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Future Weapons of War in the Works
An anonymous reader writes "Who needs explosive missiles when you can just launch a 3 foot long chunk of metal at near Mach 7 speeds and get the same result? Popular Science looks at weapons the military is developing for future wars including electromagnetic railguns, space darts, superfast torpedos, laser cannons, and a gun that fires a million rounds per minute."
I remember during Gulf War II, the British were dropping bomb-shaped concrete blocks attached to the fanastic guidance systems they have now. No explosives needed... just plonk it down on a tank from 20000 feet and it does the job with much less collateral damage.
Brilliant idea
We all know that crap is king
Give us dirty laundry!
Look at tank ammunition:
Discarding sabot - essentially a metal dart. This kills tanks using kinetic energy to punch a hole through armour. Makes a little hole and a lotta mess inside. This is the tank version of kinetic-only ammo, so scaling this up to use in a missile isn't a particularly new idea - the Durandural anti runway missile has a hardened nose cone and is rocket-accelerated under the concrete before it explodes.
HESH - high explosive, squash head - hits the outside of the tank and explodes against it. This shakes scabs of metal away from the inside that fly around the cabin, killing the crew. This doesn't need to penetrate to destroy the ability of the tank to fight.
HEAT - high explosive, anti-tank - this is the warhead attached to stuff like the RPG7. Nasty design - the shaped charge fires a jet of energy/molten metal through the skin of a tank, causing lots of damage inside to vehicle and crew. Even the relatively small warhead on a RPG7 can penetrate around a foot of steel.
Now, the point for the last 2 shell types existing is that sometimes, kinetic energy isn't enough. Other ways to get better results are to make the shells heavier - using depleted uranium for example. While what I'm talking about here is tank warfare, the same will apply to bombs and bunker munitions - different tools for different tasks.
next thing you know the US Army will be wallhacking.
We already can with ifrared.
Please flee in terror in an orderly manner.
Of course I meant to say "Terrorism is not defeated with bombs..."
Also, I guess a tip of the hat is also required to John Major re. the intelligent approach to solving the N.Ireland problem.
http://www.apfn.org/apfn/radar.htm
He, who is higher up the gravity well..
will win everytime.
AFAIK the US are not really interested in more "humanitarian" behaviour of landmines. The Ottawa convention has not been signed by a few "rogue states", including the US, Russia, China, India, Iraq, Iran and Pakistan. If you don't like that company, write to your representative.
Landmines are not really meant to kill soldiers after all, they know what they look like and where they might be - they are often even designed not to kill, but to mutilate. A dead is buried, a mutilated child will be a burden for society for all his life. Fill a country with landmines, as both Soviets and US-backed Mujaheeddins did in Afghanistan, and you have cursed the country for generations.
Self-destructing mines are not going to be accepted - these days the Geneva convention is used to wipe Rumsfeld's arse, and frankly a proposal for a more expensive and on-purpose less effective weapon is not going to get through.
I'm told that mine production is not even that lucrative business. They have children mutilated with landmines that look purposefully like toys, only to make a few pennies more. Some motherfuckers.
Speaking of Cambodia, these people know something.
Victims of 9/11: <3000. Traffic in the US: >30,000/y
Think you are getting a bit confused. The electrical charge only ignites the propelent in the bullets, it doesnt actually propel them forward. Also the article talks about multi barrel systems...so your speed calcs might be slightly off.
I must disagree with you here, pretty much the sentiment about the Belgrano sinking was that it was justified and correct. Court cases brought against the UK government regarding the case have all failed.
For the people who arent aware of the story, the Belgrano was an Ex US battle cruiser sold to the Argentinian Navy after world war two. The Argentinians used the Belgrano during their invasion of the Falkland Islands, which the UK has owned for nearly 200 years, but the Argentinians have always claimed as their own.
The UK government authorised the Royal Navy submarine Conquerer to sink the Belgrano after it was decided that she played a great threat to the UK task force fleet sailing to free the Falkland Islands, even tho the Belgrano was outside the "area of interest" as defined by the UK government (she was sailing to intercept the task force when she was sunk, but was about 100 miles outside the exclusion zone around the islands). She was hit twice, and sunk. The two escort ships accompanying the Belgrano turned and fled, failing to pick up any survivors now in the water, and thus sealing a lot of deaths.
THe upside of it was that the UK Navy didnt have to deal with the Argentinian Navy any longer, they stayed in port during the entire conflict, leaving the defence of the Falkland Islands to the Argentinian airforce, who could fly from the mainland and had enough range to attack the falklands.
The reason that the strike was ordered while the ship was outside the exclusion zone was that she was about to pass into a shallow area of water, which the submarine would have to go around. IT was deemed too risky to the task force for Conquerer to attempt this and search for the Belgrano on the other side, so the descision was made to sink the Belgrano before she passed into this area.
Landmines are not really meant to kill soldiers after all, they know what they look like and where they might be - they are often even designed not to kill, but to mutilate.
Finland is one of the countries that hasn't signed the Ottawa treaty. We have landmines all over the Eastern border that is shared with Russia. Landmines are effective slowing down fast military advancement from this direction and surely is used solely against enemy soldiers.
Finland's defense plan has for years been to make fighting exhausting and slow against enemy forces and landmines serve that purpose. I agree that mining places that an army occupies for a short amount of time isn't maybe the wisest of things, but they can also be used correctly. If a vote comes, I for one will vote for keeping the mines on our border.
"Could this be real?Possibly" http://www.metalstorm.com/04_the_technology.html
(sheesh, ever heard of a search engine??)
Yes it is real.(USA does not invent everything in the world, surprising as that may be..). Although it has a high rate of fire it's not like a machine gun. The projectiles are loaded into the barrel in series. Once gone the entire barrel needs reloading. The main advantage is many bullets close to each other means you can target things things like grenades and artillery in flight. Normally the physical distance between each bullet/shell is so large the target can move far enough between each shot (say 1/10th second=30m of target movement)so that the rounds miss. If the rounds are only 1/100,000th of a second apart they are physically closer together and as long as you can aim the first shot accurately the rest of barrel load will be very close behind.Of course if you miss, the target will probably hit you before you reload the barrel. (Which is why the device typically has multiple barrels)
You can also electronically control the rate of fire to exactly what you need. e.g. 1 rounds/min to it's maximum.
Smart weapons are great and I think they have made great strides in cutting back civilian casulties, but the Iraq war is by no means without them.
Iraqi rescue workers using a bulldozer to search the rubble said that three bodies had been recovered -- those of a small boy, a young woman and an elderly man -- and that the death toll could be as high as 14. The woman's head had been severed from her torso.
p _strike.htm )
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( http://www.boston.com/news/daily/08/war_leadershi
Rescuers said up to 14 people may have been killed in the blast, which reduced four houses to dust and blew out windows and doors of houses as far as 300 m away. The remains of a small boy, a young woman and an elderly man were pulled from the rubble.
( http://straitstimes.asia1.com.sg/iraqwar/story/0,
John Carmack is probably a bigger influence.
John McCormack was an Irish tenor if you believe that lying Google.
It was a while back, but last time I read about the railguns currently being experimented with, they were trying to raise the velocity from about 13 mile per second to a wee bit over 18 miles per second. The reason being that just over 18 miles per second, a ballistic object colliding with another object can initiate a fusion reaction (at least of limited proportions.) This would needless to say, neutralize any object the rail struck instantly, and with extreme prejudice.
Genda
Nothing in the whole country can even dent an Abrams tank.
Hellooooooooooooooooooooo?
Obviously, you have never seen this little page... Just scroll down through pictures. Don't ever underestimate the power of single RPG round fired at close range.
A lot of people seem to consider the British "Challenger" a much better tank than the Abrams, btw.
The right to offend is far more important than the right not to be offended. (Rowan Atkinson)
Lobster, I'm of the same opinion concerning Friendly Fire that you are, but:
- The great majority of the German army was never in France. Only 1/3 of the Wermacht was on the western front which includes all forces in southern France & Italy as well as the forces in Normandy.
- While Friendly Fire was feared & factored into plans, both Monty & Patton tried hard to close the Falaise pocket. The historians I've read attribute the failure to trap the German forces to german proficiency (being the first users of blitzkrieg they knew what getting encircled entailed) & allied exhaustion (breaking out was a Major effort. Sealing off the forces was beyond them).
Democracy is a sheep and two wolves deciding what to have for lunch. Freedom is a well armed sheep contesting the issue
No, but it shows the mindset of the so called "people" we are facing.
If they din't want to be treated as animals, they might quit acting like them.
Professional Politicians are not the solution, they ARE the problem.
Personally, I'm of the belief that being hit with anything disabling at the rate of one million rounds per minute will fast go from disabling to deadly.
SIG: HUP
America is proud of everything we do. Even things we shouldn't be, but that's another discussion.
Powerful weapons are used as deterrents, mostly, so it behooves us to always have the best and fastest and most intimidating arsenal.
Of course it makes no sense to have so many Nukes because they can't be used (too much damage, too messy to clean up). So we develop smaller, more precise weaponry. Always learning, always improving, always the best.
1. We don't support fascists, we kill them
Burying your ignorant head in the sand isn't helping anything.
Our Energy policy was written by the energy industry with no ability for the American public to even know who was there to set our policy.
That *is* fascism. The merger of state and corporate power.
I happen to support my government.
Good for you. I sincerely hope that you realise that that has nothing to do with Patriotism. In some cases it is, in fact, the opposite.
You can tell a great deal about the character of a man by observing those who hate him.
ALMOST correct:
Iran is very Islamist
This isn't exactly true. There is a rather large part of the Iranian population that is not only quite secular, but VERY "western" in ideaology and culture. There has been a increasingly vocal insurgency in Iran that is promoting western ideals of democracy and secular government.
To label Iran as "Islamist" is only true of the government, but a gross injustice to it's actual people.
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Depleted Uranium is just that -- Depleted . Actual research, like that from the World Health Organization, has proven the risk to be minimal:
So basically, don't eat the stuff, and don't hang around a battlezone while combat is going on. But that goes for regular lead bullets too.
[PowerPoint] is a tool for capitalist presentation
The Metalstorm gun doesn't really have any moving parts. The design of the device is that each barrel holds multiple bullets which are triggered by coded electrical signals. The bullets can be fired one at a time, several at once or all at once depending on the instructions sent.
.0004 seconds. Going by all the math that equates to a cyclical rate of 1 million rounds per minute, even though it was 'only' 400 rounds.
This aspect of the Metalstorm system is not theoretical and has been fired under test conditions, so it definitely works.
Bullets do not feed into the barrel, however. When a barrel is empty you replace it with a new barrel (I assume the barrel can be reloaded at a later date, just not while in use). Because of this design you have no significant moving parts to jam.
The key to realize however is that the Metalstorm system does -not- fire 1 million rounds a minute. It has what's known as a cyclical -rate- of 1 million rounds per minute.
When talking about guns the cyclical rate is how rapidly a weapon will fire assuming it can sustain fire without the needs of reloading or cooling off.
The reason the Metalstorm system has such a high number is because they have one gun that has something on the order of 40 barrels. Each barrel holds 10 rounds (I'm approximating the numbers). When the trigger gets pulled the gun 'burps' out all 400 rounds at once. The time it takes from the trigger pull to the last bullet leaving the barrel is something on the order of
The stat isn't inaccurate, it's misleading. You need to understand the design of the Metalstorm system as well as the definition of what they are talking about when they say a million rounds per minute.
.0004 seconds. Going by all the math that equates to a cyclical rate of 1 million rounds per minute, even though it was 'only' 400 rounds.
The design of the device is that each barrel holds multiple bullets which are triggered by coded electrical signals. The bullets can be fired one at a time, several at once or all at once depending on the instructions sent. Because of this you don't have to have a gap of 10 times the length of the bullet. Additionally the device uses multiple barrels which can fire simultaneously as opposed to current multi-barrel weapons such as gatling guns which fire one barrel after the other.
The electronic firing aspect of the Metalstorm system is not theoretical and has been fired under test conditions, so it definitely works.
Bullets do not feed into the barrel, however. When a barrel is empty you replace it with a new barrel (I assume the barrel can be reloaded at a later date, just not while in use).
The key to realize however is that the Metalstorm system does -not- fire 1 million rounds a minute. It has what's known as a cyclical -rate- of 1 million rounds per minute.
When talking about guns the cyclical rate is how rapidly a weapon will fire assuming it can sustain fire without the needs of reloading or cooling off.
The reason the Metalstorm system has such a high number is because they have one gun that has something on the order of 40 barrels. Each barrel holds 10 rounds (I'm approximating the numbers). When the trigger gets pulled the gun 'burps' out all 400 rounds at once. The time it takes from the trigger pull to the last bullet leaving the barrel is something on the order of
Of course after this you are left with a huge hunk of dead weight until you finish swapping out all 40 of those barrels.
In the end the number is more of a stunt than anything. It sure looks pretty and impressive but it is not truly an indicator of real performance. This isn't to say that the system itself is bad, merely that that one statistic isn't as impressive as it appears at first glance.
For more info, go to Dr. Jerry Pournelle's EXCELLENT site and do a search on "THOR." He helped develop the idea. There are 32 hits, one of which is MEGAMISSIONS AND SPACE POWER. Another is for the book he co-authored with Dr. Possony and Dr. Kane called THE STRATEGY OF TECHNOLOGY, which was a required text at the USAF Academy for YEARS.
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