Gizmodo: abrams

Russia's New Armor-Fooling Rocket Grenade Is An "Abrams Killer" Apparently

Kit Eaton — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 09:30:47 EST

The new rocket-propelled grenade RPG-30 anti-armor weapon recently unveiled in Russia has a sneaky trick to help it get past active defenses—it fires a tiny decoy rocket flying ahead of the main warhead. This is to confuse defensive systems into attacking the decoy, meaning they're too busy to successfully defeat the real weapon inbound just a tenth of a second or so behind. The RPG then has a 105-mm tandem warhead that is apparently capable of penetrating 650mm of steel armor, and can defeat reactive explosive armor too, earning it the "Abrams killer" label.

Which is, of course, interestingly ironic since the Abrams M1 typically doesn't use reactive armor, neither does its UK equivalent main battle tank the Challenger 2—they rely on advanced solid armor instead. And you'd need either a very lucky strike, or many impacts to seriously damage one of these beasts with any type of RPG. Russian tanks, like the T72 and T80, on the other hand, do rely on reactive armor and sometimes employ active defense systems like Arena. Would be interesting to see the RPG-30 pitted against the Future Combat System's Quick Kill defenses, don't you think?

Still, makers Bazalt got some military chaps to demonstrate the system recently on TV: [Wired]

First Look At the New USS Enterprise

Jason Chen — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 20:00:00 EST

Entertainment Weekly's got an exclusive first picture of the new Enterprise, also known as the old Enterprise, also known as Kirk's Enterprise. It looks quite Enterprisey—a sort of mashup between the old sensibilities of TOS, the more advanced special effects of the USS Enterprise E (Picard's latest ship) and Scott Bakula's lousy junker. Looking at it again, those fat nacelles make it seem more like a cross between the Enterprise A and the Enterprise B. In any case, a high five to JJ Abrams and his effects crew for making a ship we're looking forward to seeing go "pew pew pew" next year. [EW]

Star Trek Reboot Movie Will Have Tons of Gadgets

Jason Chen — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 20:00:00 EDT

The upcoming Star Trek reboot by J.J. Abrams has a lot going for it, from interesting choices in actors (John Cho, Simon Pegg and even a cameo by the son of James Doohan, the original Scotty), to updated special effects and concepts. What we're interested in are all the gadgets, from phasers to tricorders and even the ship itself.

How will they play in the update? Kind of like easter eggs, says Abrams, who stressed that the movie will be targeted toward people who have no idea of the history, yet have appearances by old die-hard devices like Uhura's Bluetooth headset that series fans can pick out. This means we should all get our wallets ready for the torrent of replica gadgets coming in 2009. [MTV Movies via Crunchgear]