Continuing my obsession with futuristic military hardware…
I love that the video seems to have been based on those spoof ads that appear in Starship Troopers and Robocop.
Incidentally, if you’re into sci-fi you should probably read Joe Haldeman’s ‘The Forever War’, a kind of response to Heinlein’s jingoistic ‘Starship Troopers’ book (one of the things I like so much about Verhoven’s film is the way it thoroughly subverts the intention of its source material). I finished it on the tube this morning.
Basically it’s a take on the authors experience in Vietnam and particularly the alienation that veterans of that war often felt upon returning to civilian life, a theme which is stretched to its limit by the relativistic effects of interstellar flight. Every time the characters return from a tour of duty, tens or hundreds of years have a passed on earth. The whole thing is told with wonderful economy and a professionals eye for military hardware, successfully nailing both the glamour and horror of war without being heavy handed or preachy.
And then Dan said:
“Advanced hardkill technologies”? Who wouldn’t want those?
I notice that it claims to be able to neutralise threats from 360 degrees, so presumably not one to send in alongside your mine-clearance ground teams… although it does state quite clearly that it operates with minimum collateral damage, so they might be ok. But what if someone fires an RPG from inside a crowded civilian area like a marketplace? Also, they don’t mention whether it’s able to detect and destroy static targets (a car bomb, for example).
Still, 10/10 for the polished and not-at-all bombastic ad.
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