amphibious

DARPA's massive water tank loves tough terrain

When the going gets tough, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency creates a vehicle -- capable of driving on water, land, and even deep mud -- to keep things going.

Officially known as the captive air amphibious transporter (CAAT), this water wagon currently under development looks like the strange lovechild of a tank and a hovercraft. CAAT could one day serve as an invaluable tool for the U.S. military when it delivers supplies to the coasts of disaster-stricken areas. … Read more

Navy's new ship sails the seas on half the gas

SAN DIEGO -- The U.S. Navy spends a fortune every year on energy, so for a ship to complete a deployment having burned through just half the cash it had available for fuel is a very good sign of things to come.

For some time, the Navy has been saying many of the right things about its plans to go green, starting with a major biofuels initiative. And though a recent Wired report claims that the servicewide efforts have lost steam, the performance of the USS Makin Island could well be a bright spot.

As part of Road Trip 2012, … Read more

Tank-treaded boat goes well with James Bond/Batman yacht

Bravo! You've bested Goldfinger, and your plot to secretly empty Fort Knox was a roaring success. (Good idea about the gold-painted Legos -- a far less messy solution than nerve agents and Atom bombs.) So now you're looking to officially join the pantheon of Bondian supervillains by acquiring all the appropriate status items.… Read more

Rocstor Amphibious portable drive: You can't overdo data security

LAS VEGAS--Add a retina scanner and you'd believe you're reading about a gadget for "Mission Impossible 5."

Rocstor announced at CES 2012 what it considers the world's most secure yet user-friendly storage device: the Amphibious.

This is a superrugged portable external drive, and is made out of aircraft grade aluminum alloy. Yet it's still compact and bus-powered, meaning you won't have to carry a separate power adapter with it. And all that is still the least interesting thing about the drive.… Read more

Yet another amphibious Toyota pickup

Longtime fans of Top Gear will find the above image of a Toyota pickup truck converted into a boat to be quite familiar.

However, it looks as if these enterprising Russians seem to have improved on Clarkson and company's amphibious truck design with a less ambitious outboard motor and the addition of inflatable pontoons, which allows the truck to float a bit more stably than the Top Gear prototype. An intake snorkel and vertical stack exhaust keep the Toyota's engine from being flooded when entering and exiting the waterway.

Check out the full photo set over on English Russia.… Read more

A million-dollar RV, by land or by sea

What could possibly be better than a million-dollar RV outfitted with state-of-art technology? One that goes in the water, of course.

As insane as it may seem, the Terra Wind Amphibious RV" has all the proper accoutrements for a luxury vehicle of its class, including an 6-foot swim deck, an 8-jet whirlpool, marble floors, wood paneling, leather furnishings, and a fully equipped home theater system featuring a 42-inch plasma TV, according to Uncrate. In the cockpit you'll find the instruments needed for the aquatic half of its persona to operate the submerged motors, rudder controls, bilge pumps, rudder … Read more

High-speed insertion on land and sea

Remember those guys who would ride their Stingrays off the end of the pier? Well apparently they're finally in charge over there at the military industrial complex, and the aquatic world of hooah is all the better for it.

Case in point: a Gibbs Technology and Lockheed Martin team has announced the development of three new, high-speed, amphibious prototypes for use in littoral and riverine special ops insertions.

"High performance on the water, high performance on the ground and the transition between the two is seamless," brags Kiwi Alan Gibbs, chairman of Gibbs Technologies of his high-speed … Read more