There is nothing worse than not knowing if you’ve been shot.  Chances are that won’t be the case if you’re hit with an actual bullet.  We’re actually referring to police training or just a friendly game of laser tag.  So what’s an aspiring gun shot wound victim, or inducer, to do?

Drop $2,500 and get the StressVest.  It delivers a real time shock, up to 4,500 volts, when your mark has been hit with a real gun retrofitted with one of their compatible, eye safe lasers.   For police force trainees this is essential since it induces stress and provides a more real world experience, demanding them to think under the pressure of not only gun fire, but the possibility of actually being wounded in the line of fire.  With each subsequent hit the voltage (i.e. stress) can automatically be increased. And unlike paintball, there is no mess to clean up and the chances of an unprotected individual being hit from a stray shot are zero to none.

In the event you’re looking for a more casual experience – you’ll need to have a federal ID to pick one of these up – the StressVest can be set to a vibration mode.  Additionally, shooting distances can mimic that of the would be actual ammunition, and the lasers work through windows or windshields.

The world of military weaponry is both scary and intriguing.  On one hand you’ve got a piece of kit that can do some serious damage and ultimately cause all sorts of hardship, not the least of them being casualties.  On the other hand it’s amazing what science has achieved over the years in terms of shear physics.

General Atomics has just moved one step closer to achieving a working and usable rail gun system.  Thanks to a Boeing, who designed and built the latest round, which looks like a mini rocket, GA was able to fire their super aerodynamic dart over 4 miles after penetrating a 1/8″ steel plate.  The below footage is pretty uncanny to say the least as they’re able to track the darts movement traveling at Mach 5.

Via: Dvice

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Brazilian police will soon use a special pair of glasses fitted with a small camera, that can track down criminals by capturing up to 400 facial images per second.
It works by wirelessly sending the recorded images to a database that can compare up to 46,000 points on a face, known as biometric data, and determine if they’ve got a criminal history or an outstanding arrest warrant. If a positive ID is made, an alert is sent back to the cop in the form of a red dot on the screen, where upon they can take action, though it’s not clear how much info is displayed.

The cameras are generally designed to scan faces at up to 50 meters, though they do have the ability to function from as far as 12 miles away.
Brazil plans on using the tech at football stadiums, concerts and the upcoming World Cup where it might prove intrusive to the average citizen, but ultimately save lives.
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Lockheed Martin is making a case for the iPhone? Never thought I’d see the day when the legendary American military tech company would get into the iOS aftermarket add-on business. I never even thought about never seeing the day. The thought of never seeing never crossed my mind, that’s how shocking this is.

A ginourmous case that has the looks of a tank and the heft of a battlecruiser, the MONAX lets you gain access to the military’s own 3G network, which spans the globe with infrastructure all the way up to dedicated satellites. Well, not you – you, but you the soldier who will be given access to the MONAX.

Lockheed’s attention was drawn by most calls in Iraq “happening over commercial cell phones, not military radios.” So an iPhone is more usable than a military radio? Who’d have thought.

Is the MONAX going to be the most expensive iPhone case? I don’t know for sure, but at $1000 it’s got a good shot at the title.

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My special ops days are far behind me, but for those of you still running game as a contractor for Mi6 or the CIA, you might want to take a look at the Battelle Tactical Air Initiated Launch system.

It uses compressed air to fire objects at up to 100 feet in distance and 60 feet high.  A titanium grappling hook with a Kevlar line is just one of many objects that can be launched out of this apparatus; anything that can fit in its barrel is game, like t-shirts and other fun objects that are sure to assuage your enemies.

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This is a real world Coil Gun.  It uses electricity and I believe magnets to fire bullet like projectiles (made of magnetic material) at uncanny speeds.

Supposedly it can achieve a comparable velocity to that of a .45 handgun, but as Make points out this isn’t to be believed since this is probably the power emitted in the capacitor bank, but not at the actual muzzle.  Probably a good analogy is the maximum horsepower of a car and how much is lost when attempted to transfer from tire to ground.

Anyway, this is one solid build that took two years to produce.  Fortunately for us, they’ve produced a short film of the gun destroying some household goods. Enjoy.

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The day has finally come — the laser wars have officially begun. Yup, in just a few years things are get totally Terminator around the world. See, the company Raytheon has officially unveiled their Laser Close-In Weapon System at an air show in England, which can take down unmanned aircraft easily with it’s 50 kilowatt beam. The U.S. Navy is now incorporating it into their anti-missile defense, which would situate it as a last defense on their massive battleships. It won’t be long now — which side will you be on in the laser wars?

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Should we be a little scared that this helicopter can take off, fly around, avoid obstacles and return home all without a preprogrammed flight path?  Is Skynet upon us?

Currently the Unmanned Little Bird, as it’s known, is in trials and is overseen by the Army funded research team at Carnegie Melon and Piasecki Aircraft Corp.  It’s the same tech that was used in some of those Darpa trials – you know, the ones where the car had to navigate a course sans driver.

The idea is that these helicopters could one day swoop in to combat zones that are under heavy fire and rescue wounded soldiers.  I’m also confident that they’ll be used to perform attacks, hence my reference to Skynet.

The Copter uses a LIDAR laser system that maps its surrounding.  The computer then creates a virtual 3D map and uses that info to determine where to fly, or in this case not fly, such as through towers, buildings and other obstacles.

What do you think: scary or cool?

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The RAPS (Remote Auxiliary Power System) can attach to any power line and provide juice to any attached gadgets or equipment. It was developed for combat soldiers in the field who don’t have access to a power outlet. Think of it as a grappling hook for electricity. The soldier would throw and hook the device to any power line. An internal razor blade pierces the lines protective layer allowing it to form a connection and draw power down to the converter box where safe, usable electricity can be used. Sounds safe, sort of. But how do you remove the hook once you’re juicing is complete?

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Inventor Matthew Hagerty has got a device that will give soldiers the ability to see around corners.  It’s called Smartsight, a small 1.5lb camera that attaches to the gun and transmits a real time signal to a head mountable display.  Effectively, solders can point their guns around the corner without exposing themselves to enemy fire and still take out their target.  The idea itself isn’t new as we’ve literally seen this type of weapon in video games such as Ghost Recon and probably countless others.  Nonetheless, Smartsight is on track for testing with Special Operations forces sometime next year.

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In the last 10 years the military has adopted video games not only as a means of attracting young new blood, but as a way of training their recruits.  Taking that process another step further, a big step further in fact, is the Nation Guard’s recent investment in Cubic Corporation’s COMBATREDI training system to the tune of $4.8 million.  The system uses a hi-def helmet mounted OLED screen that provides a 60×45 degree view of the virtual combat range and is complemented by a 3D stereo headset.  A system on the back tracks the trainees position, even going as far as to detect if they’re prone or if they need to replace the included gun’s magazine for a fresh set of virtual bullets.

Looks cool.  Can I get one for my Natal?

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I hate to make light of things that murder or maim, but the XM-25 is a bad ass weapon.  Instead of firing your standard 40mm grenade is uses a laser targeting system that measures the distance to the target and communicates that info to the round.  Because soldiers are often dealing with insurgent behind cover, they can increase or decrease the point of detonation, effectively allowing the grenade to enter a window and explode in the center of a room as opposed to the window or wall.

Each XM-25 costs $25,000.  The US Army as ordered 12,500 of the futuristic weapons, with production beginning in 2012.

[via Popsci]

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We’ve definitely seen our fair share of tough computers, iPhone cases and more, but none have matched up to the A-Box.  It’s an artillery box turned speaker system that works with any MP3 player sporting a 3.5mm headphone jack.  So next time you drive into the line of fire, you’ll take comfort in knowing that your iPod is protected by a 1mm steel plate, and that your music won’t sound crappy thanks to the special layer of vibration dampening material and on board battery system.

The A-Box is available in two versions: the lighter one includes 2 × 25W amps and woven fiberglass speakers for $339 and the heavy duty one includes 2 × 70W amps and woven Kevlar speakers for $475.

[via Technabob]

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That’s not a typo, folks, that’s a strange little bit of news that’ll make your day just a little more surreal.  I try to do that sort of thing wherever possible.

If you’ve got $3000, a lot of patience and anything with the Android operating system, then you too can buy and own a Plen, the “desktop hobby robot” controlled by the new Google OS.

Plen, through his Android handset controls, can perform a series of complex tasks, including posing, random things, and even skateboarding.

Only fifty of them will be made, making the Plen an instant collectible whether or not you have any way of controlling him.  This actually represents an amazing, possibly game-changing point–imagine an eight foot tall Plen with a machine gun on each arm.  Think that might render human soldiery largely obsolete?  Yeah, I thought so too.  And let’s not forget other hazardous duties like construction, demolition, bomb defusing…a whole host of things that might be subcontractable to remote controlled robots.

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Now, you might look at the above title, and conclude that I’ve finally gone whistling fruitcrackers clear round the bend.  Or maybe just thoroughly insane for those who don’t like colorful metaphors.  But I assure you it is true–the Pentagon is currently hard at work spending your tax dollars on creating a line of zombie pigs.

It actually started with mice.  Researchers discovered that there was a way to remove sixty percent of the blood from a mouse, inject it with a drug cocktail involving hydrogen sulfide.  This cocktail in turn caused the remaining blood to stop flowing and the heart to stop beating, but here’s the kicker–it could be brought back to life later.

Convinced that they were on to something, those same researchers then decided to turn their attention to pigs, which have a surprisingly similar cardiovascular system to guess who?  That’s right, us–HUMANS.

This is actually being billed as a suspended animation system for soldiers in the field, who researchers project would be issued a syringe full of this drug cocktail in case of severe wounds.  They could then inject themselves and induce suspended animation, giving their cohorts time to find them and get them to field hospitals.

In turn, this is also a huge possibility for civilian applications, including everything from medical first responders–imagine what this would do for accident or heart attack victims?–to the missing component for interstellar travel.

Zombie pigs may sound weird, but they may well be the first step towards an incredible array of systems and products.

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You’d have to have some seriously huge nards to wanna wear the Black Ops Throat Mic in public, but that’s exactly what they intend for you to do since it’s iPhone compatible.  Then again, nothing is worse then the geektastic Bluetooth headsets that people wear as every day jewelry.

Like iterations we’ve seen before, this headset picks up your throats vibration/audio and transfers it to the handset via a wired connection, while a small in ear headphone sends the audio to your dome.  Should work great in a convertible, though I’m not sure how palatable the $119 price tag is for most.

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Well, that’s it for me, folks–my science fiction lobe has officially collapsed on me, because I was just reading about a new military project that’ll probably change the way war is fought forever.

I read about cyborg beetles.

It seems that the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (or DARPA, the guys who started the Internet in the first place) have been working on a kind of “cyborg beetle” that’s been surgically altered and given all sorts of awesome mechanical doodads to engage in fighting and surveillance of the enemy.  They can be controlled remotely by humans in the field, and are actually part of a much larger overall project called HI-MEMS, the Hybrid Insect Micro-Electric Mechanical Systems.  HI-MEMS, if I understood correctly, will yield history’s first-ever truly bionic organism.

The article went on from there about what all they could do, but my head started swimming about the time I pictured wasps jammed full of uranium so they gave poisoned radioactive stings to their targets.

They’re the perfect soldier.  Absolutely expendable.  Kill as many as you please, the colony will hatch a few million more.  Heaven help us when they start carrying explosives.

They’re the perfect assassin.  Can you lock yourself down so effectively that even a spider can’t reach you?  And a cybernetic black widow could definitely take out a target, probably without ever being noticed.

I don’t know whether to be amazed or horrified, and right now, I’m trending toward horrified.

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Here we go into the twenty first century of warfare, folks, as the Airborne Boeing laser finally manages to hit a ground-based target for the first time ever!

The Air Force only a few short hours ago announced that, back on August 30th, a C-130 mounting a Boeing ATL (Advanced Tactical Laser) managed to hit a target on the ground.  And, the best part?  It only took Boeing thirty million dollars to pull it off!  Hurray!

But frankly, thirty million is a small price to pay, as far as I’m concerned, as long as it hastens the day when I can strap a laser gun to my hip and go plinking rats at the junkyard.

[via Slashdot]

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Now this is pretty fly for a white guy.  Until recent most iPhone translation apps were limited to text input or a phrase dictionary.  Select the phrase and an audio bite would play.  But what about speech-to-speech translations?  Well, it’s coming, albeit to the military.

Created by a company called Sakhr, their speech-to-speech translator iPhone app can translate English to Arabic and Arabic to English in real time.  The accuracy of the app, for lack of better words is remarkable and appears to have a very high accuracy rate, although I shouldn’t take the below video as a true testament since it isn’t real world testing.

As previously mentioned this app is intended for military use only, but it clearly demonstrates the power of the iPhone.  Too bad I didn’t have one of these in 9th grade French class.

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Hmmm…Dell’s latest rugged laptop includes Ballistic Armor in its moniker.  With that said I wonder if they’ll let us shoot it with a 9mm (not a .22), like we did with the Sonim XP1?  Rated for falls up to 4 feet and all sorts of extreme elements, such as blowing liquid and dirt, the Latitude E6400 XFR exceeds real world and military spec (MIL-STD-810F).  On the inside of the 8.5lb box is an Intel Core2 Duo Processor, 14.1-inch 1280×800 LCD (available in touch), up to 8GB of RAM, 120GB HDD or 128GB SSD, DVD burner, NVIDIA Quadro NVS 160M 256MB DDR2 Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 4500MHD, WiFi, GPS, Bluetooth, optional fingerprint reader, and 5-in-1 media card reader.  Video and pics after the ‘leap’.

No word on price, but expect it to cost a pretty penny.

[Dell]