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Shaped Charges – Sheet of copper going through 1ft of solid steel (2010) [video]

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Re: Shaped Charges – Sheet of copper going through 1ft of solid steel (2010) [video]

#281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Drones are effective, but nothing is ever cheap on the battlefield. While the warhead that ultimately kills the target is often cheap, the real cost comes from the system that picks the right target and delivers the warhead there at the right time. Cheap commercial drones have a short range. In order to use them effectively on the battlefield, each drone needs an operator, who must also be on the battlefield. Those o…

I envisage a swarm of say 50 cheap-ish drones with a "swarm leader", intercommunicating using some kind of short-range mesh radio. They'd be disposable, single-use. They could be launched by a squad of say, 10 men. The swarm leader could be human-piloted or autonomous. Autonomy would be a matter of software and sensors; once you've invented it, it would be dirt-cheap to implement. A swarm of 50 would be enough to baf…

This guy made an autonomous drone swarm of 12 drones similar to what you describe.

The overral objective was for any drone within the swarm to immediately chase and ram into the first human it could locate. The processes were automated and could be triggered while unattended.

For reasons the video explains, letting 12 drones all try to independantly do the same thing at the same time was not going to work, so he came up with ghis structure.

1 server that processed the video feeds from the drones using AI trained to recognize humans/human faces 1 C&C computer that sent master commands and stuffs .... and maybe the computer flight code ...? 12 drones assigned to their own LAN making them a virtual group 4 of these drones were designated as flight leaders. They sent data from their cameras to the video processing server and recieved targetting results back. Sent target and flight instructions to the two drones assigned to them. 2 drones are assigned to each flight leader drone forming a single unit. They only communicate with their flight leader. They do what it does.

I know ... it isnt anywhere near what would be required for combat use, but come on... in the last test, his drones did what they were supposed to do; every single one of them automatically attacked the first human being they detected immediately. Better yet, they did it in unison. More better of all, all of them him.

This guy did this with cheap, off the shelf parts, by himself, during his downtime at home as a joke for Youtube.

https://youtu.be/Hu3p5ZR_i5s

Re: Shaped Charges – Sheet of copper going through 1ft of solid steel (2010) [video]

#282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It strikes me that if you work with modern explosives and follow sensible procedures like retiring to a safe distance, the risks to you are not that high. The risks in a demolition are huge, but not to the life of the explosives guy. I can imagine the job of weakening the structure, (by removing parts of it) prior to the explosives carry more risk to the operator

I don’t know. I’m a trained chemist and after enough years, you have that one day where you might’ve went to sleep too late and where you use the wrong type of glass, and a boiling vat of sulfuric acid etc. fails quickly and melts a bunch of stuff. Sometimes I’m glad I’m in this field though, because I hear about the researchers working on prions that have started dying off, and I know it’s one of those one and 100,0…

What's this about the prion researchers? I only know about the one lady (from France?) who caught it after puncturing her glove. If I remember correctly she didn't follow the proper protocols afterwards (although it's debatable if they would have made a difference).

Re: Shaped Charges – Sheet of copper going through 1ft of solid steel (2010) [video]

#283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If the drone is hovering and there isn't much wind then the mortar round will fall straight down and detonate on impact. Dive bombing. These drones should be dive bombing. WW2 strategy to increase precision and placement of the bomb. Only lesser-trained pilots glide-bombed or otherwise avoided dive-bombing in WW2. I don't think the let-go at height maneuver is historically considered very good. By dive bombing, you…

Aircaft with fixed wings have pretty stable fast forward motion. Diving makes use of that, and the initial speed and vector of the ordnance is the speed/vector of the aircraft. After deployment, high g is needed to avoid hitting the ground. A multi-rotor drone (what the videos seem to be shot from) cannot fly fast, and cannot pull the high gees after drop. Dive bombing won't help much. Likely even a controlled flight…

> A multi-rotor drone (what the videos seem to be shot from) cannot fly fast, and cannot pull the high gees after drop. Dive bombing won't help much. Likely even a controlled flight into the target (kamikaze) would end up slower (final velocity) than just dropping, making the drone a much easier target for small arms fire than just the bomb alone.

Every one of these drone-drop videos is several seconds between letting go of the bomb, and the bomb colliding with the target.

If they actually want these drones to reliably hit a moving target, or even a vehicle in combat, they'll need to do something.

That's a lot of hang-time and delay in these "drone drop" videos. Once the bomb is let go, there's going to be another 20+ to 30+ minutes before the drone operator is able to fly another drone into the field, and that's if the drone operator has a 2nd drone with him. Maybe it will be hours, or maybe the next chance to drop a bomb never comes ever again.

You really want to maximize the chance of striking the target with these operations. A huge number of WW1 and WW2 operations were summarized as "Flew for 4 hours, missed my bomb, flew home". You want to minimize that kind of thing.

Especially if these drones are considered somewhat expendable.

Re: Shaped Charges – Sheet of copper going through 1ft of solid steel (2010) [video]

#284
post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The politics are important to understand, but it’s insensitive to bring this up in the context of an individual soldier’s account of this situation. Like, great work with the virtue signalling, you’re very clever and informed. Maybe try reading the room a bit and being a bit more compassionate toward people who have no influence in these politics?

I understand where you're coming from. But as an Iraqi who have lived through the "war" and having several family members and close friends who were killed in the war (all civilians), I can't help but consider the objectivity in naming here as insensitive to the half-million Iraqis who were killed in the war. Not to mention destabilizing the middle east forever.

[deleted]

Re: Shaped Charges – Sheet of copper going through 1ft of solid steel (2010) [video]

#285
post #234
post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you think about Saddam? If he was allowed to continue, would that not have destabilized the middle east? I'm not making an argument here, just honestly curious what you think about it.

Saddam is a ruthless dictator, no question about it. The middle east has been already in chaos since Sykes–Picot and repeated international interventions were only making things worse. It's difficult to predict what would have happened had he stayed in power in particular with the Arab spring in 2011, but I don't think it would be this bad.

You need to look back a little further. The middle east has typically been in chaos at least since the fall of the Roman Empire.

Re: Shaped Charges – Sheet of copper going through 1ft of solid steel (2010) [video]

#286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aircaft with fixed wings have pretty stable fast forward motion. Diving makes use of that, and the initial speed and vector of the ordnance is the speed/vector of the aircraft. After deployment, high g is needed to avoid hitting the ground. A multi-rotor drone (what the videos seem to be shot from) cannot fly fast, and cannot pull the high gees after drop. Dive bombing won't help much. Likely even a controlled flight…

> A multi-rotor drone (what the videos seem to be shot from) cannot fly fast, and cannot pull the high gees after drop. Dive bombing won't help much. Likely even a controlled flight into the target (kamikaze) would end up slower (final velocity) than just dropping, making the drone a much easier target for small arms fire than just the bomb alone. Every one of these drone-drop videos is several seconds between lettin…

Dive bombing is a silly idea for rotorcraft. It just doesn't work aerodynamically.

Sophisticated militaries will strike moving targets with precision guided munitions. Generally either laser guidance with a designator mounted on the drone, or some kind of pattern recognition built into the bomb itself (could be optical, IR, or millimeter wave radar). For example, something like the GBU-44/B.

Poor militaries and insurgents will make do with whatever they can get. Either wait for the target to stop moving, or just lead it a little and hope.

Re: Shaped Charges – Sheet of copper going through 1ft of solid steel (2010) [video]

#287
post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you mean the US invasion of Iraq

The politics are important to understand, but it’s insensitive to bring this up in the context of an individual soldier’s account of this situation. Like, great work with the virtue signalling, you’re very clever and informed. Maybe try reading the room a bit and being a bit more compassionate toward people who have no influence in these politics?

[deleted]

Re: Shaped Charges – Sheet of copper going through 1ft of solid steel (2010) [video]

#288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Makes me wonder, back at the time, when you went there -- how much did you believe in what the politicians and military commanders said about weapons of mass destruction etc, if I may ask? Sorry for the ones who died

>Sorry for the ones who died Combatants on both sides, obviously. Oh, and the civilians, too.

Yes

Re: Shaped Charges – Sheet of copper going through 1ft of solid steel (2010) [video]

#289
post #285
post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Saddam is a ruthless dictator, no question about it. The middle east has been already in chaos since Sykes–Picot and repeated international interventions were only making things worse. It's difficult to predict what would have happened had he stayed in power in particular with the Arab spring in 2011, but I don't think it would be this bad.

You need to look back a little further. The middle east has typically been in chaos at least since the fall of the Roman Empire.

No post body was provided.

Re: Shaped Charges – Sheet of copper going through 1ft of solid steel (2010) [video]

#290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sorry, but when somebody tells you "we will ship you 7000 miles away to fight in a different continent" and you accept, you share at least some part of the responsibility. There would be no wars without greedy politicians, but there would be no wars without soldiers too.

I hear where you are coming from, but the discussion is out of place, reeks of privilege and lacks perspective.

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