Modern Weapons
With wars being waged in every major continent of this planet, the names of weapons like autocannons, guns, missiles, rifles, tanks, fighter jets, bombs, torpedoes, snipers, grenades, pistols, mortars, rockets, battleships, landmines, submarines and the like are pretty commonplace. We would have read or heard about these through the various media forums available. These names do not make us sit up anymore unless there is a mention of something like a space-based tungsten rod, a stun taser, a hypersonic scramjet, a millimeter-wave beam gun, microwave e-bombs, etc. These are weapons of the future, screams a suit-clad television journalist.
Could this be true? Let’s try to understand more.
Material Elements and Weapons
The gross world that we can perceive through the five senses is made of five 
natural elements called earth, water, fire, air and ether. It appears that during the Vedic times there were many kinds of weapons made of earth, water, air, ether, etc., in addition to the modern weapons of fire. Even the nuclear weapons of the modern age are classified as fire weapons, but formerly there were other weapons made of all different types of material elements. In fact there are texts that even describe tornado weapons.
One type of weapon could be counteracted by a weapon belonging to another type. For instance, water weapons were counteracted by fire weapons, which are now unknown to modern science. There are descriptions of occasions when an enemy would deploy a water weapon to create a thick mist in order to delude the opponent. Though milk appears white, it is actually a colloidal suspension of certain protein molecules. Similarly, even though mist might appear thick and white, it is also a colloidal suspension of water molecules. Warriors had the capability of driving away this mist by deploying a fire weapon.