In 1915, it was imperative for France to keep its soldiers in good physical condition. The French War Ministry’s physical education school in Joinville looked for ways to improve soldiers’ performances and spot any problems with their health before they were sent to the Front. According to the cover story from the May 8, 1915 [...]

My teenage son, Mac, shot me. Twice, on the same day. I felt pride. And pain. Together with about 60 other guys, Mac and I were playing an "Airsoft" war game in a wooded Army Reserve training camp in Tolland, a tiny town in western Massachusetts. Airsoft is like paintball, except that the gas- or [...]

James N. Mattis is the four-star Marine general whom Barack Obama just nominated to head the U.S. Central Command, with oversight of the U.S. wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. If confirmed by the Senate (a hearing is set for today), Mattis will replace David Petraeus, who took over command of troops in Afghanistan from Stanley [...]

Do some soldiers enjoy killing? If so, why? This question is thrust upon us by the recently released video of U.S. Apache helicopter pilots shooting a Reuters cameraman and his driver in Baghdad in 2007. Mistaking the camera of the Reuters reporter for a weapon, the pilots machine-gunned the reporter and driver and other nearby [...]

At a time when drone aircraft have become a daily feature of the news and are about to proliferate in U.S. airspace, it’s a good idea to take a step back and examine a very basic and very important question: What, exactly, is a drone? The answer turns out to be more complex than might [...]

With relevance to homegrown, lone operator terrorist threats highlighted by the April 15 Boston Marathon bombings, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) announced a series of initiatives Wednesday aimed at defending the U.S. against increasingly ambiguous threats. Whereas its core mission will remain the same—researching new types of technology for the military—the cutting-edge agency [...]

NEW YORK CITY—I’ll probably never live out my childhood fantasy of riding in a fighter jet, let alone piloting one. But gazing down on a airborne F-15 Eagle from a cruising air tanker was more than enough to satisfy my adult self, who doesn’t mind vicariously taking in a thrill ride from a safe distance. [...]

A robot that can reproduce the dexterity of the human hand remains a dream of the bioengineering profession. One new approach to achieving this goal avoids trying to replicate the intricacy of the bones, joints and ligaments that produce our most basic gestures. A Sandia National Laboratories research team has adopted just such a strategy [...]

About the size of a beach ball, this flying sphere takes off vertically and hovers in place, but can zip along horizontally at speeds of up to 60 km/h (about 37 mph). It has gyroscopic control that keeps it stable even when the presenter smacks it on the side: Perhaps the most amazing aspect of [...]

Atheists The best thing about writing a story as a journalist is that you get to interact with astute readers who are never reticient about telling you what you missed in your reporting. My story, “The Neuroscience of True Grit,” the cover in the current issue, talks about what we know, and what we’re still [...]

In 2010, a new U.S. Air Force test vehicle, the X-37B, took flight from Cape Canaveral in Florida. The unmanned plane, which looks a bit like a compact version of the space shuttle, later landed at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, completing its autonomous flight. "There is no one on the ground with a [...]

Technology has always defined how wars are fought, from swords to bows and arrows through the invention of gunpowder and the dawn of the aircraft and, now, to the presence of laser-guided unmanned aerial drones and bomb-diffusing robots. The U.S. military is now hoping the next decade will see a new class of warrior—a faster, [...]

Legions of animal-inspired robots are being created to improve military missions and disaster response efforts—from crawling cockroach-like RHex bots to leaping Sand Flea robots and the speeding Cheetah machines. Now, a squishier source for smart robo-tech has joined the ranks: octopuses. Teams of researchers are already developing soft-bodied, octopus-esque robots for search and rescue. These [...]

My son Benjamin once got honorable mention for his science project, which consisted of going to a firing range and seeing whether silk is really bulletproof, as it’s sometimes purported to be. The guy at the range smiled upon hearing about what the skinny teenager was up to and said the silk would never stand [...]