Weaponized lasers move from sci-fi to reality

The military just took one huge step toward making a laser weapon a functional reality. Northrop Grumman just announced a successful test of a 100-kilowatt laser, considered battlefield strength.

This solid-state laser is not as powerful as a chemical laser, but it can be powered by a jet or tank engine, and is much smaller. Unlike the lasers we're used to, this one will have a beam that's invisible. Bummer.

Unfortunately, it's still a few years and $100 million away from being used in the field. The problem is reducing the size, weight and cost of the laser guns. Dr. Brian Strickland, manager of the Army's Joint High Power Solid State Laser program said, "The next step would be to take the laser from the laboratory to the field and begin shooting down missiles with it." He also said that they want to get the cost down. "We want to have a laser that costs $15 to $20 million." Don't we all?

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Wasp Injection Knife

When I read about the Wasp Injection Knife, I couldn’t help but think this is one lethal weapon, capable of bringing down the largest of creatures with a single strike.

If you’ve ever done any form of diving, you are familiar with the effects that compressed air can have on the body. As part of the training all divers receive, they are taught that holding your breath while surfacing would cause your lungs to expand and eventually burst.

The premise behind the Wasp Injection Knife is the same. This easy to load knife, will inject a frozen ball of compressed air, roughly the size of a basketball at nearly 800 psi upon strike of it’s target, causing even the largest of animals to drop.

The knife has a multitude of functions. In an aquatic environment, the knife can be used as self defense against large predators. When a predator is struck with the knife, the compressed air causes the region around the strike wound to freeze. The compressed air also causes the predator to float to the surface, thereby drawing other predators away from your area.

This knife will of course have military uses as well. Within the military, the knife has often been the last line of defense, protecting the soldier from harm. Over the years, the knife has undergone some transformation in terms of it’s cutting surface, but there has been very little radical transformation, that is up until now. Needless to say, with this knife, the military personnel will certainly have an advantage.

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Blast Knuckles Are Just Shocking

Blast Knuckles offer some serious protection from would be robbers. A single punch…or blast from this weapon will send 950,000 volts of juice through the attackers body. That’s no error, almost a million volts. Just be sure that you have a good lawyer and a strong self defense case before you start emulating your favorite video game street fighter.

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U.S. Navy Invents Railgun

The mighty railgun, that hitherto-unfeasible weapon most beloved of gamers and geeks the world over, is now a functional reality thanks to the U.S. Navy, which has produced a working 8-megajoule electromagnetic mass driver.

Spotted at the Naval Surface Warfare Center in Virginia, the navy's new weapon of choice fires but a single shot at once, unlike the hypothetical counterpart featured in classic FPS Quake. But what a shot is is, offering a 250 nautical-mile range (with an apogee of 95 miles from the Earth's surface!) and enough kinetic energy to equal the destructive power of a million-dollar missile.

"The projectile fired yesterday weighed only 3.2 kilograms and had no warhead. Future railgun ordnance won't be large and heavy, either, but will deliver the punch of a Tomahawk cruise missile because of the immense speed of the projectile at impact. Garnett compared that force to hitting a target with a Ford Taurus at 380 mph." - The Fredericksburg Free Lance Star

A 64 megajoule version is coming soon, and the navy expects it to be operational by 2020.

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Gun-Mount and Sniper Software for iPod Touch

IPod Touch as deadly sniper accessory? Awesome. This is the Knight's Armaments M110 iPod Touch mount, a clip-on case designed to hold your iPod Touch in easy reach while you draw a bead on the enemy.

Alone, this isn't much -- you could watch 'Nam movies while taking target practice, we guess. What makes this a useful accessory is the companion software from the same company, called BulletFlight. Simply dial in the shooting conditions: wind speed, distance, type of gun and bullet, and the app will tell you just how much to tweak your shot to hit the bullseye.

The app is $12 on the App Store. The mount and case themselves don't seem to be up on the Knight's Armaments site just yet.

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Crazy Fighting Umbrella with Knuckle-Duster Handle

The Umbuster is an umbrella so deadly and surreal it could only be at home in the hands of John Steed and Mrs. Peel. Even the legal warning for this lip-splitting brolly is odd:

The Umbuster has been classified a Class 5 weapon by good and upright men and women of the Victorian Police, and is considered similarly so in many countries. To have and to hold this accessory requires a weapons licence and, or gun licence.

Usually this kind of strangeness is confined to the world of the concept design, but eccentric designer Sruli Recht's umbrella and aluminum knuckle-duster mashup will actually be on sale for $330.

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Fighter Helmets Sees Through Walls, Scares Everyone

It looks like the F-35 Joint Striker Fighter helmet have read the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. Specifically, the Kill-O-Zap gun therein:

The Kill-O-Zap™ gun is a long, silver mean-looking device, the designers of which decided to make it totally clear that it had a right end, and a wrong end, and if that meant sticking blacked and evil-looking devices and prongs all over the wrong end, so be it.

And not only is the helmet scary (Predator, anyone?) it's also an awesome gadget. The European Joint Strike Fighter lacks a HUD, so all the info is beamed direct to the helmet. This means that the infra red images from plane-cams can be superimposed on the pilots vision, allowing him to "see through" the cockpit walls and floors to the outside world.

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