Seven Sci-Fi Weapons from Tomorrow Are Here Today...

By Ned Smith, TechNewsDaily Contributor

Life has been imitating art with a vengeance lately in the field of weaponry. A number of weapons and weapons systems now on active duty or in the prototype stage seem to have been ripped straight out of the overwrought imagination of a sci-fi writer. Here’s a trip back to the future to look at some of the latest military and law enforcement hardware...

Death Ray

Vaporizing things and folks with a powerful ray has been a staple of fervid sci-fi imaginations since the beginnings of the genre. Today, we’ve got weaponized lasers to do that for us. Boeing recently offered a powerful proof-of-concept of the lethal capabilities of airborne laser weapons when it blasted a ballistic missile into oblivion from its Airborne Laser Testbed (ALTB). The modified B 747-400 is fitted with a Northrup Gruman megawatt-class laser (read higher energy) and a Lockheed Martin beam and fire control system. The ALTB uses one low-energy laser to track the target and a second one to measure and compensate for atmospheric disturbances. Then it unleashes its killer laser that heats the target to “critical structural failure.” That’s defense-speak for oblivion.

Doomsday Cannon

Fans of “Battlestar Galactica” will instantly warm to the concept of railguns, which use electrical energy instead of gun powder to fire projectiles at very high speeds, destroying their targets with kinetic energy rather than conventional explosives. It works by sending electric currents along parallel rails, which creates the electromagnetic force needed to fire projectiles at a higher rate of speed than traditional powder-powered cannons. Railguns also have a much great range, as much as 200 to 250 miles. This allows ships to fire deep into enemy territory while staying safely out of harm’s way. Because they don’t require gun powder they are inherently safer than conventional cannons, and free up storage space aboard ship. They also provide a more uniform power charge, which gives them greater accuracy. The U.S. Navy is currently testing early prototype railguns to replace their conventional weapons aboard ship. The service hopes to have a full-capability prototype by 2018.


Invisibility Cloak

Harry Potter got a lot of mileage out of invisibility in the “Harry Potter” series. Not being seen is a key tactic in every warfighter’s toolkit. Earlier warriors adopted camouflage to blend into their surroundings. Modern-day hardware relies on stealth technology, design and materials to make aircraft, naval vessels and vehicles harder to pick out by radar, sonar or heat-sensitive sensors. Invisibility, though, is the Holy Grail in stealth. And the British Army claims to have found it, albeit in a rather kludgy way. In secret tests in 2007, they coated a tank in silicon, turning it into something like a movie screen. Video cameras on the tank take footage of the tank’s environment in real time and project the images on the surface of the tank. Voila, an invisibility cloak of sorts. Not to be outdone, the boffins at the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) have launched their own work to investigate “urban obfuscants” to develop protective shields for soldiers in urban combat situations.

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