one thousand CPU clock cycles, much less the few clock cycles it would take to qualify as "nanoseconds."

Oh, and @ zello : the claim is that the computer can tell the difference between an IED and a flashgun. That's credible; the speed they claim is not.

@ Old Man Dotes

What century are you from, modern computer calculation speeds are often measured in nanoseconds. A 500 Mghz computer refreshes it's processor cycle every 2 nanoseconds. This is simply measuring the refresh rate of it's computer screen.

Welcome to the future!

To Zello...Flash photography is already a no-go around tatical vehicles for multiple reasons. The biggest reason is that it can set off the fire supression system. This in turn "dead-lines" the vehicle for future operations until the bottle can be refilled.

Currently the blast wave has not been the significant risk to tactical vehicles and with modern v-hulled vehicles it is not even the schrapnel...but I digress.

@ Old Man Dotes

1. Modern Digital Signal Processors clock at around 1.2GHz, meaning they *complete* slightly more than one instruction per nanosecond. Most of these processors are in the $10-20 range. High-end DSPs and PC processors are actually faster, but you spend more.

2. A "Database" does NOT necessarily mean something like SQL Server running on a network or even on the local system. This is an embedded system, so the "database" they are using is probably just a data table in some form of solid-state memory (e.g. RAM, SRAM, or most likely Flash). It's *extremely* fast - Flash is as fast as the memory in your PC or faster - it just costs more than RAM.

3. Depending on how the table indexes are constructed, the right algorithm (e.g. B-tree) can find a single record in a very large table in only a few reads.

We have a program, that has been running now for a few years, the response time required is 100 Million Records, read various other data to perform 100s of logical computations and respond back... and yes we house the program in a simple unix server, which is also 4 years old now.

so dont tell me that some one can write a program to be able to return back in nano second counts.

^^ well that ate my post.... teach me use less than sign in a badly developed website again...

that was supposed to have been "the response time required is less than 10 milli seconds,

and in that time it has to validate against a table containing 100 million records..."

Onkel - so basically it'd be possible to disable an incredibly expensive vehicle in the field by using an overcharged $2 camera flash? Better hope no opposing forces ever figure that one out.

You guys are immoral annoying human beings. There's a method 1000 times more efficient than these war vehicles: don't invade countries that didn't do anything to you on false pretenses, violating international law in the process, killing more than 700,000 civilians as well (2nd iraq war, the first one did also major killings of kids during the embargo), all with the disgusting control of the media to make people think you're the good guys. At least the Romans and the Vikings were proud to kill their enemies. So don't do all these disgusting things just to gain control to oil and you won't have soldiers die uselessly. Stay home and leave the goddam world alone.

If the light sensors worked like a switch rather than a computational process, then I could see that the reaction time could be within nano-seconds. All elements give off different spectrums - if the activation of the system happened because light capturing filaments in the system only captured certain light spectrums associated with the elements used to make an explosive then a camera flash would not set it off. It would only go off if it saw the light signature of explosive materials. Actually, if the whole set up was an optic fiber one, than it may be possible to be almost as fast as light because there would be no need for a computer program - just an analog "on/off" system.

They may as well make the Pillow Mobile =D

Fire Futon torpedoes! And let the pillow-fight commence!

@melkiades

Why did you even comment on this topic? Everyone before you and after commented on the technical parts of this post and then you come in and randomly start spouting your rhetoric. So what makes these people immoral annoying human beings? They were talking about the technical aspects of a potentially life saving system. They weren't declaring anything about any war.

I'm not saying the war was right or wrong, but I think you're wrong for attacking people who did nothing. Which, (correct me if I'm wrong) is something you're against. I will agree if everybody decided not to start wars that would be great, but we live in the real world. Terrrible things happen.

I've got an idea of how we can make things more efficient. Instead of devoloping LIFE/LIMB SAVING technologies. Why don't we just have our soldiers put a bullet in their heads? That way the soldiers would only have to kill one person.

How would you respond to this technology if America, Britain, France, Etc.. was deliberately attacked by a hostile force? Would you still come in and call everybody immoral annoying human beings?