Photos: Army designates year's best inventions

Every spring, the U.S. Army designates a set of top inventions from the preceding year. Rather than radical, out-of-the-blue creations, the list tends more toward refinements on existing gear, but that doesn't make them any less significant for the soldiers who use that gear in battlefield conditions.

The top inventions for 2007, honored in a ceremony last month, like last year's bunch has an emphasis on ways to reduce the threat of, or the damage from, improvised explosive devices. This year's group also recognizes a novel technique for saving the lives of severely injured soldiers.

Pictured here is an RQ-7 Shadow 200 unmanned aerial vehicle that's in service in northern Iraq with the 6th Cavalry Regiment. The invention being honored isn't the UAV, though. It's the aircraft's Communications Relay System, which is designed to enhance two-way communications when the Shadow flies beyond the normal range of standard single-channel ground radios. The CRS can be used in a boom-mounted configuration or with wingtip-extension, handheld PRC-152 radios, the Army said.