The Flowing of the Dao

On the face of it a layer of orange jelly may not sound the best way to protect a soldier’s head from high velocity bullets and shrapnel.

But the British Army’s standard-issue combat helmet is set to be upgraded with a liner made from gooey miracle gel, which responds to a sudden impact by locking instantly into a solid form - absorbing huge amounts of energy harmlessly. Read more

Nothing new here really at all. This is the Nihonjin or Korean projection technology from ~2003-2005 just adapted to armor. Yawn …

New technology that can make tanks invisible has been unveiled by the Ministry of Defence.

In secret trials last week, the Army said it had made a vehicle completely disappear and predicted that an invisible tank would be ready for service by 2012.

The new technology uses cameras and projectors to beam images of the surrounding landscape onto a tank.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=490669

He alludes to a metamaterial application towards the end of the article …

“The next stage is to make the tank invisible without them - which is intricate and complicated, but possible.”

Alright then please tell the good people of the UK why you are wasting their money on some soon-to-be defunct projection technology when you should be spending that money on advancing the science of nonreflective metamaterials.

I don’t fuckin’ get it.

Bulletproof jackets do not turn security guards, police officers and armed forces into Robocops, repelling the force of bullets in their stride. New research in carbon nanotechnology however could give those in the line of fire materials which can bounce bullets without a trace of damage.

A research paper published in the Institute of Physics’ Nanotechnology details how engineers from the Centre for Advanced Materials Technology at the University of Sydney have found a way to use the elasticity of carbon nanotubes to not only stop bullets penetrating material but actually rebound their force.

Most anti-ballistic materials, like bullet-proof jackets and explosion-proof blankets, are currently made of multiple layers of Kevlar, Twaron or Dyneema fibres which stop bullets from penetrating by spreading the bullet’s force. Targets can still be left suffering blunt force trauma - perhaps severe bruising or, worse, damage to critical organs.

The elasticity of carbon nanotubes means that blunt force trauma may be avoided and that’s why the engineers in Sydney have undertaken experiments to find the optimum point of elasticity for the most effective bullet-bouncing gear.

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2007-10/iop-unt103007.php
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?view=DETAILS&grid=&xml=/earth/2007/10/31/scicop131.xml