5 Famous Sci-Fi Weapons That They’re Actually Building

1. The Advanced Tactical Laser, Boeing's Flying Laser Cannon Designed to engage (that is, utterly destroy) ground targets, the ATL is a weapon fitted to an aircraft like a C-130 transport plane. From 10,000 feet up and five miles away, this 40,000-pound, megawatt-class, chemical laser will melt a hole through a tank.Or should we say, tanks. The ATL is intended to strike up to 100 targets in rapid succession. Oh, and the beam's silent. And invisible. One moment you're having a nice cup of coffee atop your troop transport, the next you're a smoking hole in the ground. This space age, science fiction gadget is scheduled for live fire demonstrations later this year and was apparently inspired by the film Independance Day.

2. Railguns Railguns work by electrically generated magnetic repulsion, no toxic chemicals or propellants involved in the one shown in the picture above the projectile was fired with an electric charge of 10.6 megajoules, that's a one second pulse of 10.6 million watts, When applied in a single split second to an aluminum slug that's much, much smaller than your house, it's enough to make the slug do Mach 7. How far away are these things? Well, the American Navy intends to put 64 megajoule railguns in their new, all-electric DD(X) battleships, which should be ready in 10 years. This was apparently inspired by the film Doom.

3. The iRobot Warrior, brought to you by Roomba! The Robotic Floorvac The company iRobot (yes, the Roomba Vacum people) are teaming up with Australian weapons company, Metal Storm, to create Warrior. iRobot will provide the robot part, and Metal Storm provides the Firestorm weapons system, a revolutionary gun that work by stacking the ammo in the barrel and cooking it off via electrical impulses. The result is a robot that can shoot little 40 mm grenades at you at a rate of 4,000 a second. These terrifying super robots were inspired by the Unmanned Hunter Killers from the Terminator films.

4. Space-Launched Kinetic Bombs The so-called Rods From God system would have two satellites placed in orbit, one to control communication and targeting, the other containing the rods. When released, nothing but gravity and a little remote guidance is needed to bring them down on target like the wrath of Zeus. The brute force of hundred-kilogram rods traveling over 7,000 MPH makes them ideal for penetrating underground bunkers and hardened nuclear missile silos. The UK has to take the blame for this idea as it was apparently inspired by the Diamond Space Laser from the Bond classic Diamonds are Forever

5. Modular Disc-Wing Urban Cruise Munitions (i.e. Exploding Flying Saucers) These are robotic drones being developed for the American Air Force by Triton Systems, who believe they're well-suited to urban combat environments. Fired from a device like a skeet-launcher, the discs then fly via remote or internal guidance into hostile, heavily-defended areas. When near the enemy, the drone detonates. Its MEFP warhead will spray the area with armor-piercing shrapnel to shred infantry or, alternately, form a single-targeted explosion to destroy heavy vehicles or perform demolition work. These seem to be inspired by the Spinning Manhunters from Half Life 2.