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The video that will chill the blood of every American tank crew: ISIS obliterates M1 Abrams tank with handheld Russian missile - showing just how vulnerable US armor is Clip shows Russian Kornet anti-tank guided missile home in on tank It hits the back of an Iraqi M1 Abrams tank which erupts into flames National security analyst says it shows US-made tanks are all but obsolete Incident makes an irrefutable case for the US Army to acquiring active protection systems, Dr Dan Goure says Turkey purchased 800 of the missiles in 2008 for $70m - delivery was completed before the...

A WestJet pilot sought medical attention after a laser strike during a flight to Fort McMurray last month, airline officials say. The laser was shone into the cockpit of a WestJet aircraft on Aug. 22, WestJet spokeswoman Lauren Stewart said in an email. The flight landed safely in Fort McMurray, but the next flight was cancelled until a replacement co-pilot could be brought in. Pilots are trained to look away to protect their eyes in the event of a laser strike, but the pilot was advised to seek medical attention as a precaution. "A laser has the potential to cause...

Stephen Hawking is backing a project to send tiny spacecraft to another star system within a generation. They would travel trillions of miles; far further than any previous craft. A $100m (£70m) research programme to develop the computer chip-sized "starships" was launched by the billionaire Yuri Milner, supported by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. Interstellar travel has long been a dream for many, but significant technological hurdles remain. But Prof Hawking told BBC News that fantasy could be realised sooner than we might think. Media captionThe spacecraft would be propelled from earth by a giant laser, as Pallab Ghosh reports "If...

'Laser Cloak' Could Hide Earth from Evil Aliens A new paper describes how laser beams could disrupt measurements of Earth's orbit around the sun, potentially deceiving inquisitive aliens. Here, a 22W laser used for adaptive optics shines from the Very Large Telescope in Chile. Credit: ESO/G. Hüdepohl A simple laser beam could disrupt aliens' observations of Earth, making it look like there's nobody home on the third rock from the sun, a new study suggests. David Kipping, an astronomer at Columbia University in New York, said he first considered this idea when he heard about the strangely dimming star that...

Figure 9 from “A Roadmap to Interstellar Flight”Guest essay by Eric WorrallAn American scientist has made a remarkable conceptual breakthrough, a design for a non nuclear relativistic launcher, capable of accelerating thousands of deep space probes per year to 0.25C; fast enough to reach the nearest stars in 15 years. The system is extremely scalable – you could start with a small, low cost proof of concept launcher, and work up to bigger devices, capable of launching substantial probes into interstellar space. The system also has a practical alternative use – the full size version is powerful enough to deflect...

The Pentagon kills language. Housing the brain and central coordinating organs of the most advanced military the world has ever known, the Depart of Defense headquarters can take an announcement as exciting as "the U.S. Army is working on laser guns" and distill it to, in the words of Mary J. Miller, deputy assistant secretary of the Army for Research and Technology, "aligned to transition into a program of record in the fiscal 2023 timeframe." Make no mistake: bland phrasing aside, the Army is going to fund laser weapon development in the next decade. The remarks came last week as...

The US Army is planning to deploy the first laser weapons in 2023, it has been revealed. Mary J. Miller, deputy assistant secretary of the Army for Research and Technology, told the House Armed Services Committee's Subcommittee on Emerging Threats and Capabilities 'I believe we're very close,' when asked how close the Army is to developing offensive and defensive directed-energy weapons. She said the programmes would be extensively tested as the Army wants to understand the lasers' full capabilities 'before we offer it to a Soldier.' 'It's being done in a 'step-wise demonstration of capability,' she said. 'We have to...

Laser cutters use lasers to cut shapes into existing material, but Rice University scientists have figured out how to make one build objects instead of cut them. The result is the $2,000 3D printer that you see above, constructing the blood vessel network inside a mouse liver. If we want to maximize the usefulness of 3D printers, we have to maximize the number of materials they can work with, while minimizing the cost. That was the goal of the Rice scientists, when they devised a way to make a 3D printer with a couple of days, a couple of thousand...

It sounds like science fiction, but it's eminently possible, researchers say: Robotic spacecraft could get to Mars after a journey of just three days. The key to making this happen is photon propulsion, which would use a powerful laser to accelerate spacecraft to relativistic speeds, said Philip Lubin, a physics professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara. "There are recent advances which take this from science fiction to science reality," Lubin said at the 2015 NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) fall symposium last October. "There's no known reason why we cannot do this." Lubin and his team were awarded...

Pondering Gravitational Wavesby Paul Gilster on February 11, 2016 "Einstein would be beaming," said National Science Foundation director France Córdova as she began this morning's news conference announcing the discovery of gravitational waves. I can hardly disagree, because we have in this discovery yet another confirmation of the reality of General Relativity. Caltech's Kip Thorne, who discussed black hole mergers way back in 1994 in his book Black Holes and Time Warps, said at the same news conference that Einstein must have been frustrated by the lack of available technologies to detect the gravitational waves his theory predicted, a lack...

The invention of guns took warfare to a whole new level. Later, airplanes radically changed it again. Now, experts say another big shift is coming, led by energy weapons, including lasers. The U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory, or AFRL, said it's on track to demonstrate a working laser weapon on a fighter jet by 2020. "It really is a national tipping point," said Kelly Hammett, chief engineer for the AFRL's directed energy directorate. "We see the technology evolving and maturing to the stage where it really can be used." Arming larger planes with laser weapons has been possible for years....

Northrop Grumman has revealed a tantalising image of a new stealth 'superjet' capable of firing laser weapons. The so called 'sixth generation fighter' is rumoured to fly at supersonic speeds, although Northrop Grumman, who are developing it, say the specifications are still secret. The stealth craft is expected to use advanced cooling systems to help disguise its laser systems. Known internally as NG Air Dominance, the craft features laser weapons. The so called 'sixth generation fighter' is rumoured to fly at supersonic speeds, although Northrop Grumman, who are developing it, say the specifications are still classified. ==================================================================================================================== Chris Hernandez, Northrop's...

At the interstellar interspection of numerous Star Wars movies and national defense is an array of new weaponry and progress. Welcome to today's "galaxy far, far away." Star Wars: The Force Awaken opens in a few weeks in theaters around the globe. The seventh installment in the Star Wars film series, this latest movie is set approximately 30 years after the Return of the Jedi(1983). It also underscores futuristic technology the defense industry is developing. From Jack Kilby's invention of the silicon chip in 1958 to President Ronald Reagan's comment about the "evil empire" of Russia to the introduction of...

Vaughan, ON - On Sunday, August 16, 2015, at 1:30 a.m., Air2 was in the area of Highway 7 and Pine Valley Drive assisting uniform officers on the ground, who were responding to a weapons call. While searching for a suspect from the air, the pilot and tactical flight officer were struck by an unrelated bright light source that originated in the area of Jenna Court. The strikes continued as the crew engaged in safety measures. The tactical flight officer used the camera system on Air2 to observe three men standing next to a vehicle at the end of Jenna...

Credit: Dr Robert Williams =============================================================================================================================================== Researchers from the MQ Photonics Research Centre joined with fiber laser experts from the Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Optics and Precision Engineering in Jena, Germany to demonstrate a diamond laser 20 times more powerful than previous diamond lasers. Average power levels were less than 20 Watts, with the new laser now providing up to 380 Watts of output power – the equivalent of approximately 400,000 laser pointers and enough power to easily cut through steel. High-power diamond lasers are well-suited to applications that require beaming power over long distances, such as optical communications in space,...

The US Navy is pursuing a multi-pronged approach to fielding energy weapons by the end of the decade, with the hopes of upgrading its 30 kilowatt laser gun to 100 kw or more, and giving its electromagnetic railgun a higher repetition rate. Rear Adm. Bryant Fuller, chief engineer at Naval Sea Systems Command (NAVSEA), said in a panel presentation at the Directed Energy Summit, hosted by the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments and Booz Allen Hamilton, that both follow-on technologies should be in the hands of sailors in the fleet by 2020. “Sometime in the very near future” the...

Japan claims to have fired the most powerful laser ever created. Researchers in Osaka were able to produce a 2-petawatt laser beam using a device known as the Laser for Fast Ignition Experiment (LFEX). The power of the 'Death Star'-like beam is equivalent to 1,000 times the world's total electricity consumption, the scientists claim. While it produced a huge amount of power, the energy required for the beam itself is equivalent to that needed to power a microwave for two seconds. The team were able to produce such a high output from low energy by only firing the laser beam...

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The Z-Ro Retinal Obfuscation weapon mounted to a handgun. Last summer’s riots in Ferguson, Missouri, prompted much talk by President Obama and certain members of Congress about the need to demilitarize local police forces. Nearly a year later, the opposite is happening. New and more powerful weapons are flowing into local police departments daily, and still others are new to the marketplace. One weapon about to make its debut is the “Z-Ro Retinal Obfuscation” gun. When fired, the gun allows an officer to temporarily blind his targeted subject for up to 15 minutes. The new “compliance weapon” made a...