The Next A-bombFollow

How about an anti matter bomb? A bomb that would completely destroy the matter it comes into contact with. The more anti-matter you add the more matter that would be destroyed.

Imagine it.. it could be the most powerfull bomb in human history if it could be realisticly achieved.

Nano probes.

Micro spy/targetting tools.

Hehe. While the concept of an anti-matter bomb makes for great sci-fi, in reality, it's just not that practical.

We can generate and contain anti-matter right now. The problem is that we literally measure the quanities we generate over time in numbers of atoms of the stuff. Anti-matter reacts with normal matter and they destroy eachother (actually, more like they cancel eachother out). So... We could take the entire store of anti-matter available today, and make a bomb that could totally obliterate about a half a gram of matter...

Not exactly a breakthrough. It's actually far more efficient to just make normal explosives.


Current "new" tech they're looking at for the battlefield is directed energy weapons. Not so much lasers and such, but sonics and general EM fields. It's possible to direct these fields to a great amount of precision, with various effects. Right now, they're looking into energy weapons that'll play across an area as a sort of "stunner". Very useful for the percieved direction that warfare will be going (more terrorist/insurgent type situations where the enemy is mixed in with civilians). Being able to just blast an area with a high intensity energy field that'll incapacitate everyone in it without causing permanent harm would be tremendously useful down the line.

Many of the same technology can be used against electronics in weapons as well. Unfortunately, being able to knock out something like an ICBM is still difficult since they're in ballistic flight once they finish their initial launch phase. You have to hit them while launching, which is pretty darn difficult unless you're using sattelite based weapons (which there are treaties against).

There's also a whole slew of human improvement technologies coming out. Things like combat suits that increase the strength and speed of an infantry soldier. Improved communication and perception devices are being looked at too. I'm not sure how big an impact those things will have given the cost for the gain, but they're looking into them.

I don't think the "next big thing", will be a bigger bomb or anything. It'll be coming up with more efficient and effective methods for warfare.

Well, the military just debuted a new weapon to replace the M-16/M-4. It's fully automatic, and can fire grenade rounds. I forgot the name of it, but it's pretty awesome.

Also, one of the big things that's going on with R&D is reconaisance drones. The Predator drone spyplane is currently being used by US forces in Iraq, and now some are armed with air-surface missles. My guess is that the military is going to further the development of those bad boys into something more sophisticated.

The next major offensive weapon platform in my oppinion will be one of 2 things.

a. Micronukes. A nuclear warhhead small enough to fit several inside of a single cruise missile. While not as destructive as their bigger cousins, their true danger lies in the fact that they could be politically used much easier than a full scale nuke.

b. Hypersonic cruise missiles. Nasa has a working, controllable, and targettable prototype of a scramjet engine. It's capable of traveling at speeds in excess of Mach 8. Fuel limitations make it somewhat unsuitable for a cruise missile, but imagine an orbit based hypersonic penetrator. the kenetic energy alone from an impact would be quiteimpressive

For some reason this made me think of the story of the wind and sun fighting over who was most powerful. Should I go on.....?

They had a contest to see who could get the man's coat off.

Of course the wind blew and blew but the harder he tried the tighter the man clasped his coat about him. Yeah yeah then the sun says "phish stand aside buddy". The sun shone warm and brightly the man, starting to get sweaty in the pits, took his coat off.
~~~~~~~~~~~~

I hope that there are no more life destroying BIG weapons. I hope we've learned our lesson. Maybe we're dependent enough on our technologies that finding ways to knock out the networks, the grids and stuff will suffice.

God, I'm sooooo sappy.

Next big things:

Bio-mechanical suits
Aircraft Carriers that deploy aircraft from Inner Space.
Satellite weaponry.
Shielding Technology.
Mechanical Suits of armor(Mech warrior).
Energy Weapons(Like laser guns).
Viral Weaponry(once they figure out how to get away with it).
Cold Fusion Bombs.
Anything to do with Nanotechnology.
Robotic Technology.

All are perfectly good examples and some are becoming feasible with each passing year.

How about robots dressed to look like soccer moms?

I was about to say we needed flying mech robots. If they can turn into airplanes, so much the better. If they're piloted by Asian girls with pink, blue or green hair, so much the better yet!

I don't care if giant war robots are incredibly impractical by any logical standards, they'd still kick all sorts of ***.

I thought they exist already, late eighties? a missile (maybe no cruise missile, granted) with up to 10 (?) warheads with 1 Megaton each TNT equiv. or so...?

I second the recon bots, iirc major improvement over the last few years.

Edit: well, I wasn't to far off.

"The Peacekeeper was a MIRVed missile: each rocket could carry up to 10 re-entry vehicles, each with a nuclear warhead with the explosive power of up to 300 kilotons (twenty-five times the power of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima during World War II)"

from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LG-118A_Peacekeeper

Edited, Wed Nov 23 12:10:59 2005 by Kajolus

I forsee HUGE developments in a weapon that emits the dreaded Brown Note. Take that ter-o-ists!!

Edited, Wed Nov 23 10:27:02 2005 by Frakkor

maybe he was concidering that not many other people are