Weapons Development

There is a lot of talk about the next type of weapons we will have and those the rest of the world will be using. They are supposed to be faster, better protected, more accurate and of course more expensive. Most of these attributes are important to the military while the more expensive one is the most important to the weapons companies. It is being said the next fighter plane the US is going to have will be hypersonic and have a robot at the controls. This certainly would solve some problems for companies as it would have eliminated some of the problems with our newest plane which no one wants to fly since there are so many problems with it and many of these problems are related to keeping the human pilot safe. I am not surprised we are pushing for drones to replace fighter planes, but I have to wonder if we might regret this in the future, especially if these planes get hacked and turned against us. We will be assured this can never happen, just like our drones could never be hacked and yet Iran somehow made one of our drones land intact, or so it seems

I have to wonder about that. Could it have been possible to fly a cargo plane above it and somehow catch it in a net or something like that? Sometimes the most primitive technology can be used to defeat some of the most sophisticated weapons and sometimes this technology leads to new weapons itself. Take a look at how a catapult works. It uses kinetic energy. It will launch a rock and the force of the rock striking something causes damage not because it explodes, but because it has power behind it. Now look at our new railguns. They are just an improvement on the catapult. It is true they are far more powerful, but the principal is the same. We are launching an object which is hard and doesn’t do damage by exploding, it is the power with which it hits an object that causes the damage. We have figured out how to make the catapult into a far more deadly weapon, but a catapult is still a catapult no matter what you are calling it.

Have you ever seen a ghillie suit or do you even know what it is? Let me tell you, it is a suit which snipers wear and they traditionally create it themselves out of items from the surroundings they are going to shoot from. They may take leaves and grass and create a suit which covers them from head to toe. The idea is for the sniper to remain hidden. It is just a matter of time before there are no more ghillie suits. The reason for this is the development of material which bends light around it and renders the wearer invisible. Invisibility has been achieved and there might already be suits made from this material. One type has tiny cameras on the back of the suit which project the view from the back to the front effectively hiding the sniper. The second type operates on refracting light. Either way it is going to be much harder to detect snipers in a few years. The solution may have to be some sort of heat sensors or cameras created to detect them.

It used to be a grenade would go as far as you could throw it. In World War II the grenade was of the pineapple type and when it exploded it would break into a few different pieces, then came the next grenade. It was designed with a spring inside which would break into thousands of pieces when it exploded making it far more deadly. We then got grenade launchers which kept getting improved until we finally created the XM-25. A soldier can now launch up to 25 grenades and set the launcher for great distances.

There is a lot of laser development going on.Β  One of the things which has helped laser development is the fact electronics kept shrinking and this also effects the size of our laser weapons systems. Originally we could only mount them in a very large plane or on a ship, but this is changing. To this end DARPA, which is the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, is working on advanced laser systems known as High Energy Liquid Laser Area Defense Systems. These systems will be small enough to mount on tactical aircraft. The airborne laser program was cancelled in 2013, but this has not deterred the military from their plans. The giant 747 which housed the laser was supposed to be able to shoot down ICBM missiles after launch, but after 16 years of testing it was finally put out of its misery. The laser never had the range and was too huge to be practical and needed too many chemicals. It was over budget after 10 years by 4 billion dollars and if it could have been perfected was expected to cost us $92,000 per hour to use it during flights. The new lasers will put that old one to shame. The laser weapon mounted on a US Navy ship was created from six commercial lasers which are used for welding. Lasers will now be used for more modest missions. It is said these lasers will be able to shoot down aircraft of different types along with cruise missiles and drones which are a few miles away. As we figure out how to supply more power to lasers in smaller packages they will become far more powerful.

The Chinese are developing a very powerful missile which is said to have a range of about 1200 miles. The sole purpose for its development is to create a missile which can hit and kill a US aircraft carrier. It is being said the missile will have advanced radar avoidance capabilities, because the flight path of the missile will be able to be maneuvered. If we take this into account and the fact the missile will certainly have a low radar signature, it is a very dangerous weapon for the navy to face.

When it comes to information gathering, we have all seen robotic insects and birds by now, but did you know the US is developing something which will be a hybrid. It will be part insect and part machine, a sort of terminator, but not as violent. The system is called the HI-MEMS. A micro-mechanical system is actually put inside the insect in its early stages. Once this happens it can be controlled remotely. Sensors will be built into the system along with such things as a microphone for listening to conversations. Next time you see a fly on the wall, watch what you say.

One system it seems many countries are going to employ is a system which shoots rounds off electronically. It is called by different names depending on which country is employing the system. We call ours the DREAD Silent Weapon System. It can shoot out an incredible 120,000 rounds per minute. It does make one wonder where all this ammo is going to be stored.

There are a lot of deadly weapons on the drawing boards and some seem to rival the power of even the atom in deadliness. You don’t need a nuke if you can kill just as many people some other way. I wish the world could stop what it is doing for a few minutes and take a good look at itself. We are getting far too efficient at killing each other.