Items tagged with weapon
Just as the U.S. Navy looks to scrap its incredibly powerful railgun, the Chinese Navy have apparently installed a railgun of their own onto one of warships. A leaked image appears to give us our first glimpse at this immensely powerful weapon, but no real details are known about the Chinese weapon at this time. Image via NewScientist The image appears to show parts of the barrel of the railgun wrapped in camouflage (sort of like what we see automotive manufacturers using to hide the lines of their new vehicles during testing). If the weapon in the images is in fact a railgun, it would make China the first nation to install a railgun on a warship. The U.S. Navy has been testing railguns for years,...
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As North Korea continues to build up its missile program and arsenal, the U.S. and other nations allied against the growingly erratic regime are looking for a way to protect nations from North Korean missiles. The U.S. has a weapon called CHAMP (Counter-electronics High Power Microwave Advanced Missile Project) that could potentially stop North Korean missiles from launching, or force them to splash down harmlessly in the ocean after launch. The system is launched in a cruise missile from an aircraft and rather than having conventional explosives or nuclear payloads inside, it is fitted with high-powered microwave generators. The idea is that the American cruise missile would fly...
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The U.S. Navy has spent half a billion dollars working to perfect a new type of projectile weapons technology that could be used in current and future naval ships. That gun is the railgun, which has always sounded like something out of a video game or science fiction. Unfortunately, it looks as though the project is possibly going to be scrapped after all the money and time was put into the research and development of the weapon. The strange part is that the weapon isn't possibly being scrapped because it doesn’t work; the railgun works quite well. The beast can toss a projectile down range travelling at 4,800 mph for distances of up to 100 miles. The problem so far is that the high-tech...
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3D printing has caught on in a way that few really expected. What began as a niche hobby for technology lovers has spilled over into the mainstream, with 3D printers now available for under $1,000 and finding shelf space at brick-and-mortar retailers. We're only starting to see the fruits of labor from those who are dreaming up what items to print with plastic, but one hot-button issue that has arisen is 3D-printed firearms. It was only a matter of time before someone realized that a printer could produce a pistol, but early prints have proven to be of little threat. Why? Because traditional ammunition essentially destroys the printed firearm after a single shot, plus, misfires are common. In...
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We all know Silicon Graphics Inc. (SGI) as the company that has historically made high-end workstations for creating and rendering 3D animations for games and movies. But there is a whole other side to the company that many are probably less aware of. This very lucrative part of SGI feeds high-performance computing (HPC) solutions to the government and military. (Interesting tidbit: Silicon Graphics once owned the supercomputing company Cray.) And now it looks like some of SGI's recent implementations are helping to keep the U.S.'s nuclear weapon stockpile in check. SGI announced that has installed a storage environment made up of 17 InfiniteStorage 4600 systems at the Department of Energy's...
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Hollywood has a very poor track record with this genre, but New Line Cinema has acquired the rights to produce a movie based on the wildly popular Gears of War game. Set on the planet Sera, the game thrusts players into a battle for survival between humans and a race of creatures that surface from the bowels of the planet known as the Locust Horde. Players assume identities of soldiers on Delta Squad as they fight to save the Sera's inhabitants. The game, developed by Epic Games, sold more than 3 million units worldwide in its first 10 weeks. It also has received numerous awards, including Gamespot's Game of the Year and the Interactive Achievement...
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By now you all know that Intel's Core 2 Duo "Conroe" processors are on the horizon, and that they've been performing very well. According to The Inquirer AMD has incorporated some new technology in their AM2 platform that will give them a big boost in performance in some circumstances. "THE LAUNCH OF Intel Conroe is scheduled to go on July 23rd, when partners will start rolling out the new products. The NDA for reviews is scheduled to expire around July 28th. However, AMD has a counter-attack weapon hidden in its Socket AM2 infrastructure. It seems that all AM2 CPUs were outfitted with a support for Reverse-HyperThreading,...
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