As you might expect, that headline doesn’t tell anything close to the whole story, but it’s essentially true and dripping with irony. And I like the picture. In a test off the coast of South Australia, a Shark Shield device (which is supposed to repel sharks with a conductive field that causes them to experience uncomfortable muscle spasms if they get too close) was chomped on by a 12 foot long Great White shark. The device was attached to a float at the time, instead of a surfer. The company says that the test failure was due to a problem with the electrode generating the field, and not with the way the thing works, but I’m not sure that would make me feel much better.
The company says on their website that “the testing conducted to date proves conclusively (100% of the time) that sharks detest the effect the field has on them, and will keep a safe distance between themselves and the Shark Shield”, but a spokesman has modified that to “nobody wearing a Shark Shield has ever been attacked by a shark.” My guess is that you’re probably better off with one of these things on than not, but keep in mind that your odds of being bitten by a shark are astronomically low. If you’re still worried, a personal Shark Shield for surfers or divers will cost you about $645.
QinetiQ, a defense contractor from the UK with poor spelling has developed an unmanned maritime reconnaissance vehicle that’s about the size of an average jet-ski. The small craft is designed for multiple military or security-based roles including harbor patrol, battlefield reconnaissance, intruder investigation and even damage assessment all without risking the lives of any sailors.
And even though it’s only about 3.5 meters in length the Sentry still has an advanced stealth design, is capable of speeds up to 50 knots and can run for about 6 hours at a time. It can also be configured to operate by remote using a simple PC-based console or it can be programmed to autonomously carry out pre-planned missions like patrolling a particular body of water.
The Sentry is yet another step in the military’s slow transition to unmanned vehicles. Not only do the remotely operated craft remove the military personnel from any danger but it also means the vehicles can be smaller and more fuel-efficient since they don’t need to accommodate a human pilot or any of the life-support and emergency systems that are required.
If you have kids, this is virtually guaranteed to be at the top of their birthday wish list: Special Materials (a Russian, uh, defense technology company) has developed a hand-held water cannon capable of delivering a 100 joule “bullet” of water to close range targets. You can do the math on what 100 joules equates to in terms of fists to the jaw, but Special Materials says that “such a jet will provide a damage effect at 5m [17 feet] distance.” The end product will be a portable, self-contained unit that weighs about 5 pounds and runs off of electricity and water, making it all too easy to reload. The appeal to law enforcement is that it’s actually much safer than a beanbag round while providing a similar effect. And of course, it’s much more fun to play with when it’s hot outside.
With everyone and their dog having personal laser pointers, why is it taking so long for the defense industry to produce a laser that’s actually capable of, you know, blowing stuff up? The problem is that most researchers are trying to pump up single beam generators into the range of 100 kilowatts, which is considered to be the minimum effective strength for a battlefield laser. Raytheon got fed up waiting, and built a fiber laser of only 20 kilowatts that was nonetheless able to detonate 60mm mortar rounds at a range of 500 yards. How? By having terrible beam quality.
While everyone else is trying to cram the most energy into the tightest beam, Raytheon just clumped a bunch of lower power lasers into a wider beam, which turned out to more effectively heat the mortar up causing it to explode, whereas a tight, high powered beam might punch a hole right through it. Next up: blowing up mortar rounds in flight by mounting the laser on a Phalanx platform.
MetalStorm has been pushing their military hardware for a while now (and without much tangible success), but since their weapon technology seems to be making the rounds again, here’s an admittedly cool video of one of their multi-barrel one million rounds per minute prototype guns destroying some defenseless stacks of plywood in slow-mo:
In a nutshell, MetalStorm achieves these ridiculously high rates of fire by stacking multiple bullets in multiple barrels and firing them all virtually at the same time with electronic triggers. The system is adaptable to a variety of ammunition (like grenades), and can be mounted on aircraft or vehicles or controlled remotely. So why no luck with the military? I can’t say for certain, but I would guess that you rarely need to fire 1,000,000 rounds a minute, and when you might, they’ve already got stuff that works pretty well.
If there’s one thing that a lot of tasers lack, it’s intimidation… see example. Taser International has completely, utterly destroyed this potential problem by developing a taser that can be fired out of a 12 gauge shotgun. The taser shell is fully self contained (no wires) and uses batteries to deliver 20 seconds worth of incapacitating spazz juice.
Now, I don’t know about you, but it takes more than a taser fired out of a shotgun to knock me down. Specifically to address my own personal badassness, Taser International has also developed a Claymore-style area affect taser module that fires not one, not two, but six individual tasers. I know what you’re thinking: six might not be enough to stop me… But you can mount additional units together, “like Legos,” for some serious electropwnage.
There’s nothing funnier than videos of people getting tasered, and Gizmodo has been graced with promotional vids of each system in action:
Oh, and if you’ve got much in the way of personal experience with tasers, we’d love to hear how these two newcomers stack up against the only standbys. Especially on the receiving end. Have fun!
DARPA, the defense department’s crazy-yet-plausible ideas office, is exploring the possibility of launching unmanned aerial surveillance aircraft with ballistic missiles. I completely understand the “strapping a huge rocket to it will make it better” philosophy in general, but the specific advantage that DARPA is pursuing is the potential to drop a surveillance UAV anywhere in the world in under an hour. Sounds like a great idea, and it is… The only problem is the launch platform: certain countries (I’m looking at you, Russia and China) get a little bit jumpy when they see the US launching intercontinental ballistic missiles, and these same certain countries have plenty of intercontinental ballistic missiles of their own, not necessarily armed with surveillance UAVs.
Not even the Predator has it this good… DARPA had decided to set aside $15 million to build super shields for urban soldiers. These shields will render the soldier invisible, and as if that wasn’t enough, they’ll also heal themselves and allow guns to be shot through them from behind while still providing protection from the front. DARPA doesn’t generally throw money away at completely impossible concepts, which leads me to think that there must be some shot at getting one of these produced in the near future. And it’s true, there has been a lot of progress recently made on things like visible light bending metamaterials and self-healing materials. Still, for such a fanciful (and technical) concept, $15 million doesn’t seem to be nearly enough, so we’ll see. Or ideally, we won’t see.
Wired’s Danger Room defense blog has voted the C-RAM (Counter Rocket, Artillery, and Mortar) defense system as it’s #1 example of war tech, which gives me an excuse to post a video of the system in action. The C-RAM is a Phalanx 20mm gatling cannon that can spit out 75 armor piercing shells per second, and using it’s sophisticated radar tracking system, is able to shoot down missiles, rockets, artillery shells, and mortar shells in flight:
The US Military isn’t the only force with this kind of technology. See some more examples (even if the videos are slightly less cool) after the jump.
Few things instill as visceral a reaction in people as a close lightning strike, so it’s only natural that everybody from Benny Franklin on has tried to harness it’s power, be it for good or evil. Ionatron’s Portal Denial System is a demo of sorts for the actual lightning gun that they’ve been developing, except that in the above video, they’re using the technology to guard a door.
The discharges can be tuned to be lethal or “less lethal,” and can disable vehicles by frying their electronics. Although it looks like lightning (and it pretty much is), the heart of the system is actually a laser. The laser fires femtosecond pulses, which create a superconductive plasma channel to the target, focusing the electrical discharge. So yes, it’s a lightning gun and a laser gun and a plasma gun. Want one yet?
A lightning gun is certainly not a new idea, and Ionatron has been working on their version for years, with limited results… although currently they’re testing a remote controlled lightning gun equipped anti-IED vehicle (which sounds way way WAY cooler than it looks), not much progress seems to have been made towards the promised handheld or vehicle mounted lightning gun.
The Portal Denial System is currently available only to US Government approved customers. Whatever that means, you probably can’t get it.
The company says on their website that “the testing conducted to date proves conclusively (100% of the time) that sharks detest the effect the field has on them, and will keep a safe distance between themselves and the Shark Shield”, but a spokesman has modified that to “nobody wearing a Shark Shield has ever been attacked by a shark.” My guess is that you’re probably better off with one of these things on than not, but keep in mind that your odds of being bitten by a shark are astronomically low. If you’re still worried, a personal Shark Shield for surfers or divers will cost you about $645.
Related Tags: Animals, defense
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By Andrew Liszewski
