weapons

LAS VEGAS--Taser International is a CES regular. This year, the company's staff was at the trade show in force, demonstrating its new technology and offering to fry anyone crazy enough to volunteer. The highlight of its new range is a shotgun with self-contained bullets of electrical agony.

As ludicrous as Tasers are, we can't help but be drawn to the bright yellow guns and incredible electrical power. Most incredible is the Taser X12 shotgun, which can fire a projectile up to 82 feet--most Tasers can only be used from about 16 feet away--and doesn't have wires attached … Read more

The world can never have enough guns--at least not if they embody exciting new ways to destroy people and things that look wonderful in movies. So here is a weapon that seems to be the sheer personification of gun fun.

It is being tested by the U.S. Navy, and it seems to have some pulsating technical features. It doesn't rely on an explosive charge to propel a bullet toward a bad guy. Instead, Fox News informs me, it expels bullets along parallel rails. The bullets, thanks to the cheery push of an electromagnetic current, spring out at speeds … Read more

Aftermath is a challenging, top-down, zombie-themed arcade shooter with innovative dual-stick controls and a dread-inducing atmosphere.

Similar to other dual-stick shooters, you move around and fire with two touch-screen virtual joysticks, one under each thumb. What Aftermath does differently (and which greatly contributes to the game's tense, anxious feel) is that the left joystick controls movement while the right joystick just turns you left and right, letting you light up the otherwise dark, urban terrain with your handheld flashlight--and automatically using the weapon you're holding to "light up" any zombies in the field of your flashlight. … Read more

Buganoids is a free arcade game with 8-bit graphics, old-school sound and gameplay, and a circular range of movement reminiscent of classic stand-up tube-shooters like Tempest and Gyruss.

Buganoids' schtick is simple and addictive: you move clockwise or counterclockwise around the "surface" of a planet, shooting into the interior to take out advancing enemy bad guys--in this case, menacing little bees, birds, turtles, and centipede-type creatures, which emerge from holes in the planet's surface. The game's interface is explicitly styled after a stand-up arcade game: under the main screen, you press photo-realistic buttons to rotate left … Read more

PORTSMOUTH, R.I.--Defense contractor Raytheon and the U.S. Navy said Tuesday that they had successfully conducted a test in which they used a high-power, solid-state laser, in conjunction with a Phalanx Close-in Weapon System, to kill four unmanned aerial vehicles out of the sky off the coast of California.

The system was electrically powered, and Raytheon said it offers the military a very cost-efficient and nearly unlimited "magazine" for shooting down things like threatening UAVs, or perhaps, airplanes. "Once development is completed," Raytheon said in a release, "the Laser Area Weapon System will … Read more

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ALAMEDA, Calif--The U.S. Coast Guard entered one of its newest and most technologically advanced vessels into action during a ceremony here Friday, with the commissioning of the 418-foot National Security Cutter Waesche, a Legend-class vessel replacing antiquated ships from the 1960s.

Equipped with the state-of-the-art command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaisance (C4ISR) equipment, the abilities of the Waesche are part of an interoperability objective that will give the Coast Guard better collaborative interagency capabilities, improving operational readiness and enabling better fulfillment of new multimission roles more effectively.

See the full gallery of images from inside the Waesche here. … Read more

The Indian military plans to weaponize the bhut jolokia, the world's hottest chili pepper, by using it in tear-gas grenades against terrorists, defense officials there have announced.

The notorious pepper from Bangladesh and northeast India, also known as the "ghost chili," is ranked by Guinness World Records as the most piquant of peppers. It has more than 1 million Scoville heat units, way beyond tabasco and jalapeno peppers, which pack 2,500 to 8,000 units.

"This is definitely going to be an effective non-toxic weapon because its pungent smell can choke terrorists and force them … Read more

Firearms manufacturer FN Herstal has designed and built a Black Box that, when attached to a weapon, counts rounds fired, measures burst rate, and detects stoppages--information it then stores to facilitate more effective maintenance.

The device is housed in a module that can be molded to fit any weapon, according to FN. It comes with a non-replaceable 10-year battery, allowing the unit to record up to 100,000 rounds.

"The FN Black Box detects, discriminates, counts shots, measures burst rates and burst lengths, records firing sequences and detects stoppages due to failures to cycle," the Belgium company announced. &… Read more