If there’s anything cooler than technology, it’s warfare, and if there’s anything cooler than that, it’s the combination of the two.

Some may flap their hands in outrage at this statement, decrying the obscene cost of military R&D while we’re faced with “more pressing” issues than defense.

I’d urge such types to settle back onto their plushly-upholstered divans, take another puff on their cigarette’s extra-length, ivory holders and consider that nothing educates better than a rubber bullet. And nothing reduces a carbon footprint like a landmine.

Now, having worked the doves into a frothing frenzy, here are some cool, ridiculously expensive technologies to push them over the edge into berserker rage.

The XOS Robotic Exoskeleton

Robotics company Sarcos have developed a particularly intimidating, serious-business suit. Looking like a hollowed-out Terminator droid, the XOS is the pack-humping, long-marching, body-armoring ally of the future infantryman.

Well, assuming we don’t simply splice rhino-DNA into our clone armies, but let’s not give anyone ideas.

Donning this superhero-suit is as easy as fitting a webbing pack and a locking a pair of skis, if not quite as easy as slipping into a coat held up by a butler. From there, the suit mirrors the actions of every limb, endowing them with a brute strength to shame The Gubernator himself.

In one demonstration, the suit performed 500 reps on a pull-down bar weighted at 200 pounds, before intolerable boredom set in for its wearer and he presumably set to punching down walls instead.

With all that power, you’d expect movement to be clumsy and limited. Wrong. Even though it weighs 150 pounds, the XOS is agile enough to conceivably wear to your next Grand Ball.

They’re even talking of a model soldiers can disengage from, which will then continue with soldierly duties all by itself… Ah, DARPA contracts, hastening the inevitable robot apocalypse in style.

Non-military adaptations of the XOS, for firemen and cripples, are scheduled to appear in due course and we’re hoping the future everyman gets one too. The issue of parallel parking by females could finally be laid to rest, gingerly and neatly from an overhead deadlift.

Small Unit Space Transport and Insertion, Sustain

Small unit insertion may sound familiar to you but don’t be fooled – Sustain is an aerospace project being developed for the U.S. Marine Corps. Its aim is to transport a squad of over a dozen marines anywhere on the globe. Within two hours, max.

It’ll be a two-stage process. A carrier craft, perhaps a B-52 or similar, will power the lander to the upper atmosphere. The landing craft, probably Boeing’s X-51A currently in testing, will break away, fire up its scramjet engines and cruise at Mach 7 to its destination.

That it’ll do so just over the 50 mile limit to national airspace is perhaps something that’s occurred to the brass. They’re canny that way.

Now, while the thought of doing a flight that currently takes ¾ of a day, Los Angeles to Singapore say, in just two hours is cool if you’re a marine, what we’re really waiting for is the passenger version.

Or, for Singapore to declare war. And though it’s still a ways off for the average (GI) Joe, this new technology may soon eclipse the $50 M Gulfstream private jet as the transportation method of choice for the global super-class.

We hope they remember to pack their jetlag pills and industrial-strength barf-bags.

The 600 Ton Robot Lorry

Industrial machinery manufacturer Caterpillar and Carnegie Mellon University scientists have teamed up to create the ultimate redneck fantasy.

This 600 ton robot lorry can drive right over conventional monster trucks, which are more like Tonka trucks in comparison. It can crush cars, tanks and even houses beneath its merciless treads.

It can transport loads of up to 380 tons, making it handy for pyramid construction. And best, or perhaps most disturbingly of all, Caterpillar’s new beast can operate without a driver. Yeah, you read right.

Following a successful series of DARPA trials to develop a self-driven car, it was only a matter of time before a self-driven, mechanical Godzilla reared its head.

From there, it’s a short but inevitable step to someone covering it in guns and missiles. From there, a short quick step to all of us learning to speak Binary.

Weapons Against Robots

If the proliferation of vehicular kill-bots and humanoid death-droids sets off your “Danger, Will Robinson” alarm, you’ll be pleased to learn of WAR Defence.

This start-up was founded by dot com millionaire, Ben Way, who’s well aware of the increasing militarization of robotics technology. His company exists to find ways of defending against enemy robots, or any of ours made sullen and uncooperative by robot puberty.

WAR, “the world’s first defense company solely dedicated to weaponry against robotic entities,” is working on several means to this end. Most interesting is circuitry-frying, non-lethal (to humans anyway) technology like Electric Storm-AX1.

This high energy microwave device, along with similar directed EMP devices, offers humanity’s best hope of neutralizing hostile machinery to survive the inevitable robot apocalypse. Not to mention dealing with your neighbor’s blaring car alarm and rap music.

It’s all still in the early stages, of course, but that’s not going to stop us from buying shares in WAR Defense and posting several thousand “up yours, sentient artificial intelligence,” messages to the internet.

While it may be a few years before we see rocket-pack police jumping from spaceships, fighting off giant bulldozer robots with energy guns, that future scenario is closer to becoming a reality then ever before. Let’s just hope that before we all kick the bucket from some nuclear-robot holocaust that we also develop the time machine portal to send someone back to stop it all from ever happening in the first place.