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.
X-Ray Vision
Superman wasn’t shy about using his X-ray vision to spot evil-doers through the walls of buildings. And Metropolis was a better place for it. This year, the U.S. Army will attempt to give the troops in Afghanistan a similar advantage when it issues hand-held sensors that can see through walls, detect buried explosives and spot enemy combatants crawling through underground tunnels or hiding behind trees. These Eagle5 scanners — an M model and a P model —use low-power, ultra-wideband radio frequency (RF) waves to produce images of what’s concealed by wood, stone, brick, concrete or dirt. The M, which looks like an oversize cell phone and weighs 3.5 pounds, is designed to detect motion and can pick up people more than 20 feet away though eight-inch concrete slabs. The larger P, which weighs 6 pounds, is designed to penetrate the ground and can detect people in tunnels and buried explosives at depths greater than 10 feet.
Where Hummers Fear to Tread
Rugged terrain is tough slogging for foot soldiers, even when they’re not fighting. The average equipment load for soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan, for example, ranges from 97 to more than 135 pounds. Humping those kinds of loads takes a toll. The Imperial forces in “Star Wars” had the AT-AT (All Terrain Armored Transport) walkers to ferry its troops. Not to outdone in our galaxy, DARPA and the U.S. Marine Corps have awarded a contract to Boston Dynamics to develop a prototype for Darpa’s Legged Squad Support System (LS3). The L3 will be a walking quadruped that will augment squads by carrying traditional and new equipment autonomously and will be able to cover complex terrain where tactical vehicles can’t go. It will be able to carry a payload of 40 pounds over as much as 20 miles and provide 24 hours of self-sustained capability.
Stunning
Even in time of war, there are situations when you do not want to — or need to — use lethal force on a human being. The problem is that it’s hard to shoot someone just a little. Taser has come up with an alternative, the eXtended Range Electronic Projectile (XREP), a self-contained wireless electronic control device that is fired from a 12 gauge pump-action shotgun. It can paralyze a person without pain at up to 88 feet and can penetrate clothing. When it reaches its target, the XREP projectile autonomously generates neuromuscular incapacitation for 20 seconds, long enough for a solider or law officer to determine if the person is friend or foe.
