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CRAZIEST New Technology Used By The Military Today!

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A folding submachine gun, an electromagnetic tank-killer, and a delivery drone shaped like a motorcycle — the Pentagon’s toy box just got weirder.

World List’s rundown of “CRAZIEST New Technology Used By The Military Today!” pulls together the hardware that reads like it belongs in a Bond film but actually made it onto test ranges and into procurement paperwork. The standouts are a hoverbike the Army is genuinely trying to weaponize for resupply runs, a DARPA warhead that skips chemical explosives entirely, and a 9mm submachine gun that folds flat into something that looks like a laptop battery. Between those three, plus a supporting cast of exoskeletons and legged robots, the video makes the case that the most interesting military R&D right now isn’t about bigger guns — it’s about disguise, speed, and physics tricks.

• The U.S. Department of Defense’s Joint Tactical Aerial Resupply Vehicle (JTARV) program, built with SURVICE Engineering and British firm Malloy Aeronautics, turned Chris Malloy’s Kickstarter hoverbike into an unmanned cargo drone that cruises at up to 60 mph and hauls 220 to 800 pounds for 30 minutes per flight.
• DARPA’s Magneto Hydrodynamic Explosive Munition (MAHEM) fires molten metal penetrators using electromagnetic fields instead of standard shaped-charge explosives, aiming to outpunch the rocket-propelled grenade against armor.
• The Magpul FMG-9, a 2008 prototype from Magpul Industries, is a 9mm submachine gun that folds into the shape of a rectangular battery pack or flashlight and snaps into a shoulder-fired weapon in one motion.

The Hoverbike Goes Tactical

Chris Malloy’s original hoverbike started as a Kickstarter curiosity — a dual-rotor, motorcycle-shaped flying platform meant for a human rider. The Pentagon saw something different in it: a way to get ammunition, water, and medical supplies to troops without sending a truck convoy through an ambush zone. Under the JTARV program, SURVICE Engineering partnered with Malloy Aeronautics to turn that concept into an unmanned, hybrid-electric cargo prototype.

The numbers matter here. A cruise speed of 60 mph (96 km/h) and 30 minutes of flight time isn’t going to win any speed records, but paired with a payload range of 220 to 800 pounds, it’s enough to move real logistics — ammo crates, blood units, batteries — directly to a forward position. The U.S. Army Research Laboratory ran demonstration flights that proved the eVTOL platform could handle tactical resupply missions autonomously, without a pilot exposed to ground fire. It’s a very different pitch than the original manned hoverbike concept covered in THE FIRST EVER HOVERBIKE IN THE WORLD, but it’s the version the military actually kept funding.

MAHEM: Rewriting Anti-Armor Physics

Rocket-propelled grenades and shaped-charge warheads have been the default answer to armored vehicles for decades, but they rely on chemical explosives to force a metal jet through armor plating. DARPA’s Magneto Hydrodynamic Explosive Munition takes a different route entirely: it uses electromagnetic fields to accelerate molten metal penetrators toward the target at extreme velocities.

The pitch is precision and penetration against the kind of heavy defensive plating that defeats standard RPGs. It’s the sort of exotic, physics-first weapons research that shows up in DARPA’s broader portfolio — the same agency behind projects detailed in THE FUTURE U.S. ARMY — FUTURISTIC WEAPONS FROM D.A.R.P.A. — where the goal isn’t a bigger bang, it’s a smarter one.

A Submachine Gun Disguised as a Battery Pack

The Magpul FMG-9 solves a different problem: how do you carry a real weapon into a room where carrying a weapon is the whole issue? Magpul Industries built the FMG-9 in 2008 as a prototype 9mm submachine gun for VIP protection and covert work. Folded, it looks like an oversized flashlight or a rectangular battery pack. Unfolded — in a single motion — it’s a fully functional, shoulder-fired firearm.

Folded, it passes as a battery pack. Unfolded, in one motion, it’s a shoulder-fired 9mm submachine gun.

It never went into mass military production, but the concept stuck around as one of the more talked-about covert-carry designs to come out of the mid-2000s, and it’s the kind of hardware that keeps surfacing in rundowns of unconventional military gear alongside entries like the 10 Most Insane Secret Military Technologies.

The Rest of the Lineup

World List’s list rounds out with hardware that’s less exotic but still unconventional: exoskeleton frames meant to let soldiers carry heavier loads without the fatigue, the Boston Dynamics/DARPA “pack mule” robot known as the Legged Squad Support System (LS3), smart fabrics designed to defeat visual detection, shear-thickening “liquid armor” that stays flexible until struck, the corner-mounted Cornershot rifle mount for firing around obstacles without exposing the shooter, the 9.5-ton Black Knight Unmanned Combat Vehicle, and the Navy’s Laser Weapon System (LaWS), which disables a target’s onboard systems rather than physically destroying it.

Most of these never made it past prototype stage, which is the pattern with programs like this — the JTARV hoverbike and MAHEM warhead are still the two furthest along, one already flying resupply demonstrations for the Army Research Laboratory, the other still working through DARPA’s testing pipeline before anyone puts a price tag on fielding it.