The sun had launched its time-honored march across the Euphrates basin when our five-Humvee convoy spilled out of Camp Speicher onto "Tampa," the main highway through Tikrit, Iraq.
It was here, in Saddam Hussein's hometown, where I encountered firsthand some of today's front-line wartime innovations.
Members from the North Carolina Army National Guard 505th Engineer Battalion were breaking in replacements, mostly teenagers who'd never been "outside the wire" on a mission in Iraq. Some had never been outside their hometowns before joining the military.
I rode in the fourth Humvee, in the right rear seat. Additional plating fused to the door caused it to jam when locked, one of the unfortunate side effects of "up armoring" Humvees. Talc-like sand clogged the air conditioner's filter. The A/C system blew desert through the cabin. "Keep an eye on this guy walking on the left," Sgt. 1st Class Dale Toomey told the rookie turret gunner.
"Keep moving left and right, up and down. You're a bobble head. Don't be a silhouette."
Toomey had just scrolled his iPod to Tim McGraw's "A Place in the Sun" as the convoy entered Tikrit. Saddam remains well-regarded in this town about 100 miles north of Baghdad. The city is a hotbed for Sunni insurgents. The young drivers slowed despite urgings to press through an intersection where several Iraqi police stood dubious watch. The convoy bunched too close and moved too slowly. "Speed is your friend," Toomey told the driver. "I don't like this slowing down crap."
Humvees 1, 2 and 3 rumbled by a collection of people gathered at a gas station on the right.
On the left, buried in the median, was the roadside bomb.
It erupted just as our Humvee passed, 10:03 a.m. Iraqi time. Radio earphones and the additional skin of quarter-inch door plating - frag kits - muffled the sound of the explosion.
The force of the blast blew our 5-ton Hummer almost laterally, like getting T-boned by a semi. A Gatorade cooler plopped in my lap. Dust dislodged from every cranny in the cab. The driver jerked the wheel hard right, then hard left to regain control.
"IED! IED! IED!" Toomey and others barked in their radios.
Toomey grabbed a handful of the turret gunner's trousers and yanked him
to the floor. The young soldier's pupils dilated jet black, like doll's eyes. The kid pressed his hands against his Kevlar helmet, and he buried his head between his knees.
The Humvees were equipped with the latest version of Counter Remote Control Improvised Explosive Device Electronic Warfare systems. Everyone calls them Warlocks.
They may have saved our lives that September morning. The bomb - triggered remotely - ripped apart tires and cracked the two-inch thick windshield on the fifth Humvee. Fortunately, no one was seriously injured.
Warlocks jam electronic signals from cell phones, garage door openers and other electronic household devices insurgents use to detonate improvised explosive devices, or IEDs.
Big antennae the size of drain pipes stand at the back of Warlock-equipped vehicles. Up front, black boxes mounted on poles swing down from bumpers, sort of rhino-like. The systems likely delayed the detonation signal in our case, minimizing the damage.
Warlocks are part of a growing arsenal of innovations born from the war in Iraq. The developments, from advances in unmanned aerial reconnaissance Predator and bombdropping Reaper drones, to new breeds of armored personnel carriers such as the Cougar and Mastiff, continue a long tradition of war generating new technologies, or adapting civilian products for military use.
Indeed, Iraq has triggered a new type of arms race, where insurgents fashion weapons out of household ingredients, and America responds with bigger breeds of technology.
"Warlocks generally got better when we were over there," says Capt. Christopher Blais of the 505th Engineer Battalion. "There were constant software and hardware updates. We would have had more damage to our vehicles without them."
In response to Warlocks, insurgents have reverted to hard-wired roadside bombs or pressure-plate IEDs, which erupt when a vehicle rolls over them. Within the past year or so, insurgents also began using more lethal "explosively formed projectiles," or EFPs. Those fire a metal slug that becomes a molten projectile capable of piercing armor and flipping an Abrams tank.
To keep pace, the U.S. military is replacing Humvees with mine-resistant ambush protected vehicles, or MRAPs, armored fi ghting vehicles with V-shaped hulls designed to survive IED attacks.
PLUG AND PLAY
Wartime offers an equal opportunity for innovators - inventions need not come from Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics or high-end government contractors.
Four brothers originally from the small town of Redwood Falls, Minn., have developed the Corderized Power Supply, a rugged converter box that runs laptops, cell-phone chargers and other conventional electronics off batteries of Humvees, tanks, Strykers and a range of battlefield vehicles.
Justin Corder, 32, is the brains behind the CPS. The Air Force vet served three tours in Iraq, where he called in air strikes.
"They gave us cool technology, laptops and such," Corder says. "We had all this gear, and nowhere to plug it in. I didn't have anything other than what you buy at Wal-Mart, and the stuff you buy at Wal-Mart isn't built to last. The converters I bought before I went downrange all blew up."
About 50 or so units are in the field, ordered through word of mouth. The Corders make the devices in their shop with mostly American components. Units cost about $2,400 a pop.
The Corder brothers are tinkering with adding USB ports so troops can power digital cameras and the like. It's a morale booster, Corder says. Soldiers might have to go more than a week in the field without bathing or fresh undies. But with the Corderized Power Supply, they won't have to go without recharged iPods.
"A happy service member," Corder notes, "is a productive service member." Conditions in the field presented a commercial opportunity for the Corder brothers. Meanwhile, a different type of enterprise and innovation takes place every day on Iraq's war-torn streets.
In Baghdad, for instance, where the central electrical grid delivers only one or two hours of power a day, militias and capitalists have established neighborhood mini-power stations run on diesel generators.
With no regulatory oversight, the overlords of these ersatz power stations extort residents, who are desperate for air conditioning and power to run refrigerators.
"I know it is not right that they make us pay," says Jenan Hussein, whose Baghdad neighborhood is run by Shiite militia members. "But what other choice do I have?"
To capture - and sometimes poach this power supply, residents drape chaotic necklaces of wire from utility poles. The lines spill haphazardly into windows and along rooftops. Some alleys are so choked with wires that birds can't fly through.
Car parts also are scarce in the capital. When fuel pumps conk out, motorists use gravity. It's common to see cars with jerry cans duct taped to the hoods of cars. The cans are filled with gas. A tube from the can delivers fuel to the engine. Inelegant, yes. Dangerous, surely. But the technique works.
TECHNOLOGY TRANSFER
While many wartime inventions such as Corders' power converter are designed specifically for military use, just as many civilian technologies are drafted into service. And because technology transfer is a two-way street, many military innovations also end up on the civilian side.
World War I saw an explosion of civilian technology called to combat.
Lewis Nixon invented the first sonar listening device in 1906 as a way of detecting icebergs. Paul Langévin co-opted the concept in 1915 and developed "echo location to detect submarines."
German chemist Fritz Haber won the Nobel Prize for discovering how to turn atmospheric nitrogen into fertilizer.
Unfortunately, Haber, a fierce German nationalist, also used his discovery to develop chemical weapons. He supervised the use of nerve agents against allied forces in World War I. Haber, as it turned out, was Jewish. When the Nazis came to power in the 1930s, they unceremoniously kicked him out of the country. He died a year after going into exile.
For centuries, the migration of technology back and forth between civilian and military applications has been mostly ad hoc. Transfers largely were serendipitous and accidental. "Technology transfer is a web, not a pipeline," says John Leland, director of the University of Dayton Research Institute. "The process is murky - it's hard to put your finger on what a typical technology transfer is."
Independent inventors can crack this market - "it happens all the time," says Leland. However, "getting attention is hard."
Several services and programs have emerged to impose some sense of order and offer a more direct technology-transfer pathway. NineSigma, based in Cleveland, Ohio, is among those that have set up a Web-based system to link fellow entrepreneurs and facilitate technology transfers in the military and private sectors. NineSigma also works directly with the Picatinny Arsenal in New Jersey on technology transfer projects.
This summer, Gestalt, a Camden, N.J.- based consulting firm, launched www.TroopIdeas.com, a grassroots way for soldiers to share invention and product ideas they'd like to see in the field.
Among the more dramatic arenas where civilian and military technology transfers are colliding is the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's "Urban Challenge" - a competition for the best autonomous, robotic vehicle. The idea is to develop vehicles that drive themselves, like something out of the Will Smith movie "I, Robot."
For the past two years, competing teams in DARPA's challenge have traversed California deserts. The contest now moves to the city.
On Nov. 3, no less than 36 teams will have their unmanned ground vehicles maneuver in a mock urban environment outside Victorville, Calif., executing simulated military supply missions while merging into moving traffic, navigating traffic circles, negotiating busy intersections, and - teams hope - avoiding obstacles.
First prize is $2 million, second prize is $500,000 and third prize is $250,000.
Sarnoff Corp., a technology development company based in Princeton, N.J., is among the entrants. It's equipping a Toyota Highlander with cameras and optical sensors that will help the vehicle negotiate the DARPA course.
Sarnoff is starting to see its work with vehicle cameras come full circle. What started as a military project has migrated to the civilian space.
Automakers already are deploying a greater range of cameras on board civilian vehicles. BMW is mounting infrared night-vision cameras on the front bumpers of some models that show heat emissions from people or animals up to 1,000 feet away.
Ford and Land Rover are installing cameras that show drivers rearview video displays on dashboards. "The main purpose of our work is driver safety and awareness," says Jayan Eledath, a technical manager at Sarnoff - first with the military, and increasingly with private-sector businesses. "It's been a nice cycle."
