Tag: weapons

A real-life light saber?

Sounds more like a Star Trek phaser set on stun, to me: The LED Incapacitator works by emitting a strobe of ultra-bright, multicolored, pulsing light. Once pointed at an individual, the built in range finder measures the distance to the nearest set of eyes and then adjusts the level, output and frequency of this beam, …

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Robots with guns…

…the first armed robots in history…have now been deployed in Iraq. No, they don’t look like Arnold Schwarzenegger.

That’s not a laser security system…

…this is a laser security system!* Ionatron’s security device shoots a laser across a doorway or hall to create a stream of plasma (called a laser-induced plasma channel, or LIPC). Since the plasma is conductive, it’s easy to fire a jolt of electricity down the plasma path, which can be lethal or “less lethal,” at …

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And while we’re on the subject of my new novel…

…my underwater hunter/tracker robots destroy their targets with a sonic weapon. Now, thanks to the U.S. Navy, I know how it works.

Rise of the ray-guns

“Set phasers on stun!” Captain Kirk used to order his crew, the usual preference of the United Federation of Planets being to avoid killing aliens, no matter how bad their make-up, if at all possible. Alas, in the real world, we don’t always have that option. Aside from the Taser, which zaps people with an …

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Rise of the robots…

Next stop, the Terminator? Singapore is launching a contest to build “urban warrior robots.”

The long-lost secret of Damascus blades:

Carbon nanotubes?

Half-Life’s automated machine-gun sentries…

…become a reality, courtesy of Samsung and Korea University. Just a little scary, don’t you think? (Via Gizmodo.)

Nanotech battle suits

  In his 1959 novel Starship Troopers (the movie of the same name has almost nothing in common with the book–ignore it!), Robert Heinlein invented the idea of powered battle armor, which gave an infantryman more fighting power than a modern tank, protected him from battlefield hazards, allowed central command to locate him and monitor …

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Nuclear testing

With the explosion of “nuclear devices” (aka “bombs”) in the past couple of weeks, India and Pakistan have joined the “nuclear club,” and also, alas. brought nuclear weapons into the forefront of the news for the first time in years. So perhaps it’s time for a little refresher course on just how a nuclear bomb …

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Hobart’s Funnies

Necessity is the mother of invention, as the old saying goes; and in warfare, necessities can be urgent indeed. As a result, many technological innovations occur during wartime. The First World War brought us huge advances in aircraft design; the Second World War brought us atomic energy. But on a less grandiose scale, technical innovations …

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