New England Patriots focus on the Game

THIS is part of what makes NEW ENGLAND the team to beat...many others would rehash the past...Not Belichick, not Brady. They have only one focus - WINNING on Super Bowl Sunday.

NY best understand that the other games mean little to New England. The Patriots will do their talking on the field.

Patriots not interested in past meetings
January, 30, 2012
James Walker - ESPN

INDIANAPOLIS -- The AFC champion New England Patriots made one thing clear in their first two days at Super Bowl XLVI: They have little interest in rehashing past meetings against the New York Giants.

New England suffered recent losses to the Giants in big games -- both this past regular season and in Super Bowl XLII. Giants quarterback Eli Manning provided a pair of dramatic, fourth-quarter drives to seal it for New York.

Naturally, there will be a ton of questions for the Patriots this week whether the Giants have momentum, or have their number. The Patriots just won’t entertain them.

"This team doesn't talk, not about the past," Patriots veteran receiver Deion Branch said.

New England head coach Bill Belichick is leading the charge in not reflecting on previous games against New York.

"This team is this team," Belichick said. "I think our team is different than what it was at midseason, different than what it was in December. I think the Giants are a different team from when we played them in November."

Regardless, New York comes in very confident after being one of three teams to beat the Patriots this year. The Giants also had the tougher road through the playoffs, beating the Atlanta Falcons, Green Bay Packers and San Francisco 49ers.

Both teams have improved as the season has gone on, leading to Sunday's big matchup with everything on the line.

"You could take a little bit as far as the personnel, but as far as our game plan is concerned, you really can't take too much," Patriots linebacker Jerod Mayo said. "They've had an extra week to prepare, so have we, and I'm sure we’ll have a lot of different looks for them."

NAVY RAIL GUN - a new hi-tech weapon - Enhanced to let an enemies' explosives be your explosives

LOVE the high tech kit that the NAVY has as this will be a whole new way to take out "The Bad Guys" with the ultimate in " Don't see'm, don't hear'em ' type of weapon that slams into their hiding spot out-of-the-blue.......awesome .......just awesome


Navy Sets World Record With Incredible, Sci-Fi Weapon
By John R. Quain
Published December 10, 2010
FoxNews

A theoretical dream for decades, the railgun is unlike any other weapon used in warfare. And it's quite real too, as the U.S. Navy has proven in a record-setting test today in Dahlgren, VA.

Rather than relying on a explosion to fire a projectile, the technology uses an electomagnetic current to accelerate a non-explosive bullet at several times the speed of sound. The conductive projectile zips along a set of electrically charged parallel rails and out of the barrel at speeds up to Mach 7.

The result: a weapon that can hit a target 100 miles or more away within minutes.

"It's an over-used term, but it really changes several games," Rear Admiral Nevin P. Carr, Jr., the chief of Naval Research, told FoxNews.com prior to the test.

For a generation raised on shoot-'em-up video games, the word "railgun" invokes sci-fi images of an impossibly destructive weapon annihilating monsters and aliens. But the railgun is nonetheless very real.

An electromagnetic railgun offers a velocity previously unattainable in a conventional weapon, speeds that are incredibly powerful on their own. In fact, since the projectile doesn't have any explosives itself, it relies upon that kinetic energy to do damage. And at 11 a.m. today, the Navy produced a 33-megajoule firing -- more than three times the previous record set by the Navy in 2008.

"It bursts radially, but it's hard to quantify," said Roger Ellis, electromagnetic railgun program manager with the Office of Naval Research. To convey a sense of just how much damage, Ellis told FoxNews.com that the big guns on the deck of a warship are measured by their muzzle energy in megajoules. A single megajoule is roughly equivalent to a 1-ton car traveling at 100 mph. Multiple that by 33 and you get a picture of what would happen when such a weapon hits a target.

Ellis says the Navy has invested about $211 million in the program since 2005, since the railgun provides many significant advantages over convention weapons. For one thing, a railgun offers 2 to 3 times the velocity of a conventional big gun, so that it can hit its target within 6 minutes. By contrast, a guided cruise missile travels at subsonic speeds, meaning that the intended target could be gone by the time it reaches its destination.

Furthermore, current U.S. Navy guns can only reach targets about 13 miles away. The railgun being tested today could reach an enemy 100 miles away. And with current GPS guidance systems it could do so with pinpoint accuracy. The Navy hopes to eventually extend the range beyond 200 miles.

"We're also eliminating explosives from the ship, which brings significant safety benefits and logistical benefits," Ellis said. In other words, there is less danger of an unintended explosion onboard, particularly should such a vessel come under attack.

Indeed, a railgun could be used to inflict just such harm on another vessel.

Admiral Carr, who calls the railgun a "disruptive technology," said that not only would a railgun-equipped ship have to carry few if any large explosive warheads, but it could use its enemies own warheads against them. He envisions being able to aim a railgun directly at a magazine on an enemy ship and "let his explosives be your explosives."

There's also a cost and logistical benefit associated with railguns. For example, a single Tomahawk cruise missile costs roughly $600,000. A non-explosive guided railgun projectile could cost much less. And a ship could carry many more, reducing the logistical problems of delivering more weapons to a ship in battle. For these reasons, Admiral Carr sees the railgun as even changing the strategic and tactical assumptions of warfare in the future.

The Navy still has a distance to go, however, before the railgun test becomes a working onboard weapon. Technically, Ellis says they've already overcome several hurdles. The guns themselves generate a terrific amount of heat -- enough to melt the rails inside the barrel -- and power -- enough to force the rails apart, destroying the gun and the barrel in the process.

The projectile is no cannon ball, either. At speeds well above the sound barrier, aerodynamics and special materials must be considered so that it isn't destroyed coming out of the barrel or by heat as it travels at such terrific speeds.

Then there's question of electrical requirements. Up until recently, those requirements simply weren't practical. However, the naval researchers believe they can solve that issue using newer Navy ships and capacitors to build up the charge necessary to blast a railgun projectile out at supersonic speeds. Ellis says they hope to be able to shoot 6 to 12 rounds per minute, "but we're not there yet."

So when will the railgun become a working weapon? Both Ellis and Carr expect fully functional railguns on the decks of U.S. Navy ships in the 2025 time frame.

The XM25 - A perfect weapon for street-to-street fighting - a "game-changer "

LOVE THE TECHNOLOGY....This is the stuff that will give us an edge out there....Brilliant!

From the UK Daily Mail

No hiding place from new U.S. Army rifles that use radio-controlled smart bullets
By Daily Mail Reporter
8:25 AM on 30th November 2010

Weapon hailed as a game-changer that can fire up and over barriers and down into trenches

Soldiers will start using them in Afghanistan later this month

The U.S. army is to begin using a futuristic rifle that fires radio-controlled 'smart' bullets in Afghanistan for the first time, it has emerged.

The XM25 rifle uses bullets that be programmed to explode when they have travelled a set distance, allowing enemies to be targeted no matter where they are hiding.
The rifle also has a range of 2,300 feet making it possible to hit target which are well out of the reach of conventional rifles.

The XM25 is being developed specially for the U.S. army and will be deployed with troops from later this month, it was revealed today.

The XM25 Counter Defilade Target Engagement System has a range of roughly 2,300 feet - and is to be deployed in Afghanistan this month

The rifle's gunsight uses a laser rangefinder to determine the exact distance to the obstruction, after which the soldier can add or subtract up to 3 metres from that distance to enable the bullets to clear the barrier and explode above or beside the target.

Soldiers will be able to use them to target snipers hidden in trenches rather than calling in air strikes.

The 25-millimetre round contains a chip that receives a radio signal from the gunsight as to the precise distance to the target.

Lt. Col. Christopher Lehner, project manager for the system, described the weapon as a ‘game-changer’ that other nations will try and copy.

He expects the Army to buy 12,500 of the XM25 rifles this year, enough for every member of the infantry and special forces.

Lehner told FoxNews: ‘With this weapon system, we take away cover from [enemy targets] forever.

‘Tactics are going to have to be rewritten. The only thing we can see [enemies] being able to do is run away.’

Experts say the rifle means that enemy troops will no longer be safe if they take cover

The XM25 appears perfect weapon for street-to-street fighting that troops in Afghanistan have to engage in, with enemy fighters hiding behind walls and only breaking cover to fire ocasionally.

The weapon's laser finder would work out how far away the enemy was and then the U.S. soldier would add one metre using a button near the trigger. When fired, the explosive round would carry exactly one metre past the wall and explode with the force of a hand grenade above the Taliban fighter.

The army's project manager for new weapons, Douglas Tamilio, said: ''This is the first leap-ahead technology for troops that we've been able to develop and deploy.'
A patent granted to the bullet's maker, Alliant Techsystems, reveals that the chip can calculate how far it has travelled.

Mr Tamilio said: 'You could shoot a Javelin missile, and it would cost £43,000. These rounds will end up costing £15.50 apiece. They're relatively cheap.

Lehner added: ‘This is a game-changer. The enemy has learned to get cover, for hundreds if not thousands of years.

‘Well, they can't do that anymore. We're taking that cover from them and there's only two outcomes: We're going to get you behind that cover or force you to flee.’

The rifle will initially use high-explosive rounds, but its makers say that it might later use versions with smaller explosive charges that aim to stun rather than kill.