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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."
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Coincidentally, I just saw a program on this tonight on History Channel. Considering that the rate of fire on existing weapons max out at around 6,000 rounds per minute, it's a large step forward. For those of you that might be interested, it takes magazines of caseless rounds and electronically ignites the detonator in the round. By doing this, it effectively removes most of the mechanical limits of firing from the weapon.
t ml
Being in the Army and having fired some very cool weapons, I've got to say this needs to be seen to be believed. What I saw tonight was out of this world.
And for those that want to check it out:
http://www.metalstorm.com/04_video_latest.h
(sorry, don't know how to embed URL's)
How about timers in land mines so that they blow up/self destruct after two or three years. That way, we don't leave land mines all over the place like we did in Cambodia, with people still dying from them, god knows how long after the conflict. Does anyone know if the US does anything like this? It doesn't sound that hard, and would do a lot of good. (Have them blow up at 3 in the morning, so noone is nearby).
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It's the end of my comment as I know it and I feel fine.
I'd love to see what the army is really developing.
Most of these weapons are just old ideas with gee-wish factor.
But then again, if slashdot posted something that army wanted to keep secret, we might find banner saying "servers ceased due national security issues " on front page next time we logged in.
There are no atheists when recovering from tape backup.
just take 20,000 20cm long/2cm thick steel rods with sharp points and drop them from a plane flying 4km high.
Super deadly on infantry..
I must obey the inscrutable exhortations of my soul.
I predict a flood of "If we don't do it first, then our enemies will," comments.
What enemies? The only enemies the USA has right now (discounting people like the French who would love to see us taken down a peg or two, but aren't actually going to invade) are terrorists, and terrorists are famous for the amount of money they don't put into high-tech weapons research.
Remember, on 9/11 al-Qaida brought down the center of New York and half the Pentagon with half a dozen box cutters.
If we want to make our land secure, I don't think battlefield weapons are the way to go... we have the most powerful military in the world, but military power hasn't solved our peacekeeping troubles in Iraq, and military power hasn't caught bin Laden.
Intelligence is the key to security. Let's see some of those tax dollars taken away from the military and handed over to the CIA and the FBI.
Funny, the weapon you describe is actually very close to one of the earliest form of airborne weapons developed. It was called Fléchette (french for dart) and was dropped bu the ten of thousands over german troops. However, they were recognised as beeing inefficent, lacking penetrating power and virtually inpossible to aim (wind could bring them out of course). Straffing with machineguns proved much more efficent.
The basic point of the article is corect however - no need to use explosives if you can provide as much or more energy delivered to the target by other means - and since the kinetic increases by the square of the velocity, a lump of metal can be deadly if it moves fast enought.
Everything in the world is controlled by a small, evil group to which, unfortunately, no one you know belongs.
IIRC, South Africa was the only country to develop nuclear weapons and then dismantle them. It's nice to see a country with the balls to try to make things better.
Forget thrust, drag, lift and weight. Airplanes fly because of money.
...or shaped charges as they are often know:
Back when the shaped charge was first developed as a usable weapon against tanks, it was seen as a way to defeat the newer, more heavily armoured tanks that had started appearing. Up to that point, a anti-tank gun had relied on the penetrating power of a solid shot - often with a tungsten core.
After a little while people realised that since a HEAT warhead did not rely on kinetic energy to punch a hole thru armour, lighter, manportable anti tank weapons could be designed and built - including the US bazooka, the british PIAT and the german Panzerfaust (the worlds first disposable anti tank weapon). Shells fireing HEAT warheads was also fired from guns of virtually any caliber during and shortly after WWII.
Relatively soon however, it was found that composite armour and, to a lesser extent, spaced armour was efficient in protecting against both HEAT and HESH shells, signaling a return to the solid penetrators - now fired by guns that could achive much higher muzzles velocities than the pre WWII designs. For manportable weapons however, it was difficult to increase the velocity of the weapon without making it larger, heavier and thus more difficult to transport and operate. Therefore the wast majoity of the manportable anti tank weapons, including the M72, the RPG-7, the TOW missile and many, many more, still uses HEAT warheads - and is likely to do so for the forseeable future. The deliverysystems for the warheads are simply not capable of delivering enought energy to make a kinetic penetrator a viable option.
Everything in the world is controlled by a small, evil group to which, unfortunately, no one you know belongs.
This reminds me of the Arthur C. Clarke story, Earthlight. The battle was set on the moon, which helps considerably with projectile weapons.
The weapon used in this case was a large glob of molten steel, fired using extremely large electro-magnets to launch and guide the "projectile".
The image he paints of spearing a space ship, like a pinned butterfly has stayed me for a long while.
When you shoot this gun (I did look at the article and there aren't any details except that it's electric) more than 15000 bullets a second are leaving the muzzle. If each bullet is 1cm in length that's at least 150m of bullet and assuming a recycle time equal to 10 times the length of the bullet [*] let's say 3000m. That's a firing velocity of Mach 9.
... using KE (kinetic energy) formula we give it 30 thousand-million Joules of energy @ 500 million Watts (about the output of 5 large electric plants). ... They're going to need big batteries!
Also, a one million strong line-up of 1cm bullets adds up to 10km of metal being fired each minute! Alternatively if each bullet is 1cm^3 of metal that's a m^3 of metal which is likely to weigh in excess of 7 metric tons (using Iron, 7380 kg/m^3 as a guidline).
So each 60seconds we accelerate 7+ tons of bullet metal to Mach 9
[*> that is the bullet has moved ten times it's length before the next bullet sets off]
PS: I'm sure someone will find a mistake in these calculations and that someone else with more gun knowledge will correct some horrible assumption, but hey.
And airforce.
Did you know that before the war in Iraq "ended", the US armed forces killed more of their allies than the enemy did?
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
Ireland is only still a problem because the whole island isn't British and the Dublin government, for may years, allowed the terrorists to operate freely.
Whatever the faults or not of the Ireland problem... the British have a policy that the people of Northern Ireland will decide their future democratically -- and loonies with bombs won't change that. Which is more than the American's paying for the IRA bombing campaigns have ever done (you know, the ones who think they are Oirish because their grandad once drank a pint of Guiness).
16000 bullets per second, assuming each of them is 2 inches (5cm) long, makes 80000 cm=800m of bullets per second if no space is left in between. The bullets would have to travel at least at 800 m per second. According to this, that should indeed be reachable.
Somebody once commented about the physics of movies that Rambo couldn't possibly keep firing and firing and firing all that much time because the weight of all the bullets he fired would get to be way too heavy to carry around.
I'm not very well informed about weaponry, but if a bullet weighs ten grams, then a minute worth of bullets (1 million of them) weighs 10 million grams or 10000 kilograms. I don't know, but basically such a fast gun to me seems not much more than a great way to overload your apache chopper, and a fantastic way to run out of bullets real fast.
Could this be real? Possibly. Practical? I doubt it. There's only so much more benefit of spitting out even more bullets per second.
Visit http://ringbreak.dnd.utwente.nl/~mrjb/growingbettersoftware to download your free copy of the book
"Nothing in the whole country can even dent an Abrams tank."
Perhaps you are a victim of your government propaganda. U.S. actually lost dozens of M1 in Iraq. No need for depleted uranium to kill Abrams, a recent RPG with melted copper core is sufficient.
"The US soldiers have the best protection, the best fire power, the best communications, recon etc..."
In Falujah setback, hundreds of US soldiers were even hungry for days because of total destruction of dozens of supply convoys from Baghdad. That was the reason for retreat and negotiation.
The problem is leaders are often overconfident with weapon effectiveness, while field tactics is always more important in real life.
Perhaps that stupid mind setup has culture roots in computer so-called "strategy" games, where resource economics and sheer power via upgraded tech wins the map.
There you are, staring at me again.
The space darts are bunker and tank killers, such as the old "Thor" program to drop crowbars from orbit. Saddam spent a lot of time near the end of his career in underground bunkers to prevent assassination: being able to destroy one, precisely and without having to send aircraft over the other country is appealing.
It is also a fantastically dangerous weapon of political control of foreign heads of state and amazingly illegal under various US-signed treaties against space-based weapons. But hey, this is Shrub/Cheney/Rumsfeld! They don't need no stinkin' badges to go stop the terrorists!
I knew a guy that worked at White Sands in the early 90's. His project was the rail gun. One evening he brought a few thing by my work and showed me the possibilities. A 5mm plastic BB, not even hard plastic, and a 4inch square of 2 inch thick aluminum with a one inch dia. hole in it. The gun accelerated the BB to mach5 and it went throug the plate like a knife through butter. Very impressive technology.
This kind of research goes on all the time, it does advance science. Wheather it ever gets used or not, who knows. Once the technology gets developed it can be adapted to other uses. Anyone think the space programs computer research was wasted? While your sitting in front of the result?
Professional Politicians are not the solution, they ARE the problem.
They've jammed our radar, sir!
Raspberry. There's only one man who would dare give me the raspberry: Lone Star!
slashdot discussed it at length a few years ago. The principles are well known, and the soviet military has been using 200+ mph supercavitating torpedos since the 1970s. The best article on the subject that I know of is from the May 2001 Scientific American
"Weapons should be hardy rather than decorative" - Miyamoto Musashi
I think that goes for OS's too
You can't say civilization doesn't advance,
for in every war they kill you a new way.
(Will Rogers)
j
Well you're wrong.
At least two of the weapon sytems were about taking explosives out of the equation and getting kinetic kills. So an even more casualty resistant form of warfare. And trust me there are PLENTY of americans who'd like to see a little WWII visited upon the muslim world. Then lasers for just injuring and killing hardware with the option to bump it up to the occasional kill for people. Not to mention missle defense. (The current missle defense at all ranges is pre-emptive strike) And metalstorm which would offer increased protection from missles, and facillitate closer contact for better discrimination as opposed to ever greater stand-off ranges. Or selecting lethal and varying degrees of non-lethal force as the moment dictates. It's a lot easier to own the ground when the only trick in your hat is "bomb it to gravel and suck all the oxygen out of the air." We don't do that, and not because we can't, but because we buy into that "age of enlightenment" bullshit. That's what everyone Iraqis, Islamists, Westerners and Americans included seem to be forgetting. But aside from all that, the inevitability and human propensity for war. Pretend that doesn't count. Just go along with me. There's the technology.
The move from chemical to high power solid-state lasers will revolutionize a lot. New cooling technologies, which might influence everything hot where a cold side needs to be kept cold. To semi-conductors in general. To X-rays with out the X-rays. To better low power chemical sensors. And who knows what. But lets go to railguns. Delivering ordinance at hypersonic velocities without explosives very handy no doubt. But a big brother verion of it could put payloads in orbit. All of a sudden maybe putting an erector set in space is pretty cheap, and the space program is looking to build an office building where no man has gone before. Or how about the Rod's from God. Heavy metal indeed. Takes a new type of rocket engine, or just some old school ambition. Next thing we know project Orion gets off the ground from a Sealaunch platform? The government does the hard thinking and 50 years later Intel runs the numbers finding it's suddenly feasible to build a fab on the moon.
Once more, the world should stop looking over our fence, and worry about the shit they've got in their yards.
They hate america because they're reminded of what their not. The Arabs like to blame everyone for their problems, and it's taken the combined might of the Soviets and Americans to keep them from exterminating each other for 50 years. Even the feudal Japanese culture Matthew Perry encountered knew it immediately it must undertake a radical transformation or be destroyed. And American wasn't the dominant power by any measure that it is today. How many second chances do the arabs get? And the things that divide them are insignificant in comparision to the things that divide America. Who gives a fuck about how the leader of the world's poorest and fastest growing religion is chosen, and why the fuck are they cutting their babies with small swords? And really there's the answer. In the west, and America especially, kids are raised to look foreward to the future, not fight some war lost 300, 500, 700 years ago. Who gives a fuck. That is ancient history.
The mongols had it right. "We be bad. You can do it our way, or we can do you in." Harsh lesson? Maybe. But Russia would be a tiny collection of fifedomes if it wasn't for them. Germany, the UK, and China they owe a debt to those that subjegated them too. Of course every american grows up learning Yankee Doodle Dandy, and we love that star spangled banner. A song about the British kicking the crap out of a fort protecting Baltimor after they burned down the whitehouse, later lending the seat of last superpower its name. Maybe that's what the arabs and islamists need. A whole lot of killing at the hands of a would-be empire that thinks they all look equally worthless. Or maybe an object lesson would do it. But h
I'm not "anti-war" because I think it will make me safer, I'm anti-war because I think it will make the people in the area safer.
For the most part, you're right, big iron is a thing of the past. Perhaps all those burning Abrams on the side of the road in Iraq hit with RPGs, er somehow disabled, are just flukes. Oh well, the most interesting government tech thrusts are in less-than-lethal techs.
...but there's always a place for railguns. Being able to bombard a country from outside the range of anti-ship missles (without expensive cruise missles) is still needed.
Try looking up recent research on calmatives (despite international treaty, they're hiding under the less-than-lethal mantra), and vortex based weapons (a round based modification for the MK19-3 automatic grenade launcher). Hell, I've even read entire thesis from the naval academy on the use of smells for controlling crowds. It is a very active field of military research, you just don't hear about it.
As we get more technologically superior with our weapons, we are increasingly finding ourselves in situation where they are not particularly useful. Specifically, guerilla warfare seems to be difficult to defeat with such weapons. Rumsfeld's doctrine on using advanced technology to created a slim, efficient force works well when the enemy has tanks, aircraft, and well define building that can easily distinguished for attack. But when faced with a insurgents who blend in the civilian population and use schools and mosques as bases, the doctrine becomes less applicable. This is evident in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict where often a strike against militants often cause unintended collateral.
Perhaps what the military needs is less emphasis on technology and more on tactics. As we becoming increasing superior in both military and resources, our enemies are going to increasingly rely on guerilla warfare and terrorism. So, our military should put more effort in its most reliable system- the soldier. No technology developed is as versatile as the human mind. They should focus mobilizing efforts on preparing the soldier for the battlefield environment that he is entering. This includes basic education in the local language with techniques to expand their skills once they are there. Also, they should give soldier better access to surveilance with a realtime view of the battefield as that they can track enemies using hit and run tactics as well as ambushes. Ultimately, they should develop a toolkit of general tactics that the soldier can then hone into a specific strategy to suit their current situation.
The technologies we should give particular focus are those that augment the soldier. Examples include body are that protects not just center mass but also the limbs, a selection of weapons that have strength in certain areas of combat such as long-range (open field) and medium/short range combat (urban), a lightweight computer that they can use to get realtime information.
You don't have to be smart to use a Mac, you just have to be smart enough to buy one
Islamic leaders do not want to lose their stranglehold on the minds of their people and by extension, their power. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.
I'm sure that's part of it as well, at least for some of them.
Bullshit, it is their "it's them or us" mentality.
Wrong, there is no moral equivalence or grey area here. One group of people is targetting civilians and non-combatants, the other is not. It's that simple.
So we're lily white, are we? I didn't say we were morally equivalent, just that there's plenty of disregard for human life on both sides. When looking to see if that's true, be sure to look beyond strictly governmental actions, look at the rhetoric and actions of the people on both sides as well.
FWIW, I think we do have the moral high ground in this conflict -- I just wish we wouldn't work so hard at giving it away.
You rail against our "cultural imperialism" and then posit that a transition to a free and open Middle East is an inevitability because the people want to create their own culture which will have the same attributes as ours? Your logical paradox doesn't stand...
First, I didn't rail against our cultural imperialism. I just stated its existence. I think our (western) culture is generally good, and that its spread is inevitable precisely because it's good, but that doesn't make our efforts (overt, covert and unintentional) to spread it any less a form of empire-building. We don't invade other countries to take direct control of them, we build our empire with movies, music, trade, subsidies, etc. It's a fact, not a discussion point. You're the one who chose to read a negative connotation into the phrase.
Radical Islamists and the people whose minds they control want the extermination of all non-Islamic societies. This is their eventual goal and their interpretation of "jihad."
There are some of those, of course. There are radical extremists in every society advocating nearly every form of world change. Don't exaggerate their size or influence, though.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
Terrorism cannot be defined.
Okay, that's obviously false. Let's see what else you've got.
There's no difference at the base level from what Al-Qaeda did to the WTC on 9/11 from what the US military is doing in Iraq now
Yeah, more of the same. Nihilism and moral equivalence. Nothing is anything, so everything's the same. Sure, man.
Tell you what: let's try this again after you graduate.
I write in my journal