[Jusentantaka]

Cause, on 01 December 2009 - 10:38 PM, said:

I think were actually starting to see a shift in mentallity from offense to defence that we have not seen for a very long time. Armour for tanks and ships is finaally starting to gain some ground against the weapon they face. The shield Nicodimas mentions, guns that literally shoot missiles out of the sky. Enhanced countermeasures and flares. Shotguns on tanks which literaally shoot rpgs out of the air. Perhaps 'shields' are coming back in fashion

I think that shift is going to be a short lived thing, really. Because short of bigger and better (ha) nuclear weapons, missiles and tank rounds haven't especially advanced in their destructive power over the past twenty or so years. And the bullets body armor is designed to stop are identical to the 1950's versions.

The US navy is developing a (surprisingly functional) railgun which will probably be workable in the next decade or two. No realistic amount of physical armor on a tank or ship is going to stop a 3kg tungsten slug going mach 8. I wouldn't be surprised to see the whole overpriced guided missile craze go right out the window right then too, if they can scale it down to something that could be put on an AC-130 type aircraft.

Maybe some sort of super-alloy will come out in the meantime... or optical camouflage maybe.

[Tapper]

Jusentantaka, on 01 December 2009 - 11:14 PM, said:

Cause, on 01 December 2009 - 10:38 PM, said:

I think were actually starting to see a shift in mentallity from offense to defence that we have not seen for a very long time. Armour for tanks and ships is finaally starting to gain some ground against the weapon they face. The shield Nicodimas mentions, guns that literally shoot missiles out of the sky. Enhanced countermeasures and flares. Shotguns on tanks which literaally shoot rpgs out of the air. Perhaps 'shields' are coming back in fashion

I think that shift is going to be a short lived thing, really. Because short of bigger and better (ha) nuclear weapons, missiles and tank rounds haven't especially advanced in their destructive power over the past twenty or so years. And the bullets body armor is designed to stop are identical to the 1950's versions.

The US navy is developing a (surprisingly functional) railgun which will probably be workable in the next decade or two. No realistic amount of physical armor on a tank or ship is going to stop a 3kg tungsten slug going mach 8. I wouldn't be surprised to see the whole overpriced guided missile craze go right out the window right then too, if they can scale it down to something that could be put on an AC-130 type aircraft.

Maybe some sort of super-alloy will come out in the meantime... or optical camouflage maybe.

Aye, but what is the size of that railgun? Can a mini unmanned plane or a torpedo or a low flying guided missile blow it out of the water for a fraction of the cost of the railgun and the ship it is mounted on? What are you going to aim it at in the first place, now that wars mostly take place in rough terrain where tank formations aren't practical, where the enemy consists of lightly armed guerilla infantry and where you have air superiority anyway so can bust what strongpoints/bunkers (and the occassional wedding party ) they have from the sky with conventional weaponry?

The only answer I see is China/ North Korea.
If you are going to war against them in a landwar in mainland Asia (The Princess Bride says you shouldn't), well, it might be that you're not going to get a high tech war but a war of attrition where highly customized, specialised and costly weapon systems and training regimens become a liability because you can't replace your men and equipment as fast as you lose them/it to the screaming hordes, no matter whether you kill twenty of them for each of your own men you lose.

[Jusentantaka]

Tapper, on 02 December 2009 - 02:16 PM, said:

Aye, but what is the size of that railgun? Can a mini unmanned plane or a torpedo or a low flying guided missile blow it out of the water for a fraction of the cost of the railgun and the ship it is mounted on? What are you going to aim it at in the first place, now that wars mostly take place in rough terrain where tank formations aren't practical, where the enemy consists of lightly armed guerilla infantry and where you have air superiority anyway so can bust what strongpoints/bunkers (and the occassional wedding party ) they have from the sky with conventional weaponry?

The only answer I see is China/ North Korea.
If you are going to war against them in a landwar in mainland Asia (The Princess Bride says you shouldn't), well, it might be that you're not going to get a high tech war but a war of attrition where highly customized, specialised and costly weapon systems and training regimens become a liability because you can't replace your men and equipment as fast as you lose them/it to the screaming hordes, no matter whether you kill twenty of them for each of your own men you lose.

apart from the R&D budget, it actually comes out to be cheaper (so they say, it is still in R&D, but it does make sense that it will cost less) than a tomahawk+all the systems needed to use it effectively. torpedoes and planes and guided missiles can be countermeasured or simply shot down. More difficult to trick the much-more advanced radar and all that on a cruiser or satellite than a missile. Don't know if there are tracking systems even capable of shooting something that small and fast down. I wasn't saying it would be overly effective against guerilla infantry (though I imagine a hit on open ground would be a fuck scary)

I think a couple cruisers with a few railguns firing ten shots a minute a piece onto the DMZ would be a hell of a deterrent to NK armor though. (supposing of course the 2.7 quadrazillion landmines aren't) I don't think a war between China and the US would be anything but nuclear, so its kind of irrelevant. Though functional railguns would be a LOT cheaper and probably much more effective at shooting down ballistic missiles than the thumbs-in-the-ears-and-pray missiles we use now. Hopefully, it never will matter.

Really though, this is not some new hyper-advanced and specialized thing (for use anyway). Its still just a cannon, albeit nerdishly cool and sci-fi-y.

Also, I think the chinese army outnumbers all the americans who are actually fit for military service (on account of not being fat, and in the right age range) by something like 2 to 1. Fun fact.

[Nicodimas]

Quote

Also, I think the chinese army outnumbers all the americans who are actually fit for military service (on account of not being fat, and in the right age range) by something like 2 to 1. Fun fact.

Doesn't matter at this point in time. You are unlikely to move an army that big, you are far less likely to feed it! Remember, supply is extremely important. A Bio-weapon would work wonders on such a thing...

I heard that the pentagon was messing with Anti-matter bombs in the past, but at this point a Terra-bomb is a bit over the top. Over the next couple of decades we will continue to work on ways to place distance from the soldier and the target. So my thoughts are weaponized robots (at the control of people as we are xenophobic of course). Things are going smaller, more mobile and stealthier. A railgun on a Humvee would be a the natural progression if we put shields on tanks.

The only true way to fight war is through total war. Otherwise has modern industrailized tech really made it's way out? We get to test certain things of course...but nothing too major. A big war would change everything. Eistein would be right.

I await my Holtzman Shield though.

[amphibian]

Jusentantaka, on 02 December 2009 - 03:51 PM, said:

apart from the R&D budget, it actually comes out to be cheaper (so they say, it is still in R&D, but it does make sense that it will cost less) than a tomahawk+all the systems needed to use it effectively. torpedoes and planes and guided missiles can be countermeasured or simply shot down. More difficult to trick the much-more advanced radar and all that on a cruiser or satellite than a missile. Don't know if there are tracking systems even capable of shooting something that small and fast down. I wasn't saying it would be overly effective against guerilla infantry (though I imagine a hit on open ground would be a fuck scary)

I think a couple cruisers with a few railguns firing ten shots a minute a piece onto the DMZ would be a hell of a deterrent to NK armor though. (supposing of course the 2.7 quadrazillion landmines aren't) I don't think a war between China and the US would be anything but nuclear, so its kind of irrelevant. Though functional railguns would be a LOT cheaper and probably much more effective at shooting down ballistic missiles than the thumbs-in-the-ears-and-pray missiles we use now. Hopefully, it never will matter.

One of the things I like about the idea of Tomahawks and airstrikes is that they can be rendered inert or sent off course if it turns out the military does not indeed want to blow up Target X - which happens a fair amount of time.

You can't pull back a "dumb" projectile moving at Mach 8 or 10.

Using them as missile defense seems a bit odd - those projectiles keep going if they miss. They might hit a friendly airplane or land in some place with civilians (as anti-ship missiles would probably be fired from some spot like Lebanon).

I wonder what cold-war era plans for warring with China were like. It's an interesting topic.

[Jusentantaka]

amphibian, on 02 December 2009 - 07:41 PM, said:

One of the things I like about the idea of Tomahawks and airstrikes is that they can be rendered inert or sent off course if it turns out the military does not indeed want to blow up Target X - which happens a fair amount of time.

You can't pull back a "dumb" projectile moving at Mach 8 or 10.

Using them as missile defense seems a bit odd - those projectiles keep going if they miss. They might hit a friendly airplane or land in some place with civilians (as anti-ship missiles would probably be fired from some spot like Lebanon).

I wonder what cold-war era plans for warring with China were like. It's an interesting topic.

How often does the military actually kill a missile before it hits something it is not supposed to though? Damned rarely, because by the time they realize they fucked up, shit is too far out to kill-switch, or it already exploded. Not saying it would entirely replace guided missiles, though. Or that it is really of much use in a guerilla war. (but then again, what is?) 'conventional' style war though, they might well be useful, as at least a sort of hybrid between artillery and missiles. However! there is absolutely no reason a railgun can't shoot an explosive, (it'd be so little as to be useless except as a sort of failsafe/killswitch) so if in the ~3 minutes (Mach 8 = 1mile/second) between firing and hitting, they find out they fucked up, it could be exploded.

and ballistic missiles, as in nuclear bombs. friendly airplane... two or three million people. tough call. Using it as some sort of cruise missile defense would be really pointless at this level of functionality. Maybe if it shot a really small projectile at a high rate of fire. They're hardly functional for shooting down an ICBM now either, just a 'probably', since the technology is pretty sound, and with a real good radar, hitting a missile on the way down (going something like mach 12?) would be possible. Though more likely: a new star wars program where they ditch shitty lasers and use railgun-armed satellites.

I imagine america's cold war plans for fighting china were probably pretty simple. 1.) Chinese airforce attacks taiwan, is slaughtered by walls of AA missiles, fighters and a carrier or two full of tomcats with phoenix missiles. 2a.) If 1 has happened, tell china to quit their shit and sit down. 2b.)If 1 has not occurred, send SFs and/or stealth fighters/bombers to destroy chinese ICBM silos, and then threaten to use nuclear weapons and make peace. I can't imagine that the maybe 20k marines in Okinawa were ever expected to invade china. More likely though there were about ten thousand different plans covering just about everything possible and they're buried in the depths of the pentagon's storage rooms.

[amphibian]

I apologize; I was conceptualizing the rail-guns as purely ship-based - as in using the railguns for defending against several incoming anti-ship missiles. That didn't make a whole lot of sense to me and I didn't make the leap to land usage.

A high rate of fire may be difficult to sustain in true warfare fashion, as the guns tend to get wrecked after shooting a few projectiles that fast. Dealing with a barrage may be outside the realm of possibility.

[Jusentantaka]

amphibian, on 02 December 2009 - 10:53 PM, said:

A high rate of fire may be difficult to sustain in true warfare fashion, as the guns tend to get wrecked after shooting a few projectiles that fast. Dealing with a barrage may be outside the realm of possibility.

I forsee some sort of rotary barreled mega-minigun.

That sounds like bs, but I think it would actually be pretty bitchin', and actually a plausible end - It was done in the 50's or 60's to increase the sustained rate of fire for machine guns. The barrels themselves are cheap, and the capacitors are seemingly solid technology. You couldn't get thousands of rounds a minute, but 20 shots a minute would be doable, if they get the current melty-barrel-problem fixed.

Now, for the hand-held railguns that I can buy in Newark and use to hunt Hippos.

[cerveza_fiesta]

I wonder if they'll actually develop a single-use railgun for atillery units. That would be pretty dang neat.

Considering you'd need a dedicated nuclear reactor to power a multi-shot like you guys have been discussing...which restricts you to ship-mounted guns...its not really practical for battlefield deployment. A single-shot-per-charge howitzer-style thing for high-value targets wouldn't be out of the question though. Just carry as many ultra-capacitors as you need to put a hole in whatever needs hole-putting. Bring the capacitors back for recharge at the end of the day. Considering the range on the navy railguns is something like 200 miles, its not like you actually have to deal with the howitzer-railgun in the heat of battle. Just park it at your field base and plink away.

I'm thinking a along the lines of a cusser here...something to fire 5 or 6 times to put a huge breach in a wall (for example) and then set it aside while more conventional weapons are used for the rest of the battle.

Getting back to the matter of armor, I don't think a stone wall would stand much of a chance against something like that...and a shield sure as hell isn't going to do a lot either.

Random question on riot shields though...in Call of duty the shield is bulletproof. Do those actually exist or is that just a video game thing.

This post has been edited by cerveza_fiesta: 03 December 2009 - 02:07 PM

[Jusentantaka]

I can't really factually refute anything there, since finding the specs on the actual high end capacitors is well beyond a US patent search so I can't say if portable-land based is really feasible. But the army has some pretty powerful portable generators, so 'maybe'. I can say that a dedicated modern nuclear reactor is unnecessary though, since the navy has had 150MJ+ reactors in the 60s on cruisers, though that series has been decommissioned, because cruisers cost too much, so unless its firing out multiple shots per second, even a 64MJ gun (the end-result-weapon the navy wants) isn't going to over-tax the reactor.

Here's the civilian/navy site about railguns: GA its got some pichurs

And the shields are absolutely a videogame thing. unless the guns are actually airsoft guns made to look like real weapons. Even a soft lead .223 (~5.56mm) bullet would punch through a riot shield.

[rhulad]

Shields went out of style for the same reason that swords went out of style. When everyone is using guns and can kill you from 30 yards away with a bullet that would have no problem going through your shield, it makes carrying them kind of pointless.

On another note, I was reading the other day that the US government just gave a couple of companies a whole bunch of money to develop lasers that could be mounted on fighter jets...

[Jusentantaka]

rhulad, on 03 December 2009 - 04:27 PM, said:

On another note, I was reading the other day that the US government just gave a couple of companies a whole bunch of money to develop lasers that could be mounted on fighter jets...

good ol' DARPA, encouraging nerd fantasies since 1958. I think that 'project' is going to crash and burn the minute an air force pilot says 'wait, how long does the beam have to be hitting to punch through steel?'

[cerveza_fiesta]

lasers are far from the all-powerful death beams scifi cracks them up to be.

I work with them quite a bit and definitely know. The amount of gear you need to cut steel at range is pretty frickin ridiculous. Killing individual people / igniting fuel sources....maybe but I think it will be a gooood looooong time before you would see a strafing run burn a continuous track in the dirt and cut through buildings.

@jusentantaka

Cool about the actual MJ required for railgun operation. Are you sure you aren't confusing the nuclear reactor with MW...megawatts? Megawatts are joules per second. The 63mJ in a railgun is released very quickly (much less than a second) so the actual power they use is much higher. Hence why they talk about supercapacitors. Capacitors are capable of releasing the energy they store in a much shorter amount of time.

I wonder RE Howitzer style railgun how big of a capacitor you'd need to lug around. One capable of discharging 63Mj could actually be unreasonably large.

[Jusentantaka]

cerveza_fiesta, on 03 December 2009 - 07:00 PM, said:

lasers are far from the all-powerful death beams scifi cracks them up to be.

I work with them quite a bit and definitely know. The amount of gear you need to cut steel at range is pretty frickin ridiculous. Killing individual people / igniting fuel sources....maybe but I think it will be a gooood looooong time before you would see a strafing run burn a continuous track in the dirt and cut through buildings.

@jusentantaka

Cool about the actual MJ required for railgun operation. Are you sure you aren't confusing the nuclear reactor with MW...megawatts? Megawatts are joules per second. The 63mJ in a railgun is released very quickly (much less than a second) so the actual power they use is much higher. Hence why they talk about supercapacitors. Capacitors are capable of releasing the energy they store in a much shorter amount of time.

I wonder RE Howitzer style railgun how big of a capacitor you'd need to lug around. One capable of discharging 63Mj could actually be unreasonably large.

MW, MJ, whatever. I was reading a page at the time that had plant power in MJ and it kinda slipped in. Plus, I'm lazy, and have a PhD, so by default, what I say is correct, even if obviously wrong. I had an undergrad professor like that...

& for the currently not-considered howitzer-railgun, I suspect they'd go with a smaller gun, so smaller capacitors. (and of course shorter range, since the 32MJ one only goes ~100n.miles - which is still 4-5 times the range of the current artillery) But you look at some stuff the army totes around (Fucking ginormous Patriot missile system) and I figure something the size of that missile-trailer would be hauling around capacitor banks. But the more I see, the less likely I think the army would be to pick up on this, unless there was a pretty big improvement of the weapon's capabilities/capacitance, or some kind of portable nuclear plant.


Also, I was under the impression that these were about the size capacitors they were talking about. I've never seen any big power modern capacitors before, so for all I know, those 3 could have twenty MJ capacitance combined. In which case, mobile isn't happening.


Also #2, I remember on one of those 'explain science fiction and reconcile it with reality' shows, that all the 'laser' weapons and the like in sci fi shows, ect would actually be a sort of plasma beam. It was a long while back, so I don't remember much about how they tried to prove that or anything.

This post has been edited by Jusentantaka: 03 December 2009 - 08:35 PM

[cerveza_fiesta]

hmm...plasma "beam" maybe. Plasma is just extra high-energy matter, like the state thats even higher-energy than gas.

Therefore a plasma gun would shoot slugs of ridiculously energized matter...ie not a laser "beam" at all...so that show is probably right.

The lasers they use to actually cut stuff are only able to do so at a ridiculously short range because of focusing optics. Like a magnifying glass concentrating the sun's light to burn an ant. You would need a truly ridiculous amount of portable stored energy to make a laser capable of shooting down missiles in flight.

Its an awesome goal and I commend them for trying to figure it out. Lasers ftw.

[Tapper]

rhulad, on 03 December 2009 - 04:27 PM, said:

On another note, I was reading the other day that Hollywood just gave a couple of companies a whole bunch of money to develop lasers that could be mounted on sharks...

fixed

On a serious note - I have to parrot Jusentantaka in thinking that a laser will not be very effective in punching through armour. You may have a better chance trying to fry or cook the person inside the vehicle than burning through it, I imagine.

[Jusentantaka]

Tapper, on 04 December 2009 - 10:42 PM, said:

rhulad, on 03 December 2009 - 04:27 PM, said:

On another note, I was reading the other day that Hollywood just gave a couple of companies a whole bunch of money to develop lasers that could be mounted on sharks...

fixed

On a serious note - I have to parrot Jusentantaka in thinking that a laser will not be very effective in punching through armour. You may have a better chance trying to fry or cook the person inside the vehicle than burning through it, I imagine.

I don't mean to say it is impossible, only impossible nao. The original Reaganomics Star Wars program (I is old) was basically based around making a laser weapon capable of delivering megajoule-level kinetic energy in a millisecond, or at least only a few, which would blow right through an ICBM case or anything similar. A quarter second would put something like that through a tank, probably blowing it to crap in the process with the heating/energy influx, ect. The only problem is that we are several decades at least away from being able to make a laser anywhere near that power.

And even with that sort of increase in power, I don't think putting them on a fighter is going to happen, since the power bleeds a lot with atmospheric friction, since we (America/NATO anyway) have pretty accurate air to air missiles that can reach 80 to 100 miles.

I wonder how long it would take with a modern laser to 'cook' a tank like you said though.

and I probably got my joulies and wattsies wrong, but whatever, i'm too lazy to consider doing math when its dark.

[cerveza_fiesta]

http://www.wired.com...exans-build-wo/

most powerful laser in the world.

try carrying that around in a satelite or jet fighter.

it'll never happen anytime soon.

[Adjutant Stormy~]

Jusentantaka, on 02 December 2009 - 11:24 PM, said:

amphibian, on 02 December 2009 - 10:53 PM, said:

A high rate of fire may be difficult to sustain in true warfare fashion, as the guns tend to get wrecked after shooting a few projectiles that fast. Dealing with a barrage may be outside the realm of possibility.

I forsee some sort of rotary barreled mega-minigun.

That sounds like bs, but I think it would actually be pretty bitchin', and actually a plausible end - It was done in the 50's or 60's to increase the sustained rate of fire for machine guns. The barrels themselves are cheap, and the capacitors are seemingly solid technology. You couldn't get thousands of rounds a minute, but 20 shots a minute would be doable, if they get the current melty-barrel-problem fixed.

The problem with railguns is that there really IS no way to fix the ablation of the rails / projectile. You pretty much have to live with it, since your man-made materials have finite limits on their conductivity.

cerveza_fiesta, on 03 December 2009 - 02:06 PM, said:

I wonder if they'll actually develop a single-use railgun for atillery units. That would be pretty dang neat.

Considering you'd need a dedicated nuclear reactor to power a multi-shot like you guys have been discussing...which restricts you to ship-mounted guns...its not really practical for battlefield deployment. A single-shot-per-charge howitzer-style thing for high-value targets wouldn't be out of the question though. Just carry as many ultra-capacitors as you need to put a hole in whatever needs hole-putting. Bring the capacitors back for recharge at the end of the day. Considering the range on the navy railguns is something like 200 miles, its not like you actually have to deal with the howitzer-railgun in the heat of battle. Just park it at your field base and plink away.

You pretty much need a dedicated nuclear reactor to run any sizeable railgun at any reasonable power output. That just makes the reactor an all-too-dangerous high-value target.

Quote

Random question on riot shields though...in Call of duty the shield is bulletproof. Do those actually exist or is that just a video game thing.

The CoD riot shield is only bullet proof in the hands of a player. NPC shields can be broken (at least, I'm pretty damned sure).

This post has been edited by Adjutant Stormy: 09 December 2009 - 09:30 PM

[Jusentantaka]

Adjutant Stormy, on 09 December 2009 - 09:30 PM, said:

The problem with railguns is that there really IS no way to fix the ablation of the rails / projectile. You pretty much have to live with it, since your man-made materials have finite limits on their conductivity.

use better materials then. Or will into existence the other sort of material which has no limit to its conductivity.

I might not know anything about non-catalytic metallurgy apart from being able to draw the carbon composition chart thing for steel and saying what each zone means, but the idea that we've reached the peak in that field is a little absurd to me.


& on the CoD thing, it seemed to me that the only reason the NPC shields went down was because they like tripped or fell over or something when you hit the shield with enough rounds. Only played the SP once though, so who knows.