The kind of military technology only imagined in sci-fi movies like Iron Man and Star Wars could be coming to an international conflict near you sometime in the very near future. As if missiles and nuclear bombs weren’t enough, militaries around the world are currently developing a terrifying range of deadly weapons as well as aircraft that could take warfare into space. Some of it is unconfirmed – like Russia’s supposed mind control guns, which impair the higher cognitive functions of crowds – while some is already in early stages of deployment, like the puke-inducing ‘thunder generators’ now in use against protesters by local police.

Hypersonic Projectiles

Hypersonic weapons fly over five times the speed of sound to not only make them a hell of a lot more powerful, but also evade detection, tracking and attempts to destroy them. Among them is the Electromagnetic Railgun under development by the Office of Naval Research – essentially a flying hypersonic strike that whizzes through the air at around 5,600 miles per hour. It’s capable of traveling up to 100 miles, arrives with virtually zero warning and tears things up about as much as you’d expect. Oh, and it’s also guided. It uses magnetic fields generated by huge amounts of energy to travel.

Though it has cost the Pentagon about $500 million since they first began working on it in 2005, there’s some question as to whether it will ever be implemented due to the sheer expense of it. The military now appears to be more interested in the spiked projectiles than the weapon that fires them, investigating their use in available powder weapons before moving forward on testing the railgun.

Thunder Generators

Thunder generators were first tested as a way to ‘humanely’ scatter birds away from crop fields and other areas, like the landfill seen in the video above. But of course, if it’s capable of generating shock waves that scare birds, it could also be leveled up for crowd control usage on humans. While stunning people from a range of 30 to 100 meters will only create the kind of sonic blast that either makes people run in panic or knocks them off their feet, get closer and it kills. It looks pretty nondescript – just a single barrel that can be mounted on a mobile base – but you can put several of them together for a more powerful effect, and a curved barrel will allow the sonic waves to turn 90-degree corners. The similar LRAD Sound Cannon (Long Range Acoustical Device) looks a like a speaker.

Developed in Israel, it’s now being marketed for military and security applications, and it’s equipped with enough gas to produce around five thousand blasts. It’s just one of many acoustic weapons in use and development by military and police forces, often deployed against protesters like those at the Dakota Access Pipeline in South Dakota. Just a short blast from a typical sonic weapon can make everyone in a crowd spontaneously puke. Unsurprisingly, their use can also lead to health problems like hearing loss and traumatic brain injuries.

‘Smart’ Tracking Bullets

The phrase ‘dodging a bullet’ may seem quaint very soon thanks to tracking technologies that make sure bullets don’t miss their targets. So-called ‘smart bullets’ contain optical sensors to hit moving and evading targets, and even a novice shooter using the system for the first time will almost certainly hit the mark. This DARPA project achieves extreme accuracy at sniper ranges that can’t be achieved with traditional rounds, and the .50 caliber bullets travel at hundreds of miles per hour.

Powered Exoskeletons

Iron Man-style powered exoskeleton suits have plenty of possibilities that aren’t nefarious, like helping medical professionals lift and carry patients more easily, or allowing paralyzed people to walk. But in addition to mobility, they bestow the wearer with an uncanny strength, and several different models are being developed for use by soldiers. One is Lockheed Martin’s FORTIS knee-stress-release device, which uses independent actuators and motors along with a lithium ion battery to let soldiers carry 180 pounds up five flights of stairs without tiring while also preventing knee injuries. DARPA is testing a battery-powered exoskeleton as well, and China and Russia have their own versions, “turning soldiers into Stormtroopers.”

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Looking and working remarkably like the robots in the 2009 movie Avatar, the 1.5-ton, 13-foot-tall ’METHOD-2’ by South Korean firm Hankook Mirae Technology has officially taken its first steps. Engineers and reporters watched the robot navigate the company’s facility on its massive mechanical legs, traversing about ten feet before reversing. It appears to be remote-controlled for this exercise, while previous videos have shown how it functions with a human ‘pilot’ sitting inside.

The idea is that METHOD-2 will be able to help people reach the kinds of hazardous destinations that are currently too unsafe to navigate, and it’s easy to imagine this thing walking down the street like a superhero after a disaster. It sounds like the company is currently working out the mechanics of the robot itself, and it’s unclear whether it’ll ultimately be able to climb over obstacles, negotiate uneven terrain or withstand harsh climates.

Its first planned expedition is into the space between North and South Korea known as the DMZ (demilitarized zone), the world’s most dangerous border, but it’s still got about a year of planning and tinkering to get it into shape. Right now, it requires a tether for power. Its arms weigh 300 pounds each and are controlled by the pilot’s own limb movements.

Unsurprisingly, the robot was designed by Vitaly Bulgarov, who previously worked on the Transformers films and helped design Boston Dynamics’ bipedal robots. Yang Jin-Ho, chairman of Hankook Mirae Technology, says the robot is still taking its ‘baby steps’ but ultimately aims to “bring to life what only seemed possible in movies and cartoons.”

METHOD-2 is already getting lots of interest from companies who want to purchase one, and the price tag is expected to run around $8.3 million. The final version is expected to be ready for potential buyers by the end of 2017.

No need to get too concerned about a robot uprising just yet, if the finalists at last year’s DARPA Robotics Challenge are any indication, but that doesn’t mean the field hasn’t made some impressive advances. Typically developed by Boston Dynamics with funding from the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, most recent robotic creations were created to someday take the place of humans in dangerous scenarios like disaster response and war. We may still be a long way away from robot soldiers (which are, frankly, kind of terrifying), but DARPA and the teams that participated in the challenge have still produced some impressive results.

Challenger: DRC-Hubo

Held from 2012 to 2015, the DARPA Robotics Challenge was a bit underwhelming for robot fans, resulting in more funny GIFs of robots falling than amazing feats of robotic technological prowess. The entrants used the tall and gangly ‘ATLAS’ humanoid robot technology developed by Boston Dynamics as a base, and then made their own improvements. The goal was to develop semiautonomous ground robots that can complete “complex tasks in dangerous, degraded, human-engineered environments.” South Korea’s Team KAIST won with its DRC-HUBO, beating 23 other teams from around the world. The robots were tasked with opening doors, operating valves, driving cars and climbing flights of stairs. By the final challenge, where the robots had to take more risks, there was a lot more toppling, including one that fell so hard it lost its head.

Challenger: Running Man

Crowd favorite Running Man, by Team IHMC, was particularly adept at walking and balancing “in a complete whole-body control algorithm,’ hence its name. This guy took the lead early on and was only edged out by DRC-Hubo during the final challenge. Running Man successfully drove a Polaris off-road vehicle all the way down a dirt track, got out, walked to a door and opened it before successfully completing several more drills, but then fell and couldn’t right itself twice in a row. While the bots were being remotely controlled by their human operators for part of the time, they generally had to figure things out on their own.

Challenger: Tartan Rescue CHIMP

Looking significantly less humanoid than the other challengers, Carnegie Mellon’s CHIMP dominated the challenges early in the competition, completing all eight tasks and picking itself up after falling. Designed to go virtually anywhere, the all-terrain bot moves on all four of its limbs, which is pretty cool to watch when it’s scaling vertical surfaces on ladders or working itself up to a full run. None of these robots move at lightning speed (one DARPA official likened the pace of observing the competition to watching a round of golf) but they’re doing some pretty cool things nonetheless.

Challenger: LEO

Lockheed Martin’s Team Trooper produced the ‘Leo’ robot, named for Leonardo da Vinci. This bot stumbled when it started to close an open valve but then stopped midway through, requiring human intervention. Lockheed focused on the ability for a human operator to assist Leo at varying levels of autonomy, from sending commands to pick up tools to planning arm and finger trajectories manually if the robot was required to use an entirely new type of tool. It’s easy to see how this ability could translate into real life, helping robots carry out life-saving tasks like shutting valves at a malfunctioning nuclear power plant.

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In war, innovation can mean the difference between a glorious victory and a world shattering defeat. When research and development departments have the funding of a desperate nation behind them, and are faced with a long and brutal campaign, the ideas that are spawned can turn the tide of battle. It’s inevitable that some of the wilder ideas would later seem ridiculous. Here are 10 of the most extreme, and odd, military weapons created in the 20th century:

(Images via sovietempire, bodston, primeportal, wikipedia)

The brutality of war can be reflected by the means with which it’s fought. Anti tank dogs were a soviet creation, and said to have taken down over 300 German tanks during World War II. Dogs were taught to find food under tanks, and then starved before a battle. They would have bombs strapped to their backs, with levers that would trigger as soon as it hit the underside of a tank. When the lever snapped back, the dogs would explode, destroying the tank. The Germans eventually fought this tactic with flamethrowers, and a couple cases of dogs running amok away from battlefields was enough to cut back the program.

(Images via americainfra, panzerguy_01)

Corkscrew tanks didn’t run on the typical caterpillar type treads, instead propelled by giant corkscrews. Just like an electric screwdriver pulls into a piece of wood, so these treads would cruise along the ground, regardless of terrain. Their travel was a bit erratic, and the tanks had to be too lightweight to be useful in combat.

(Images via fastcompany, foothill)

When it comes to urban fighting, every corner can hide a group of enemy soldiers. Even the slightest advantage can win battles, so various weapons were designed to allow soldiers to see around corners, and fire around them behind the protection of a concrete wall.

(Images via nerdcore, autotrader, sobiratelzvezd, strange vehicles)

The Tsar tank was Russian built with two wheels 27 feet in diameter that pulled a much smaller set of wheels behind. Mounted with large and heavy guns, it was one of the few tanks that didn’t have treads, and was designed to overrun any obstacle. The design was bulky and ill conceived for the reality of battle, and was quickly dropped.

(Images via castlekay, annefrankguide, aerostar)

Barrage balloons were strung up by the hundreds over cities during World War II. Like floating mines, they would make it difficult for low flying enemy aircraft to make devastating bombing runs by threatening to bring them down with their taut wires and incendiary devices.

(Images via darkroasted, mondolithic, cim mcgill)

With the scarcity of metal toward the end of World War II, Project Habbakuk was an attempt to create aircraft carriers out of pykrete, a mixture of ice and wood pulp. Thick enough to withstand enemy fire, and easily repaired, pykrete would enable the construction of large ships with the uses of minimal resources. The war was completed before any of these ships became a reality.

(Images via 5348 Franco, tolka rover, brassdragon, bathead)

It’s surprising a prototype of a bat bomb was ever even made, but it was. The idea was simple: place incendiary explosive devices on Mexican Free-Tailed Bats, lower their temperature inside a bomb so they hibernate in transit, and then release them over an enemy city to roost in the infrastructure below. At a specific time, all the bats would explode in a thousand fiery blazes, igniting fires across the city.

(Images via weirdworm, photo collection, skylighters)

The Goliath tracked mine was a remote controlled anti tank mine that carried nearly 200 pounds of explosives and would be steered toward enemy troop or tank formations and detonated. These mines were created by the Germans and used throughout World War II, on all fronts, and were known as beetle tanks by Allied forces.

(Images via willys mb, fiddlers green, weirdworm)

The flying jeep was created to fulfill a contract to create a lightweight helicopter that could be landed in any terrain. Several prototypes were created but they never went into full production. No matter how good it looked on paper, the flying jeep’s goofy appearance gives a good indication of why such a flimsy hybrid would not do well in the heat of battle.

(Images via royal airfarce, rooksmoor, cracked)

Flying aircraft carriers had a brief stint in the collective imagination of a wartime populace. Much like hoverpacks and flying cars, the idea never came to fruition, only to live on in steampunk style novels and shows. They would be easy to shoot down, consume inordinate amounts of fuel, and had few advantages to counter an extended list of cons.