This weapon, made by BAE Systems, is targeting a range of 50 to 100 nautical miles to start with and the Navy plans to increase the range 220 nautical miles. The railgun uses 32-megajoules of electromagnetic energy to fling a projectile down a pair of rails at anywhere from 4500 to 5600 mph. That is seriously hellafast.

In fact, it is so fast that explosives aren’t needed to destroy a target. No gunpowder, or high explosives, just pure raw speed and momentum will obliterate whatever that projectile hits. The Navy said to be in testing the new prototype this month while it waits for a second prototype to be delivered that is constructed by a different contractor, General Atomics. The day I can deer hunt with a railgun, will be the day I kill my first Bambi.

The 4 inch-long bullet was invented by Red Jones and Brian Kast, who aside from being engineers are also hunters. So if you hate this tech, blame the game that they couldn’t hit. Although to say that this is overcompensating would be an understatement: the high-tech ammo has an optical sensor, an 8-bit CPU that handles “guidance and control electronics” and electromagnetic actuators that control its fins.

The bullet is meant to be used with smooth-bore firearms, i.e. ones that don’t have grooves inside their barrels. The grooves give spin to normal bullets to help them fly straight, but since this bullet literally has a mind of its own it doesn’t need the spin. The screenshot above shows the path left by a prototype fitted with an LED, proving that its electronics and battery are not destroyed when the bullet is fired. That is one weird trajectory.

Sandia’s press release also said that the bullet’s flight gets steadier with distance, so it’s better suited for long-range targets. The current prototype isn’t up to the U.S. military’s standards in terms of velocity, but its inventors are confident that they can make it go faster by using customized gunpowder. Or they could invent bullet time. Check the link below for more details.

[via Sandia National Labs via BBC News]

The coolest of the projects that received grant money is one proposed by a team of scientists at Boston University that want to figure out if you can grow brown fat cells and then inject them into the human body as a way to boost metabolism and burn fat, leading to weight loss. The human body has both brown adipose tissue and white adipose tissue. The white fat cells make people obese, yet the brown fat cells help burn calories.

In fact, a recent study showed that a pockets of brown fat cells can burn as much as 250 calories in a three-hour time span. Those brown fat cells can even steal energy from white fat cells, further stunting obesity. The researchers hope to develop a method of growing those brown fat cells and injecting them into the body with the goal of helping overweight soldiers lose weight. You can bet that if the team is successful, this will also be highly profitable in the private sector with obese people looking for a way to lose weight.

[via Wired: Danger Room]

Most drones in the military arsenal have a pilot, even if that pilot is half a world away. The X-47B will be able to take off, find its target, attack, and return home and land all on its own using internal systems. While it’s still years away from being used in the field, the X-47B would be the first fully-unmanned aircraft system in the military.

Humans would still program flight plans and targets, but Northrop program manger Carl Johnson said, “It will do its own math and decide what it should do next.” Let’s hope the math is does comes up with an answer other than humans are a risk to its survival. While it is currently illegal for a machine to make its own military decisions, I don’t think Skynet really cares about such rules.

[via TheAtlanticWire]

Watch designs featured by Tokyoflash are usually extremely complicated, which makes reading the time off of them – which happens to be the main purpose of watches, by the way – more difficult than necessary. Needless to say, I was pleasantly surprised when I chanced upon the Trax MkII Concept Watch.

The watch was designed by Peter Fletcher from the UK, and draws on obvious military themes as its inspiration. That’s pretty much apparent as it uses tank-like treads to tell the time. Unlike other watch displays that flash a series of LED lights and leave all the time reading interpretation up to you, the Trax MkII tells it like it is: with good, old-fashioned digits.

As the time changes, the numbered treads move into position. Just read the numbers found between the LED illuminated brackets in the middle to know what time of day it is – in military time, of course.

On the design, Peter explains: “I wanted to come up with a watch design based on driven belts. The first thought that popped into my head when thinking about belts was caterpillar tracks and what caterpillar tracks are usually attached too. So I decided to use tanks as an inspiration for this watch concept.”

Execution of this particular design will require a fairly complex mechanism to be built, but if you’d like to see it produced some day, be sure to cast your vote over on the Tokyoflash design blog.

[via Ubergizmo via Geeky Gadgets]

The giant vehicles that the military uses are far from fuel-efficient and the more fuel they consume, the more fuel the military has to transport to wherever they are operating from. The more transportation runs to fuel up, the more soldiers are in harm’s way. Never mind the massive fuel expenses passed onto taxpayers. Clearly, saving fuel has many benefits in the military. This is why the Hummer is gong hybrid.

The full details on the vehicle known as the Fuel Efficiency Group Vehicle Demonstrator or FED Bravo are still classified. However, it is said to be a plug-in hybrid, using technology similar to the Chevy Volt. More details are known about the FED Alpha, a lightweight model which uses a solar panel to power its electrical system, and runs on a turbo 4-cylinder diesel engine, along with special tires which have a low rolling resistance. The vehicles are said to get the same performance as current Hummers and save 70% on fuel.

[via Inhabitat via Jalopnik]

According to the scientist, the RQ-170 Sentinel drone was forced to land where the Iranians wanted it to using a GPS hack. First, they blocked the GPS signals to the drone placing it into autopilot. Then the GPS hack fooled the drone into thinking it was somewhere it wasn’t.

The drone then landed of its own accord when the Iranians told it to and they had the complete and working drone in their possession. The crazy part is that apparently the military knew that this exact hack could compromise the drone all the way back in 2003.

[via C|Net via Gizmodo]

There are all sorts of robots in use within the military – some of them can roll around to fight with their own weapons, and others are designed to simply give a look at what is over a wall or around a corner.

The Army has purchased 315 ReconRobitics Recon Scout XT video reconnaissance robots that soldiers can throw up to 120 feet (and operate from as much as 300 feet away outdoors) to give them a look at what’s going on ahead of them. The tiny bots measure just 8 inches long and weigh just 1.3 pounds, and have gnarly looking spiked wheels so they can navigate difficult terrain. It even has an automated infrared mode for seeing in dark environments.

Click to View Embedded Video Clip

The Army also bought SearchStick accessories that allow the Recon Scout XT to be put on a stick and lifted up in the air to see over walls. Each of the Recon Scout XT bots can be deployed in just five seconds. It has a rechargeable battery and a single button controller for simplicity.

AlphaDog looks just like BigDog with the exception of being larger and having a higher payload capability and range. AlphaDog can carry up to 400 pounds of gear and has some other cool systems. Alpha has internal GPS and computer vision that allows it to follow along behind a solider automatically.

The US Marines and DARPA plan to put the AlphaDog through its paces next year. The thing still creeps me out. I can see it going bezerk and stomping all over my head. Check out the video to see AlphaDog in action.

Click to View Embedded Video Clip

[via IEEE Spectrum]

Lockheed Martin has unveiled a new remote controlled drone based on the design of the maple seed. The Samarai drone is very compact and lightweight. It has two moving parts and camera on it and can fly using a remote control or a tablet app. Test flights for the drone took it up to about 30-feet in elevation, and proved that the concept works.

Click to View Embedded Video Clip

The drone can hover like a helicopter and can take off vertically in tight spots. It’s small enough to be deployed from a backpack and the pilot can launch the craft by throwing it like a boomerang. The thought is that the drone could some day be used by military and police to see what is going on over a wall, or in other hard to reach locations.

[via Navy Times]

Often in the military, how far a group of soldiers can wander from base depends on the amount of gear they can carry with them like water and food. They also have to contend with getting tired from carrying heavy packs as well. The military is now sending its cool Squad Mission Support System to Afghanistan to help take a load off the soldiers.

The Lockheed Martin produced, six-wheeled ATVs can navigate on their own and are able to carry the supplies that the soldiers need when on a mission or just hiking to the next point. The SMSS is the largest unmanned vehicle to ever be deployed with the army. It can be remote controlled, tele-operated, or manual controlled. In the future, the vehicles might be armed, and provide surveillance capabilities as well.

[via CNET]

Lockheed has said that at 32,000 feet the airship had some sort of issue and had to return to a “predetermined location” for landing. Either the person that determines the location for landing needs to be shot or there was nothing predetermined about where the HALE-D ended up.

The airship “landed” in a heavily wooded area in Pennsylvania. The area is apparently so densely wooded that Lockheed is working to figure out how to get the HALE-D back. The aircraft is said to be undamaged and no injuries are reported. The goal of the program is to create an airship that can hang in the air 12 miles above the ground with surveillance capabilities like a satellite at a much lower cost.

[via GizMag]

The Blackfish apparently starts as a normal jet ski, then QinetiQ, the company that makes the Blackfish, hacks the top off and crams a bunch of sensors inside what’s left. Those sensors allow the Blackfish to see under the water and on top of the water to look for attackers that might be swimming up to attack Navy ships.

The Blackfish will be able to be remotely controlled at distances of up to 1KM and can also be autonomous and patrol pre-set GPS waypoints. Care was taken to be sure the jet ski could go slow enough to be useful for surveillance. Bow thrusters were added to allow the Blackfish to move slowly enough in the water. The Blackfish is 10-feet long and can hit 40mph on the water.

[via Discovery News]

The haptic belts use an array of vibrating motors called tactors that are spaced at 45-degree intervals. One tactor points in each direction the solider might need to go. As they move along a path noted by waypoints, the tactors will vibrate and point them in the correct direction. To make the device even cooler, the belt can also be connected to a glove worn by the leader so that they vibrate in response to hand signals.

For instance, all the tactors can vibrate when the commander gives the halt hand signal and when the move out signal is given the tactors can vibrate in a back to front motion. The haptic belts can even be programmed by a remote command center to steer squads on a new path based on intel they might not have on the ground.

The haptic belt project is being conducted by Elmar Schmeisser and a team at the Army Research Office in North Carolina.

[via New Scientist via Dvice]

According to the rumors, the soldiers were using night vision contact lenses. The lenses are claimed to get power by magnetic induction. The wearer would put a gel with a strong magnet on the eyelids and each time they blink the lenses would be charged. That is so awesome – assuming it’s more than a rumor.

Contacts for night vision would be very cool because the wearer would get their peripheral vision back. Peripheral vision is lost with the wearing of normal night vision goggles. This may well have no truth to it, but I could see the army fielding some straight up Pitch Black sci-fi contacts.

[via kitup]

The X500 has a 15.6-inch screen, an Intel i7 2.66GHz processor, and it’s quite tough. And to prove it, Getac partnered up with a company called Tough Corp to get the job done. The laptop also comes with a sunlight readable touchscreen and high power WiFi (up to 3,280 feet outdoors). It comes with a fingerprint scanner, multi-card ready, and some anti-theft features.

There’s no word on pricing, but you got to give to Getac on coming up with something ruggedly sexy. I can already see Jack Bauer having a go at this to disarm a nuclear warhead or something. I’ll bet that it can double as a bulletproof vest as well (or not).

[via Ubergizmo]

The Tactical Pants Blog has found three pairs of pants that have pockets large enough to hold your iPad or iPad 2. Yep, now you can look all swanky by carrying around your iPad in great big old pocket, ensuring that it’s always close by.

The best pants to carry your iPad are the Warrior Wear Pants by Blackhawk, which were recently discontinued. Right after came the Kitacnica Tactical Pants that cost $160 but didn’t feel all that secure. Having your iPad in the pocket of your pants might not be the best idea, since these pockets offer no security, meaning that your iPad 2 could be easily stolen by someone with nimble fingers. You also probably won’t want to sit down.

[Tactical Pants Blog via CrunchGear]

A British team has recorded a test session on video so the curious sort like me can see just how it is done. If you were expecting a steely-nerved pilot strapping in and punching out while flying at mach 1, sadly, that’s not how it is done.

Click to View Embedded Video Clip

The reality is almost that cool though. They use a frackin’ rocket sled. The sled hurtles down some railroad tracks and a dummy strapped in the seat is ejected into the sky. I guess if the dummy has all its appendages after the test and things work OK, the seat is approved. We never get to see the dummy land in the video, so we don’t get to see how well the he or the seat did when they landed.

[via Boing Boing]

This wasn’t a toy or a model mind you, but a real Harrier that last flew with the RAF in 1997. The kid hit the “Buy it Now” button on the $113,000 purchase and then the bad things happened. His dad found out he bought the jet and canceled the sale.  Apparently, Will Smith was right, parents just don’t understand.

The upside is that the seller cancelled without giving the man a hard time, and says that the boy actually helped them because the story brought more attention to the sale. The harrier can no longer fly, and according to some would take millions of pounds to return to flight capable.

[via MyFoxChicago]

The threshold for a laser weapon that is good for defense is 100 kilowatts of power. The prototype laser that the Navy has been working with had only 14 kilowatts of power. The Navy has announced that it has been testing a new injector that has greatly increased the power of the laser and brought the Free Electron Laser up to the megawatt class.

The Navy also points out that the laser could be used for more than shooting down missiles. It could also be used to guide other weapons and more. The cool part about a laser is that it never needs bullets and the beam travels at the speed of light.

[via Wired]