Weapons

Old Nazi warheads and US warships have been reclaimed by a new army of diverse marine life, as scientists for the first time uncover how nature has made use of the munitions and fleets that ended up dumped in waterways during the two world conflicts.

Australian defense company Electro Optic Systems (EOS) has unveiled its Apollo High Energy Laser Weapon (HELW) that pumps out up to 150 kW of power yet can take out 200 medium-sized drones running on its own internal power supply.

Britain's Ministry of Defence, with the help of the United States, has achieved what is being billed as a major hypersonic propulsion test of a new engine design that could power a cutting-edge hypersonic cruise missile for UK armed forces by 2030.

In response to the return to large-scale peer-to-peer warfare, Anduril has unveiled its new Barracuda family of autonomous cruise missiles, which can be built to "hyper-scale" for intelligent swarm attacks against hardened targets.

The US Air Force has released video of a ship getting ripped in half, to demonstrate its new Quicksink weapon, which turns an inexpensive dumb bomb into a precision anti-ship missile – and lives up to its name in spectacular fashion.

In another step toward practical battlefield energy weapons, the UK has for the first time tested a laser weapon mounted on a British Army Wolfhound armored vehicle as part of the Land Laser Directed Energy Weapon (LDEW) Demonstrator program.

ARX Robotics has just received €9 million from the NATO Innovation Fund to develop a series of robust unmanned ground vehicles. The modular design of the bots makes them capable of filling a variety of roles in the alliance's attack and defense systems.

Defense contractor Teledyne FLIR has unveiled its new thermal sniper scope that can see its own bullets fly by day or night at ranges up to 2,200 m (1.3 miles), allowing them to engage targets at long range while remaining unseen.

The US Navy and US Air Force have tapped Raytheon to design, build and test two high-power microwave antenna systems. These will be used in field-grade directed energy weapons to counter aerial drones and similar threats.

In the spirit of waste not, want not, Anduril Industries has rolled out its Roadrunner-Munition (Roadrunner-M) jet-propelled VTOL autonomous interceptor drone that can destroy aerial threats or return to base intact to fight another day.

In a video posted to TikTok, Gravity Industries founder Richard Browning has shown off what appears to be live-fire aerial testing of a shoulder-mounted, head-tracking weapons system for the Iron Man-style jet suit he's been flying since 2017.

To reduce accidental deaths during civil disturbances, firearms manufacturer FN Herstal has developed a gun that not only fires less-than-lethal elastomer projectiles, it has a digital smart sight that can recognize human heads and refuse to fire at them.