04 Sci-Fi Weapons of the Near Future

We owe a lot to violence and conflict, because a huge part of all our technological innovation has come from violence and conflict. It also makes a perfect evolutionary feel. If you have better swordsmen than a rival clan, you will automatically learn more about swords and metalwork, and will be more likely to survive and pass on that knowledge.

You might think that no longer is the case - since technological innovation no longer needs to depend on killing each other - although you'd be surprised to learn that weapons are still our best-crafted tools. Most of our inventions in automotive technology, prosthetics, robotics, artificial intelligence, and other areas are still theorized and developed in defense laboratories.

If you want a glimpse of what the future will look like, take a look at the weapons we are currently developing. From a crowd-controlling ray of pain that looks just like it does - to seeing straight through walls, near-future weapons prove we're still at our creative best when we prepare for war.

1. Invisibility Cloak

The invisibility cloak has always been such a staple in the imagination that even if you think about it for two seconds, it's a terrifying idea in an urban setting. Imagine if invisible gowns were a reality. You never know if you are really alone in any room.

However, apply it to a military situation, and this honestly bizarre idea quickly turns into one of the deadliest fixes we could come up with. If we can create the perfect cloak of stealth, not only will it give us perfect camouflage on the battlefield, but it can also be used to create new, previously unheard of tactics. Combine that with our innovations in robotics, and we'll soon have invisible killer robots that can be built to do anything on enemy lines.

While it's still a while before we come up with a Harry Potter-style invisibility cloak, we still have plenty of prototypes that are close to the real thing (like this Canadian one).

2. Nanobots

Nanobots are kind of like Ant-Man: they don't look very sexy or powerful at first glance, but if you really sit down and think about the potential uses of being really small, you realize that they're actually one of them. One of the most powerful abilities one could think of. Small robots that can perform advanced operations can be used to do just about anything they want—a fact that Army scientists are well aware of.

While we don't know much about what the military is developing—because the best models are the ones we don't know about—some recent research may give us a clue.

MIT researchers have developed something very close in appearance to military-grade nanobots. They are no larger than a grain of sand, they float in the air and they can generate energy continuously. While this is still in the future, you can also expect them to have their own weapons.

3. Exoskeleton

Exoskeletons are probably one of the most popular futuristic technologies we know of, although this is largely due to FPS video games and Iron Man. Exoskeletons have proven completely ineffective in almost all of our previous experiments, either because of the force required to keep them going for long periods of time, or because of thermal inability to move inside a bulky metal suit. The idea of an augmented robotic suit with cool features is fine on paper, but no one has been able to make it work. Nobody but the Russians, that is.

The exoskeleton developed by the Russian military has solved many of these problems, and it may be the first exoskeleton we've seen that actually works. Currently, the prototype allows a soldier to run fast while aiming a machine gun with just one hand. While they don't have enough batteries to end a typical war, they're confident they can work it out and have a working suit on the battlefield by 2025.

The USA's exoskeleton program -- TALOS -- may not be far behind, though we don't know much about it yet.

4. Auto Kill Zones

Concerns about the continued use of AI in warfare are growing, and rightfully so. Robotic weapons are one of the biggest threats to life on Earth, and we're not even talking about deceptive AI here. We already have weapon systems that directly challenge the ethic of using automatic weapons: self-kill zones.

While Israel is the only country currently using it at the border, other countries are also developing their own versions. It's exactly what it sounds like: restricted areas protected by automatic weapons that can choose when to strike. That last part is the most annoying, since auto-kill zones - by definition - require the device to tell it who to shoot. How does the machine learn to distinguish between a warrior and a civilian?