The Geeks of War: The Secretive Labs and Brilliant Minds Behind Tomorrow's Warfare Technologies

This compendium of military research projects aims to elicit a starry-eyed ""gee whiz"" from readers, and a few of the novelties showcased here-including ship-borne free electron lasers that zap incoming missiles, gamma ray bombs and mechanical ""exoskeletons"" that let soldiers shoulder huge loads-may achieve that goal. But many more will provoke a resounding ""ho-hum,"" like the ""cognitive software"" that helps commanders answer their e-mail and do their scheduling, supply-tracking radio frequency identification tags that are old hat at your local Wal-Mart, and a scheme to set up military blogs. The truly appalled ""Oh, God!"" reactions will probably be to the ""First Strike Rations"" under development by the Army's Combat Feeding Directorate, which feature ""energy booster gel"" squeezed from tubes. There's little here to fire the martial imagination. To judge by the plethora of proposals for small reconnaissance robots and drones, tiny sensors and omniscient computer networks, the army of the future will be increasingly miniature, bloodless and unmanned-a prospect that could only excite a techie. Edwards, a business-technology journalist and author of Leveraging Web Services: Planning, Building, and Integration for Maximum Impact, sources his rather dry, jargon-heavy accounts of new technologies mainly to the same academic and corporate researchers who are developing and promoting them, and rarely subjects their boosterish claims to critical evaluation. The result is a turgid but shallow look at the shape of things to come. Photos.