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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."
Military technology is striving to be one big Quake clone I mean, we already have aimbots, now there are railguns....next thing you know the US Army will be wallhacking.
I can understand the need for a good military, but to spend this much money for it.
:(
Personally I think it would be better spent if invested in medical research and to better the relationships with other countries (admit it, a whole big part of the world isn't a big fan of the US, putting it mildly).
Not trying to flamebait people
This is the sig that says NI (again)
Microsoft's Digital Rifle Management?
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
We're developing space based weapons. But watch out. Bin Ladin is developing Ewoks.
___
It's the end of my comment as I know it and I feel fine.
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.
I live in South Africa where, not to many years ago, sentiments such as yours were considered to be official government policy. Thus I'm pretty sure that investing money in education, rather that in weapons technology, is a much better investment.
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...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.
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.
Friendly fire always happens in every war. Regardless of what you think from playing SOCOM, war is chaotic and mistakes do happen.
-- You see, there would be these conclusions that you could jump to
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.
Actually, I have seen otherwise intelligent people readily adopt that stance (that terrorists hate the US because of our freedom, or wealth, or religious beliefs, or basically any non-aggressive act they can drum up).
Well, there actually is a component of religion in the mix. Islamic leaders are very concerned about the corrupting influence that our immoral society is having on their own people. Our sort of cultural imperialism is arguably *more* threatening to them than a few bombs, if you keep in mind that to them (as well as to many serious adherents of other faiths, like Christianity), death is not nearly as bad as damnation.
As a Christian, I look around our society and have to sympathize with them on that point, at least in part. Particularly when I consider that their view of our society is primarily the one portrayed by Hollywood.
And 9/11, of course, was not at all about innocent civilian deaths, it was mostly about trying to get the infidels out of the Holy Land (Saudi Arabia). Bin Laden's major beef is the fact that the Saudi Royal family invited drinking, porn-viewing US soldiers and their flesh-revealing women into Mohammed's sacred land.
In fact, very little of the Middle-Eastern terrorism has been in response to American attacks on innocent civilians. The hatred is largely created by cultural imperialism, support of Israel and various apparently anti-Arab actions taken by the US government over the last 30 years in the process of fighting the cold war and suppressing Iran and Iraq.
Of course, the civilian casualties of these actions just serve to reinforce the perception that America hates Arabs. That plus the religion-based fears plus the political disagreements leads to all of the Great Satan rhetoric and the moral "justification" of terror attacks.
Be careful not to fall into your own groupthink and excessive simplification. The causes of the situation are many, varied and complex, and there is plenty of irrationality, self-serving and blind disregard for human life on both sides of the question.
Overall, I think we need to be more sensitive to the Arab world, and less heavy-handed in our approach to international relations around the globe, but I think that there's ultimately nothing we could do that would erase the fear and hatred. Middle-eastern societies are in the grip of their own great internal turmoil, as they attempt to decide whether they're going to be Islamic or secular, whether they're going to join the rest of the world in the materialism we call progress or whether they're going to stay "pure". America is the ideal symbol for one side of this conflict, and much of the hatred directed our way arises from that struggle, over which we have no direct control.
Over time, the Middle East will eventually join the rest of the world, become secularized, progressive, open and democratic. Why is this inevitable? Because that's what the vast majority of people individually want. In the case of devout and semi-devout Muslims, they also want to honor their religion and obey their religious leaders -- who do not want secularization and progress, and see that openness and democracy lead to empowerment of the common man who will act against his own best interest (in their view). But, over time, the desire for individual freedom and economic progress will push these societies away from religious control.
Just don't expect the change to be painless, or to stay within the Islamic nations' own borders.
Finally, it's also important to realize that everything I've said here is a sweeping generalization. The Arab nations are not a unified whole. Iraq is already very secularized (was prior to Saddam, and during Saddam's reign, although he used religion), Iran is very Islamist, Saudi Arabia is Islamist, but still trying to be progressive, Egypt is a melting pot with lots of factions and counter-factions, and a government that is secular. I don't know enough about Syria and Jordan to comment, but I'm sure they have their own, unique situations.
Really, it's much more complex than just "they want to kill us because we keep killing them".
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There's a large difference between protesting a war unilaterally begun under obviously false pretenses, and not being willing to fight for anything at all.
And while we're quoting:
"Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel"
- Samuel Johnson