It's a grenade launcher, not a rifle. (you can have rifled barrels in a grenade launcher, doesn't make it a rifle) and a TOT detonation's hardly the most amazing thing ever. It's just another example of mobile infantry artillery, it's expensive and it's just another horrible way to die.
Military technology: Magic bullets
11–20 of 93 posts
Re: Military technology: Magic bullets
#12Surely it's just a 1 axis accelerometer and perhaps a lookup table or some basic maths? The military sure do like to make themselves seem important. Super secret alien assault rifles being attacked by unspecified hackers from unknown locations. Yep, better keep funding new and exciting ways to kill people.
> Surely it's just a 1 axis accelerometer and perhaps a lookup table or some basic maths? I'm more interested by the mechanism that programs each projectile's detonation distance. That seems like the tricky bit...
Something along the lines of RFID? I've heard them described as "radio controlled" before too.
Since it's in the chamber protecting it from external sources of interference / attack (e.g. programmed to explode at the end of the muzzle) should be easy to protect against physically. I guess you could do it with some mechanically retractable pins or something, but electrical contacts and the inside of a bullet chamber don't seem like the sort of thing that should go together to me. You'd need to clean them constantly.
Re: Military technology: Magic bullets
#13Surely it's just a 1 axis accelerometer and perhaps a lookup table or some basic maths? The military sure do like to make themselves seem important. Super secret alien assault rifles being attacked by unspecified hackers from unknown locations. Yep, better keep funding new and exciting ways to kill people.
Hmm, would the accelerometer really detect anything? I think the bullet would have to experience significant lift, otherwise it's in free fall and the only acceleration you'll see after it leaves the barrel is air resistance, which isn't in the right direction to change with each rotation. To a first approximation, spinning bullets don't experience lift.
Maybe there's still some minuscule effect that can be detected, though. The sections on Magnus force in http://www.nennstiel-ruprecht.de/bullfly/index.htm seem to suggest that this is the case. But now I'm not so sure it's as simple as counting the number of periods of oscillation from the accelerometer.
IANAIBOEP (I am not an expert in ballistics or even physics)
Re: Military technology: Magic bullets
#14Nitpicking a bit, this is a grenade launcher, not a rifle. Explosive 25mm (or 40mm!) rounds are grenades, not bullets.
The article says that the grenade's travel distance is measured by counting its rotations, implying that the barrel is, in fact, rifled. (Maybe that doesn't technically make it a rifle, but it doesn't seem like a terribly inaccurate term.)
Technically true; however, in practice, you must rifle the barrel of any grenade launcher, or else have tail fins on the grenades to prevent aerodynamic tumbling. Tank guns, cannons, howitzers, and the like typically have rifled barrels but we don't call them rifles. (Mortars, on the other hand, use finned ordnance.) AFAIK rifles are usually defined to have a caliber at most 20mm.
Re: Military technology: Magic bullets
#15Earlier quoted context omitted.
The article says that the grenade's travel distance is measured by counting its rotations, implying that the barrel is, in fact, rifled. (Maybe that doesn't technically make it a rifle, but it doesn't seem like a terribly inaccurate term.)
Technically true; however, in practice, you must rifle the barrel of any grenade launcher, or else have tail fins on the grenades to prevent aerodynamic tumbling. Tank guns, cannons, howitzers, and the like typically have rifled barrels but we don't call them rifles. (Mortars, on the other hand, use finned ordnance.) AFAIK rifles are usually defined to have a caliber at most 20mm.
I thought that tank guns these days are usually smoothbore rather than rifled - with the notable exception of the British Challenger 2:
Re: Military technology: Magic bullets
#16Ah, the XM25. Last publicity blitz we saw on this was a year ago, and Gary Breacher called them out on it: http://exiledonline.com/xm25-gee-whiz-how-can-we-be-losing-w... (Even the file photo is the same!)
The XM25 autocannon is neat. Absolutely nobody denies this. It's also pretty useless, because any insurgent who engages security forces in a conventional gun battle is going to die. Nine times out of ten, they're dead; if by airstrike or just being outflanked and outgunned.
They know this, which is why for the last nine years, the weapon of choice used by the other side has been the IED or the suicide bomb; where high tech weapons like the XM25 are rendered entirely useless. While it's nice to see the Economist running an advertisement for Alliant Techsystems in their magazine, the XM25 will actually do very little to win CI wars.
Re: Military technology: Magic bullets
#17$25 bullets and $25000 rifles are insanely expensive. And I don't see how better rifles will bring an advantage - most coalition casualties are from mortar fire and improvised explosive traps - rebels have already lost preference for gun standoffs. But I'm sure H&K and Alliant will love to sell lots of these to whatever army is corrupt enough to buy them. Also... aren't exploding bullets illegal under the Hague conve…
It's a 25mm explosive round, not a rifle round, so $25 isn't out of the question. I don't know how much an M203 grenade costs in bulk, but that would be a suitable comparison.
Re: Military technology: Magic bullets
#18Ah, humanity, always figuring out better ways to murder other humans.
Re: Military technology: Magic bullets
#19Earlier quoted context omitted.
There are lots of "end-runs" around the Hague http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expanding_bullet#Law and note that domestically governments do not have to obey even the most basic "rules of war" when they set police against their own people
Does Afghanistan even get covered by that stuff since no formal declaration of war has been made according to Hague Convention III?
IANAL but that has some problems. First of all the convention mandates 'declaration of war' in a sense that you have to tell someone you're attacking. If it was skipped then it was against the part of the convention mandating such notification.
Secondly the other parts of the convention do not talk about war as a set of specific circumstances (e.g requiring declaration of war) but just hostilities regardless on how they originated.
So by skipping the declaration of war one simply breaks one additional part of the convention, the one mandating the declaration.
Re: Military technology: Magic bullets
#20Surely it's just a 1 axis accelerometer and perhaps a lookup table or some basic maths? The military sure do like to make themselves seem important. Super secret alien assault rifles being attacked by unspecified hackers from unknown locations. Yep, better keep funding new and exciting ways to kill people.
Hmm, would the accelerometer really detect anything? I think the bullet would have to experience significant lift, otherwise it's in free fall and the only acceleration you'll see after it leaves the barrel is air resistance, which isn't in the right direction to change with each rotation. To a first approximation, spinning bullets don't experience lift. Maybe there's still some minuscule effect that can be detected,…
I was thinking of the accelerometer being located near the outside of the shell, rather than relatively stationary near the centre of rotation. I agree it's not entirely trivial, but it seems pretty doable to me.