MECHA!
Is the US or some other nation working on intercontinental cruise missiles? I recall hearing about this because of the book The Future of War, but I’m not sure what intercontinental cruise missiles offer that intercontinental ballistic missiles don’t.
Was this author full of it or is it an idea that’s being worked on out there?
There’s no single right answer to this question, so I’ll move this thread to MPSIMS.
bibliophage
moderator GQ
I think he means powered exoskeleton suits like the ones that never made it into the Starship Troopers movie. They’ll probably start off looking more like the walking forklift from Aliens than something out of a Japanese cartoon.
I think you are talking about materials that “remember” how to keep their shape.
Hey, don’t leave out the humble bullet!
http://www.eng.auburn.edu/department/ae/labinfo/AAL/current.html
You’re kidding me, right?? Are we talking actual Battletech MYOMERS here? Do they actually work? How
much power do they take? How strong are they?
-Ben
I read in Popular Science about new jet engine prototypes for new kinds of jets. I smell some government usage here.
I’m not a fan of weapons or anything, though I find their workings intersting. I hate it when there used againsnt people. A weapon that would be interesting, but very dangerous and powerful, would be a sort of controlled black hole. It could destroy everything on a moleculer level but not disturb anything beyond it’s blast radius.
FOG (Fiber Optic Guided) missiles are one of the immediate, next generation theater weapons that will wreak Hell with the enemy. Based on the old wire guided missile technology, instead of the projectile paying out a spool of control wires behind it after launch, the FOG missile reels out a fiber optic strand. There are numerous benefits to this seemingly cumbersome methodology.
[li] The F/O strand delivers real time video and other passive sensing telemetry back to the launch point.[/li]
[li] The F/O precludes the need for any signal radiation (as in radio control systems) thus eliminating a significant degree of early detection or trace-back to the launch point. This reduces the possibility of countermeasure location using source guided (radar or radio signal homing) missiles and any potential jamming of the control signals.[/li]
[li] A FOG weapon can loiter for a significant amount of time while in target acquisition mode. This reduces the number of rounds fired and increases the likliehood of a successful kill for each individual weapon sent aloft.[/li]
[li] The operator can remain out of sight and out of the line of fire while controlling the weapon during flight. Control of the weapon is via a simple video screen with typical steering controls. The screen is used over and over with subsequently launched ordnance so a lot of the expensive guidance computing remains behind in the control vehicle or station.[/li]
[li] Like the old wire guided missiles, in-flight course correction is possible and with FOG’s, mid-flight retargeting is available in the event that a more mission critical kill can be made.[/li]
All of this adds up to another of the “video game” style of easy-to-use weapons that are more accurate, more cost effective and more difficult to interdict.
As to laser weapons on the battlefield. The Army already looked into an anti-personnel or anti-civilian laser known as CCLAW. This would blind large masses of the enemy rendering them militarily useless but still requiring huge amounts of battlefield aid. The burden on the enemy’s search and rescue teams would hamper operating efficiency. Public outcry and potential violation of war conventions have this one shelved.
Personally, I love the idea in some ways. I want wartime combat to be so horrible that enemy soldiers will mutiny instead of face our troops on the battlefield. As you can tell, since 9-11 I have lost all sympathy for those who would do us harm.
…if one of these babies hits anywhere near you, all your computer guidance and, indeed, anything else that uses electricity, will instantly become scrap material. Vehicles, ranging, gyroscopic stabilization, radar, targeting, tracking, you name it. Instant toast. Try firing that TOW without the wire guidance or the electronic trigger.
I believe you’re talking about an EMP weapon, Ogre. Yup, they’re pretty nasty too. You just have a difficult time driving or flying away from the scene.
The effect was discovered during the atomic tests in New Mexico. Some of the scientists had those new-fangled electronic ignitions. Not many of them worked after a detonation.
(I tried to repair the link but it doesn’t want to work.)
Give this a whirl.
(Link worked on preview.)
By the way, I love that they put this right in the subtitle of the article:
Nice going, guys. I hope Zawahiri doesn’t give Bin Laden a subscription to Popular Mechanics for Ramadan.
:rolleyes:
Not that they are especially needed, and I hope and pray they are never used, particularly here in the U.S.; but the Atomic bomb is essentially ancient technology, well over 50 years old and hydrogen weapons aren’t much newer; where are the newer technological weapons of mass destruction, say, based on Helium or somesuch?
[drive-by]
running sequentially with this next great weapon thread was the Vaginal discharge thread. This brings a whole new meaning to the concept of biological warfare. [/drive-by]
You can shield against an EMP burst if you know what you are doing. And the military does. A Faraday cage for instance, will shield against an EMP, but nothing can be protruding out from the cage. Still is quite doable.
Narile, the article I referenced addresses Faraday cages.
The installation of ultra-fast zeener snap diodes on the inputs of integrated circuits goes a long way towards curtailing the negative effects of EMP. Much of this research was done back in the eighties when IC manufacturers discovered that simple ESD (Electro Static Discharge), as in scuffing your feet on the carpet type sparks, could toast a lot of their expensive little processor chips.
A new generation of air-gap solid state structures (essentially, a micro-vacuum-tube) has extended this sort of circuit input protection even further. When the first Foxbat MIG fighter was obtained for reverse engineering, our military scientists were abaft at the fact that the Soviets were still using vacuum tubes in the avonics package. Then they though it out and realized the high degree of immunity such low tech circuitry confered upon the flight electronics. Still, our methods are much more space and power efficient. Our military equipment isn’t quite as vulnerable as one might think.
My brother described a crude electromagnetic bomb to me back in the late sixties. It consisted of a fluffy core of iron filings surrounded by compressive shaped explosive charges. A large (1 farad) capacitor would be rigged to discharge across the iron core as it imploded. This would yield something on the order of a kilo to mega Gauss discharge field.
As to the exact magnetic strength of such a device;
Your Gauss is as good as mine.
[sup]I’ve been waiting years to use that one again.[/sup]
Rather than working on ground and aerial weapons as we’ve been suggesting, why not start with sci-fi weapons? Like laser blasters, tachyon cannons, and photon torpedo? Or is that just far-fetched right now?