UGS.

This is coolbert:

These are not the UGS your father knew!! 

Thanks to Danger Room and intelNews.org we have this item of interest.

Unattended ground sensors [UGS] an integral part of a net-centric system now being used in Afghan and before that in Iraq.

From over forty years ago now during the Second Indo-China War, those UGS as part of the Mac Namara Line once again in use, but this time much up-dated as you might well imagine, the size of the proverbial hockey puck, solar-powered, potentially able to operate for DECADES and resembling a rock more or less.

Can be "sown" in profusion allowing for economy of force, especially in the low-intensity counter-insurgency warfare.

 "This Rock Could Spy on You for Decades"

 "Palm-sized sensors, developed for the American military, will remain littered across the Afghan countryside — detecting anyone who moves nearby and reporting their locations back to a remote headquarters. Some of these surveillance tools could be buried in the ground, all-but-unnoticeable by passersby. Others might be disguised as rocks, with wafer-sized, solar-rechargeable batteries that could enable the sensors’ operation for perhaps as long as two decades,"

 "Arrays of up to 50 palm-sized acoustic and seismic sensors form a mesh network. When one sensor detects a person or a vehicle passing by, it uses unlicensed radio frequency bands to pass an alert from one node to the next. The alert finally hits a communications gateway, which can send the signal via satellite, tactical radio network, or Wi-Fi to a command and control center. That signal can tip off additional sensors — or it can send a Twitter-like message to an intelligence officer’s phone or tablet."

Sounds like net-centric stuff. Links to radio relay, remote sites, satellites uplink/downlink and accessible by a variety of decision makers and shooters. Able to detect the movement of persons or vehicles from a long distance, further investigation warranted, destruction a possible.

 UGS in Vietnam NOT such a big success. Too susceptible to variables and the various types of signals often not distinguish-able, the observer not able to determine an enemy soldier from a peaceful peasant or a herd of water buffalo.

UGS only one of many sensors available to the net-centric warrior and combined with other assets and used in tandem, those shooters relying on data remotely accessed, modern technology allowing for maximum of damage to the enemy with minimum of effort.

Such is the concept and the hope!

 coolbert.