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EXACTO demonstrates first-ever guided .50-caliber bullets

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Re: EXACTO demonstrates first-ever guided .50-caliber bullets

#151

Post by Perseids »

bmelton wrote: post #145
BugBrother wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cough... five comments and no one wonder about the possibility of shooting at drones with this rifle?

Impractical. The effective ceiling of an MQ1 Predator is 25,000 feet, which approximates to 4.5 miles. The effective range of a Barrett M82 (50 Caliber rifle) is approximately 6,000 feet, and that's not shooting straight up. Point blank (which, despite the common vernacular meaning 'really close', actually means 'the range of the bullet before you have to adjust for elevation') is 1500 feet, past that, gravity begins…

In metric:

25000 feet = 7620m, which approximates to 7.6 km ;)

6000 feet ~= 1800m

1500 feet ~= 450m

Re: EXACTO demonstrates first-ever guided .50-caliber bullets

#152

Post by bmelton »

Perseids wrote: post #151
bmelton wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Impractical. The effective ceiling of an MQ1 Predator is 25,000 feet, which approximates to 4.5 miles. The effective range of a Barrett M82 (50 Caliber rifle) is approximately 6,000 feet, and that's not shooting straight up. Point blank (which, despite the common vernacular meaning 'really close', actually means 'the range of the bullet before you have to adjust for elevation') is 1500 feet, past that, gravity begins…

In metric: 25000 feet = 7620m, which approximates to 7.6 km ;) 6000 feet ~= 1800m 1500 feet ~= 450m

Ironically enough, I converted some of those measurements FROM yards into feet.

Re: EXACTO demonstrates first-ever guided .50-caliber bullets

#153

Post by grkvlt »

vacri wrote: post #130
droopyEyelids wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every nation you listed including our own has at some point fought against it's own government. The assumption isn't whether a government can get oppressive to the point where people fight. It's "Is our government so good that citizens will never have cause to oppose it, for the rest of human history?"

What was the UK's popular uprising against its own government?

The English civil war(s) from 1642 to 1651 which resulted in the regicide of Charles I and then Cromwell's Protectorate. Until everyone decided that maybe Kings were kindof OK, as long as parliament could tell them to fuck off if they got too demanding, plus Cromwell (and son) had generally pissed everyone off by then...

Re: EXACTO demonstrates first-ever guided .50-caliber bullets

#154

Post by vacri »

grkvlt wrote: post #153
vacri wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What was the UK's popular uprising against its own government?

The English civil war(s) from 1642 to 1651 which resulted in the regicide of Charles I and then Cromwell's Protectorate. Until everyone decided that maybe Kings were kindof OK, as long as parliament could tell them to fuck off if they got too demanding, plus Cromwell (and son) had generally pissed everyone off by then...

The English Civil War wasn't a popular uprising against the government. The king had delayed parliament to try and weaken its powers, and the civil war was about parliament versus monarchy, not people versus government.

Re: EXACTO demonstrates first-ever guided .50-caliber bullets

#155

Post by [deleted] »

vacri wrote: post #130
droopyEyelids wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every nation you listed including our own has at some point fought against it's own government. The assumption isn't whether a government can get oppressive to the point where people fight. It's "Is our government so good that citizens will never have cause to oppose it, for the rest of human history?"

What was the UK's popular uprising against its own government?

[deleted]

Re: EXACTO demonstrates first-ever guided .50-caliber bullets

#156

Post by nmrm »

rayiner wrote: post #150
nmrm wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't even begin to express how ass-backwards this comment is. Genocide of natives and internment not only constitute existential threats to democracy; by the time either of these happens, democracy is already long dead (excluding voting and other basic human rights to only the demographics most aligned with your interests generally doesn't count as democracy. The US today would probably impose massive sanctions on…

Democracy is nothing more or less than rule by the will of the majority, either directly or indirectly. If the will of "the people" is to exterminate a minority, and the military carries out that intent, that's not anti-democratic. It's lots of other things, it's definitely oppression, but it's not anti-democratic. It doesn't represent an existential threat to a political system rooted in rule by the majority. The ge…

> If the will of "the people" is to exterminate a minority, and the military carries out that intent, that's not anti-democratic.

Well then, I don't care much for your notion of "democracy", and don't particularly understand why it would be worth defending or even necessarily better than minority rule in the first place.

Most reasonable definitions of democracy delineate between mere mob rule, and democracy as a governmental philosophy (including aspects like equality before the law).

Re: EXACTO demonstrates first-ever guided .50-caliber bullets

#157

Post by rayiner »

nmrm wrote: post #156
rayiner wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Democracy is nothing more or less than rule by the will of the majority, either directly or indirectly. If the will of "the people" is to exterminate a minority, and the military carries out that intent, that's not anti-democratic. It's lots of other things, it's definitely oppression, but it's not anti-democratic. It doesn't represent an existential threat to a political system rooted in rule by the majority. The ge…

> If the will of "the people" is to exterminate a minority, and the military carries out that intent, that's not anti-democratic. Well then, I don't care much for your notion of "democracy", and don't particularly understand why it would be worth defending or even necessarily better than minority rule in the first place. Most reasonable definitions of democracy delineate between mere mob rule, and democracy as a gove…

> don't particularly understand why it would be worth defending or even necessarily better than minority rule in the first place.

The word "minority" conjures up images of the oppressed, but through most of human history, the minority have been the oppressors. The majority were, historically, ruled by the will of a minority of people that made up royal families, etc. Saudi Arabia, for example, is a society in which a minority rules the majority.

Now, of course, in a democracy the majority can use violence to suppress the minority. But that is in fact the bulwark of democracy: the majority using violence or the threat thereof to suppress royal families, warlords, etc. And while ideally the majority does not do this, oppressive rule by the majority is almost certainly preferable to any situation where the minority is in power.

Re: EXACTO demonstrates first-ever guided .50-caliber bullets

#158

Post by bootload »

prawn wrote: post #106
bootload wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> startups in weapon technology Metal Storm: old but interesting. Mike O'Dwyer conceived of an idea for "a rapid-fire gun prototype ... can fire up to 1,000,000 rounds per minute, or 16,000 rounds per second." [0] to give extra fire-power for Special Forces soldiers. More details can be read here: http://www.abc.net.au/austory/transcripts/s167329.htm cf: [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Mike_O%27Dwyer

Were these the guys who adapted their technology to fire fertiliser pellets into the ground from the air, for agricultural purposes?

@prawn, not sure but probably not.
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