Military tech is often far ahead of what civilians see and use. For example, the GPS system we all use to find our way around was first launched by the military in 1978. Like GPS, it can take years for this tech to find its way into wide usage. These eight examples of cool military tech through the years include weapons and other cool devices.
CornerShot
It’s basically a gun that shoots around corners.
In service since 2003, the CornerShot is actually an accessory on which you mount a weapon – be it a semi-automatic pistol, an “assault pistol rifle” that fires 5.56 mm ammo, or even a grenade launcher. The CornerShot has a hinge that allows it to bend horizontally – and thus point its killing end around a corner. An LCD monitor on the accessory’s “butt” end displays the live feed captured by a high-resolution digital camera attached to the barrel in a bayonet position, allowing the operator to see around the corner – and fire without being fired upon.
Panjandrum
If this looks to you like massive cart wheels powered by two dozen bazookas… that’s essentially what it is.
The Great Panjandrum was a British WW2 invention developed as a means of delivering an enormous explosive payload to penetrate the 7-foot-thick concrete defenses that made up part of the Atlantic Wall – an extensive system of Nazi coastal fortifications. Consisting of two wooden wheels, ten feet in diameter with steel treads a foot wide, joined together by a drum intended to carry a 4,000 lb. payload, the Panjandrum was meant to be propelled by a set of rockets as a form of rolling land-missile. While prototypes were built, repeated tests saw all manner of catastrophic failures, from the unmanned and largely unguided device veering wildly off-course to multiple rockets coming loose and whizzing off dangerously in all directions. Suffice it to say, the Panjandrum never left its prototype phase.
Active Denial System
Informally called the “heat ray,” the ADS is a non-lethal, vehicle-mounted, directed-energy weapon deployed by the U.S. military in 2010, but withdrawn before seeing combat. The ADS fires an energy beam at a target in a manner similar to a microwave oven – the energy excites the water and fat molecules in the skin, instantly heating them. A spokesman for the Air Force Research Laboratory described his experience as a test subject for the system:
“For the first millisecond, it just felt like the skin was warming up. Then it got warmer and warmer and you felt like it was on fire… As soon as you’re away from that beam your skin returns to normal and there is no pain.”
BigDog
Faster than a speeding toddler, more powerful than a pair of mules, able to climb up a 35 degree incline – it’s BigDog!
Created in 2005, this quadruped robot is loaded with around 50 sensors that prevent it from tipping over – even when kicked by a disgruntled robot operator. Able to carry 340 pounds and traverse difficult terrain at 4 mile per hour, BigDog is a robotic pack mule intended to take a load off our soldiers’ backs.
Panzer VIII Maus
The heaviest fully-enclosed armored fighting vehicle ever built, the Panzerkampfwagen VIII Maus was a Nazi super-heavy tank completed in late 1944. Weighing in at 188 metric tons, the Maus measured 33.5 feet long, 12 feet wide, and 12 feet high. It was so big, in fact, that developing an engine powerful enough to move it at a decent speed proved a huge problem – it was intended to move at a speed of up to 12 mph, but could only reach 8 mph.
Hwacha
If I told you about an artillery weapon that could fire 100 rockets in a single volley up to a distance of over a mile, would you be surprised to learn that this device was developed in 1409 by Korean scientists? The Hwacha was a two-wheeled cart bearing a board with 200 slots for singijeon, a type of fire arrow rocket.
Huolongjing Multistage Rocket
The Huolongjing, a 14-century military Chinese military handbook, describes “a fire-dragon issuing from the water” that was used by the Chinese navy. It is the oldest known multistage rocket and the ancestor of modern cluster bombs. The two-stage rocket would launch into the air, and once airborne, fire a number of smaller rocket arrows out of its front end, which was shaped like a dragon’s head.
Schwerer Gustav
The largest-caliber rifled weapon ever used in combat, the 1934 Nazi Schwerer Gustav was the heaviest mobile artillery piece ever built. Mounted on a chassis that carried it on railway tracks, the Gustav fired the heaviest shells of any artillery piece (seven tons) to a range of 29 miles.
