In the futurist Tom Cruise thriller Minority Report there is a scene where police outside the house of a suspect use technology to see through the walls. Now imagine a scene in the Iraqi city of Basra in the not too distant future. An army vehicle patrols the town, using a gadget to scan everything in its path. As well as 3D images of the streets and buildings, it creates a complete picture of its surroundings, detecting everything from mobile phone signals to biological and chemical weapons.

That is the future of Masthead, a system developed by the defence company General Dynamics. It is currently being fine-tuned by the company’s development team and is expected to be in use by troops by the end of next year. is “effectively where the concept came from”, says Mike Thomas, a business development manager at the company. The system uses lasers, thermal imaging and a backscatter X-ray that can produce detailed images of organic material, to create its 3D images.

“The system has a number of sensors and you can drive down a street and it will scan buildings and anything in its path,” says Mark Estcourt, the lead engineer on the project.

The gadgetry really could see through walls one day. “These technologies are a reality now,” Estcourt says. Backscatter X-rays are already used at docks to scan lorries for stowaways. More sensors can be added to the system as the technology becomes available, so one day Masthead could detect telephone signals, for example, or the presence of chemical or biological agents.

Technology like this will help troops to prepare for missions in unfamiliar places, Estcourt says. “In Basra we’re no longer operating inside the town, and day to day knowledge of that town is getting out of date. \ you could drive through and within about an hour you have a 3D model of that environment.”

Helping troops to respond quickly is also the aim of research at the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory, the Ministry of Defence’s scientific and technical research agency. Imagine being able to spray a vehicle with a thin plastic coating that not only acts as camouflage but changes colour in the presence of chemical and biological agents and neutralises them. Dr Steven Mitchell, a research scientist, says that in the future adding a catalyst from inorganic chemicals or enzymes to the coatings currently in use could enable them to do just that.

“There is a range of materials that could eventually be put on the coating,” he says. A long-term aim is a colour change signal, “so you can see by looking at the colour of the vehicle that it is contaminated”.

Although the creation of such smart coatings is several years away, the coatings currently used by troops are being developed to make decontaminating vehicles speedier. “We are aiming for a system that decontaminates itself,” Mitchell says.

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