Military

Having placed third in the prestigious DARPA Urban Challenge in 2007, engineering students from Virginia Tech have returned to the forefront of autonomous vehicle development by designing and building four GUSS (Ground Unmanned Support Surrogate) vehicles. Able to carry 1800 lbs and designed to resupply and evacuate troops in the field as well as reduce the load carried by them, the vehicles are due to make their debut at the impending 2010 Rim of the Pacific (RIMPAC)war games in Hawaii. Read More

If you own an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV), here’s piece of advice: don’t fly it near San Nicholas Island, California, or it could be blasted out of the sky – by a laser. Two such vehicles were successfully shot down there on May 24th by a US Navy laser weapon. According to the official press release, this marks "the first detect-thru-engage laser shoot-down of a threat representative target in an over-the-water, combat representative scenario.” Read More

If a terrorist attack has left an area contaminated with nerve gas, chances are no one wants to add any other noxious substances to it. Using conventional chlorine- and lye-based decontamination agents, however, that’s exactly what’s happening. Not only can these substances run off and harm people or the environment, they can also react with the very materials they’re cleaning up, forming new toxic substances. It is for reasons such as these that the US military has developed Decon Green - a non-toxic set of ultra-strength cleaners. Read More

With its ability to handle any rope thrown at it with ease, the Powered Rope Ascender would’ve been the perfect device for those torturous rope climbing activities in gym class. Although they’ve been around since 2004, the Office of Naval Research (ONR) threw down the gauntlet to Boston-based Atlas Devices to create an Ascender for naval use that is lighter, smaller, more functional, and includes a removable, rechargeable battery. The device the company came up with is currently on display at Fleet Week New York. Read More

Lockheed Martin has won a $3.93 million contract from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to develop high-tech rifle-scope attachment. Designed to improve marksmanship over distances of between three and 600 meters, the Dynamic Image Gunsight Optic (DInGO) system combines a low power laser rangefinder, an embedded ballistics computer and onboard sensors that determine wind and other environmental effects. Read More

DARPA has launched an unmanned hypersonic gliding vehicle that can reach speeds up to Mach 20 (13,000mph). The Falcon program aims to develop and demonstrate hypersonic technologies for prompt use in global reach missions and the Falcon Hypersonic Technology Vehicle 2 (HTV-2) forms part of this quest to produce an unmanned, rocket-launched, maneuverable air vehicle that glides through the Earth’s atmosphere at incredibly fast speeds. Read More

The sniper is without doubt the most feared combatant in any theater of war, the best of whom have an array of skills far beyond simply being able to hit human targets at a distance. Snipers are the most cost effective way of killing the enemy. Individual snipers routinely account for more kills than entire battalions operating in the same place at the same time, hit the target almost every time, and each bullet costs around €2. An elite sniper's skills cannot be assessed with a single measurement, so the “longest confirmed kill” record stands as the pseudo world championship for military combat riflemen, and as of now there's a new outright champion - using an Accuracy International L115A3, British Corporal Craig Harrison killed two Taliban with consecutive shots at a distance of 2.47 kilometres (8120 ft) in Helmand Province, Afghanistan last November (2009). He then fired a third shot and hit the Taliban's PKM machinegun in perhaps the most prodigious feat of marksmanship in military history. Read More

Lockheed Martin and Kaman Aerospace Corporation have transformed a 6,000lb power lifting K-MAX helicopter into an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) and successfully tested airdropping cargo by parachute to simulate resupplying troops in the field. The test involved cargo airdrops from 300ft-400ft using a four-hook carousel during one flight, demonstrating how the UAV could conduct four drops in a single mission. Read More

Known as Turtle, the world's first military submarine appeared during the American War of Independence. It was 10 feet long, constructed of two wooden shells covered with tar, propelled by a one-person crew using hand-cranked propellers, had enough air for a 30 minute dive and its weapons were a drill, a keg of gunpowder and a time fuse. Fast forward 230-odd years to the British Navy's Astute class submarine, which is currently undergoing sea trials, and you get a very different picture. Made up of a million individual components and capable of carrying 93 crew and an array of weapons including Tomahawk cruise missiles, the nuclear-powered Astute class is 97m long, weighs 7,800 tons, is coated in 39,000 sonar masking acoustic tiles and doesn't need refueling throughout its expected 25 year service life. Read More