Lifeboat Foundation

Circa 2018

If you’ve been a grunt, then you probably have a love-hate relationship with body armor. You love having it in a firefight — it can save your life by stopping or slowing bullets and fragments — but you hate how heavy it is — it’s often around 25 pounds for the armor and outer tactical vest (more if you add the plate inserts to stop up to 7.62mm rounds). It’s bulky — and you really can’t move as well in it. In fact, in one firefight, a medic removed his body armor to reach wounded allies, earning a Distinguished Service Cross.

;oooo.

YouTuber and engineer, the Hacksmith, has created the world’s first retractable, “plasma-based” lightsaber, and it burns at 4,000 degrees Fahrenheit.

Circa 2018

Measuring one million times less than the width of a human hair, graphene is harder than diamonds and 200 times stronger than steel. Small, strong, and flexible, it is the most conductive material on earth and has the potential to charge a cell phone in just five seconds or to upload a terabit of data in one. It can be used to filter salt from water, develop bullet-stopping body armor, and create biomicrorobots.

These incredible properties have captured the attention of scientists and industry specialists around the world, all seeking to harness graphene’s potential for applications in electronics, energy, composites and coatings, biomedicine, and other industries.

Continue reading “A Wood Product Stronger than Steel that Could Change the World” »

ST. GEORGE — An invention that could lead to the end of gunpowder is not just an idea — it’s already been used in a real-world military mission.

Priced at $1 million, ZHeus 3 is not a gun; it’s a “platform” that has taken Harvester, a St. George-based inventor, 15 years to design. Harvester could not release his full name because he still has a commitment to national security.

The idea for this invention, along with an improved armor, began some 15 years ago when Harvester’s best friend died in his arms after being shot during an Air Force mission. The bullet shot straight through his friend’s bulletproof vest and kept going.

| Denver, CO Patch

Expect to hear gunshot testing in downtown Denver Wednesday evening.

Circa 2019

But perhaps soldiers should be glad that the Army didn’t go with the infamous Heckler & Koch G11 or the futuristic XM29 OICW, or the ill-fated XM8 assault rifle.

Instead of a very conventional rifle firing the 5.56 NATO round, the Army is now rapidly progressing towards developing and field-testing a new weapon that can double the muzzle speeds of a bullet.

Continue reading “New research shows the Army could soon develop a rifle with hyper-velocity rounds” »

O„.o carbon nanotube suit.

Researchers announce new military funding in search for body armor skin that could be 300 percent stronger than anything we’ve seen before.

In Christopher Nolan’s Batman Begins, there’s a scene where inventor Lucius Fox, played by Morgan Freeman, explains that Wayne Enterprises has created a prototype body armor for the U.S. infantry that’s as light as Kevlar but bullet- and knife-proof. Bruce Wayne asks why it never went into production. “The bean counters figured a soldier’s life wasn’t worth the 300 grand,” Fox replies.

Continue reading “One Step Closer to a Batsuit for Soldiers” »

A newly developed metallic foam can stop even the biggest of bullets, but as with steel, there’s still a margin for death.

Scientists have accidentally discovered a completely new form of matter that works in the same way as the lightsabers used in Star Wars.

A team of physicists were messing around with photons when they managed to get the particles to stick together and form a molecule.

The molecule behaves, they claim, just like a lightsaber by moving the light particles around in a solid mass and is unlike any matter seen before.