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What can you shoot out of a shotgun? It turns out that there are a surprising variety of things… Let’s say you are going to use a shotgun for hunting. A typical shotgun shell shoots a small handful of pellets. You pick the size of the pellets based on the size of what you are [...]
Let’s start by acknowledging that war is bad. People die, buildings are destroyed, stuff blows up and burns. But if you are going to have a war, is it possible to control the damage? Is it possible to kill only the bad guys without harming nearby civilians? Is it possible to destroy one building and [...]
How Crossbows Work – shooting arrows in the style of a rifle
by Marshall Brain | April 18, 2011
Crossbows come in all shapes and sizes, from tiny like this: To “normal” like this: The video’s description points out the big difference between longbows and crossbows: Due to the heavy construction of the crossbow’s steel prod, or bow, and the short draw length along the crossbow’s tiller, the crossbow was a very inefficient weapon. [...]
Trailer for Hawken – A first-person shooter with mechs
by Marshall Brain | March 31, 2011
Mechs are one of those vehicles that have been predicted by Science Fiction for decades but have never made the transition to real life. For example, the mech in Avatar in 2010 is amazing in its realism: 30 years earlier, the AT-STs appeared in The Empire Strikes Back: Even though they don’t yet exist in [...]
The XM25 – the gun with radio-controlled bullets – deploys to Afghanistan
by Marshall Brain | November 30, 2010
The goal of the XM25 is to eliminate the idea of “cover”…. No hiding place from new U.S. Army rifles that use radio-controlled smart bullets The XM25 appears perfect weapon for street-to-street fighting that troops in Afghanistan have to engage in, with enemy fighters hiding behind walls and only breaking cover to fire ocasionally. The [...]
Ever since WWI and WWII, tracer bullets have been a common part of warfare. On an airplane’s or helicopter’s machine gun, tracer bullets make it much easier for the pilot to hit the target – the tracers light up the stream of bullets so they look something like a laser blast. Tracer bullets also make it more likely for the target to explode. In WWI, tracer bullets ignited hydrogen-filled zeppelins, for example. Tracers also ignite fuel.
In the following video you can see how tracer bullets help a helicopter gunner hit his targets…
As boats go, this one is pretty amazing. It is called the M80 Stiletto and it has a top speed of 50 knots….
One of the big problems that the Army learned the hard way in Iraq is that a standard Humvee doesn’t offer a lot of protection for the soldiers inside. It is possible to retrofit a Humvee with more armor (even stick-on steel panels were an option), but there are still vulnerabilities. If a Humvee can be disabled with a small bomb, it is then a sitting duck.
The MRAP (Mine Resistant Ambush Protected) is a vehicle that provides much more protection for the soldiers inside…
If you are in a field with your enemy and you can see him, chances are you can hit him with a bullet. But what if the enemy is hiding behind a hill, or crouched in a trench, or protected by a brick wall? Then it is a lot harder – nearly impossible sometimes – to get to the target with a rifle or machine gun. You could lob a grenade, but that only works up to a certain distance. What to do? This is where the XM-25 excels…
This video has been getting a lot of buzz and attention this week because it demonstrates a cruise missile launch system hidden inside a normal steel shipping container: Typical articles covering the video include: – A cruise missile in a shipping box on sale to rogue bidders – Club-K Container Missile System Defence experts say [...]
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