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Military technology: Magic bullets
- dimitar 15y ago$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 convention?
- ck2 15y agoThere are lots of "end-runs" around the Hague http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expanding_bullet#Law 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
- __alexs 15y agoDoes Afghanistan even get covered by that stuff since no formal declaration of war has been made according to Hague Convention III?
- sharpneli 15y agoIANAL 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.
- thisrod 15y agoI understand that changed when the UN was formed. Its member states aren't permitted to start wars, period.
- anamax 15y agoDoes it matter whether both parties are signatories?
- JamisonM 15y agoNo
- jcurbo 15y agoThe US follows the Hague Convention and other 'rules of war' regardless of if the other side does or not.
- bootload 15y ago"... $25 bullets and $25000 rifles are insanely expensive. And I don't see how better rifles will bring an advantage ..." Snipers are force multipliers ~ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Force_multiplication http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Force_multiplication
- mjwalshe 15y agoWell a "better" rifle allows you to engage at longer range Fireteams tend to have designated marksmen with Battle Rifles these days. Also a better rifel is less prone to jamming (this is why SF's prefer the piston version of the M4)
- reitzensteinm 15y agoIt'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.
- icegreentea 15y agoThe Hague forbids bullets that expand on penetration, on the basis that it creates larger and more traumatic wounds. This round acts more like a grenade. It explodes (and wounds/kill by shrapnel) near the target. It shouldn't actually hit the person. Completely different class of weapon. It's more accurate to call this a grenade launcher than a rifle.
- grannyg00se 15y agoIt always seems so absurd to me that there are rules around wartime killing. Once you acknowledge that it is acceptable to take another person's life for profit you really have little credibility for laying out rules of fairness.
- almutasim 15y agoWar without rules would be a greater horror. Even the ancients had them (Julius Caesar himself was charged with war crimes). How could closure and peace be negotiated, for example, without protection for emissaries.
- felipemnoa 15y agoAccording to history rules only matter if you loose.
- icegreentea 15y agoWell, most of the rules aren't about killing per se, but rather wounding. And most of the rules are in place so that the stakes of fighting never gets high enough that we would all have to stop fighting. For example, the Geneva Protocol that bans chemical and biological weapons pretty much because aside from killing, those who were wounded were an enormous burden, and terrible for morale (aside from any ethical reasons). In that case, losing the ability to use those weapons was deemed to be outweighed by the consequences of having to deal with them being used on you. Also, since they could be potentially huge and unpredictable force multipliers, it made war all the more predictable, which is good from their perspective. Long story short, nearly all rules of war exist because they are beneficial to abilities of the parties to conduct war. The rules do no exist to make killing fair. They exist so that parties may conduct war in a way they agree with.
- Detrus 15y agoIt's very affordable when you compare it to air strikes and artillery bases.
- tsotha 15y agoIt's really a misnomer to call this thing a rifle. Yes, it has a rifled barrel. But it's a grenade launcher, not a rifle in common parlance. It replaces the 40mm grenade launcher in use.
- tlb 15y agoIt costs about $1M / yr to maintain a US soldier overseas, so those costs aren't a huge deal.
- __alexs 15y agoSurely 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.
- humbledrone 15y ago> 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...
- __alexs 15y agoSomething 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.
- kabdib 15y agoPresumably they got their security right; no recommit after firing, for instance. If not, I can easily imagine a "bullet jammer" gizmo that broadcasts a retargeting command. "Sorry, little grenade, you have another thousand meters to go...."
- the_tubes 15y agoI am thinking something like a headphone jack right before it's loaded in the barrel. Press some buttons, cock, shoot. During this time of programming its probably then charged too with a capacitor in the grenade/bullet thing. EDIT: I just thought of an even better way of doing it! There could be little contacts on the back of it surrounding the part that the hammer hits. During charging, it also programs with spikes of voltage. While it is still loaded the gun, the gun's computer monitors that voltage of the cap to keep it charged so there isn't a lag during when you want to fire.
- ck2 15y agoI guess our economy will never completely bottom out as long as we can export death. Just wait 'til your local police get these for "domestic terrorism crowd control" (aka protesters) with the shrapnel replaced by "less lethal" rubber bullets while drones fly overhead for more accurate targeting. Oh it would never happen, right? What if a congressman owns stock in the company?
- GFKjunior 15y agoATK contributes large amounts to politicians. They spend millions on lobbying and hundreds of thousands on individual PACS. http://influenceexplorer.com/organization/alliant-techsystems/5d9b2621e7974bccadf150adf3334de7?cycle=2012 http://influenceexplorer.com/organization/alliant-techsystem...
- Sharlin 15y agoNitpicking a bit, this is a grenade launcher, not a rifle. Explosive 25mm (or 40mm!) rounds are grenades, not bullets.
- humbledrone 15y agoThe 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.)
- Sharlin 15y agoTechnically 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.
- arethuza 15y agoI thought that tank guns these days are usually smoothbore rather than rifled - with the notable exception of the British Challenger 2: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Challenger_2 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Challenger_2
- GraemeL 15y agoTrue, but the smooth-bore guns used in most other tanks all fire fin-stabilised rounds.
- tsotha 15y agoThe British have been trying to replace that rifled gun with the German L/55 smoothbore, too, but they don't have the money. It wasn't clear at the time the tank was designed, but the rifled barrel turns out to have been a mistake. The round for which it was primarily designed (High Explosive Squash Head, or HESH) hit a sort of technical dead end with the introduction of spall liners and layered composites in tank armor. Read the comment by Steven Den Beste, who explains the situation pretty well (aside from getting the HESH acronym wrong): http://www.professorbainbridge.com/professorbainbridgecom/2010/01/challenger-v-abrams-who-wins.html http://www.professorbainbridge.com/professorbainbridgecom/20...
- domwood 15y agoIt'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.
- sbierwagen 15y agoAh, 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-with-such-cool-stuff/ 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.
- nhangen 15y agoThat's not entirely true. There are still plenty of gunfights and ambushes being staged in Afghanistan, especially outside of the major cities.
- mjwalshe 15y agoyes its just a replacement for the existing under barrel launchers M203 and the venerable Vietnam era M79 this gives that gives you a few more tactical options.
- electromagnetic 15y ago"A few more tactical options" is playing down something that can be monumental. The howitzer only offered "a few more tactical options", mainly being the ability to lay down accurate indirect fire whilst still being able to offer direct fire and defensive fire. I mean why bother inventing gunpowder or rifling or any other weapons when an arrow killed people too. I mean sure the rifle was more effective and less competent soldiers could use it skilfully, but what was the point when we already had bows and crossbows? So why bother inventing an accurate method of firing a frag round at 500ft when the M203 has a max range of 400ft and effective fire at only 150ft. Granted the AK47 is only effective at 250ft, but that still means the soldiers will be spraying and praying with grenade fire. The whole point of making a weapon more accurate and effective is to increase the enemy combatant losses whilst decreasing civilian losses and soldier risk.
- antihero 15y agoAh, humanity, always figuring out better ways to murder other humans.
- awakeasleep 15y agoYep. It'll be great for this company once the regulations are loosened and they can begin selling to all the countries onnafrica, the middle east, western Europe, and Asia. Bad for everyone else though.
- zackzackzack 15y agoWonder how long before people the article: "The gun that fires computers with bullets in them" or something to that effect.
- jsh2134 15y agoprice of those bullets reminds me of Chris Rock's bit on gun control http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OuX-nFmL0II http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OuX-nFmL0II
- ilaksh 15y agoIn this era of global mass instantaneous communications, every citizen of every country is our neighbor. There is no excuse for the continued existence of this disgusting military industrial complex. The only things keeping this going are racism, ignorance or misperception fueled by propaganda, and a sick, inhuman and outdated Social Darwinism. We just cannot permit criminals and thugs to continue to have control.
- jgrahamc 15y agoMy stab at how the bullet measures its own rotation: Suppose the bullet leaves the muzzle rotating at 300,000 RPM (quite reasonable for a rifle). That is 5kHz. It's easily within the capabilities of a Hall Effect sensor to measure a 5kHz rotation and so I'd make the very centre of the bullet contain a free rotating magnet. The rifle itself sets the magnet spinning at some known rate opposite to the rifling. When the bullet leaves the rifle it is able to measure the time between detections of the magnet and given the known rifling, the known magnet rotation speed it would be able to calculate rotations. Alternatively, the inner magnet could be spinning in the same direction as the rifling but faster and detect complete rotations of the bullet. Either way I think Hall Effect + spinning magnet at bullet core would work. Also, 5kHz is well within the operating range of a micro controller so this wouldn't need much computer power. Lastly the article says that the weapon is accurate at 500m and that the shrapnel kills everyone within a few meters. Also says that the soldier estimates the target distance. That sounds like there's plenty of room for the measurement to be not too accurate. Suppose 'several meters' is 5 then you can get away with an error of 1% or so.
- regularfry 15y agoI suspect it would be easier to make the front spin and fin-stabilise the rear than try to make a rotating core. That being said, given a known muzzle velocity I don't understand why it's not a simple timing problem.
- sbierwagen 15y agoMuzzle velocity varies quite a lot based on ambient temperature, air pressure, altitude, and propellant grain size.
- regularfry 15y agoAh, so knowing the muzzle velocity might actually be a red herring - the turns per metre travelled is going to be a more stable metric.
- omegant 15y ago
- mikemoka 15y agoSmart bullets, that is the best oxymoron I heard in my whole life.
- Generic_Name 15y agoWell it works well enough in modern warfare 3, though slightly noobish...
- Tycho 15y agoRegardless of the tactical implications of this particular weapon... the fact they're now making computerized bullets makes me wonder where else this path will lead.
- TomGullen 15y agoSounds like a good way to counter this sort of weapon would be to have human shields. I'm not sure if that's an improvement on the situation if they start to adopt those sort of tactics. Enemies will simply adapt to new weapons they face. Much like a bucket of paint would be quite effective against and remote control mini tank. Whilst the engineering feat is impressive, it is still important to note that at the receiving end of such ingenuity is a writhing half dead corpse so it is with hesitation I would ever celebrate such innovation.
- coldarchon 15y agoJust have look at the Wunderwaffen of the Nazis in WW2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fritz_X http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fritz_X http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rheintochter http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rheintochter http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schwerer_Gustav http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schwerer_Gustav Did it change anything when the Russians let 13.500.000 of their soldiers die while for every 3 of them there was someone with a gun at the back of their head to make sure they wouldn't flee? The T-34 was the most successful tank in WW2, but his gun couldn't even hurt the Tiger tanks. Advanced technology will only help on commando operations, not in a war.
- Freestyler_3 15y agoBut if they move you have to restart :\
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- losethos 15y agofuck jews
- kkartik 15y agoAm I the only one horrified by both the technology, and the general apathy to the moral implications of military tech in the comment thread.
- Sukotto 15y agoThe morality is in deciding when it is worth ending a human life. What tool you use is a distant second, at best. In war, once you have decided to kill a person, the moral course is to kill them as quickly and effectively as possible. Preferably with as little pain as possible. The tools are horrible, because war is horrible. If you're opposed to their use, you need to act at the political level (to stop unnecessary war from happening) or the strategic level (to win the conflict in a way that does not require direct, physical confrontation)
- losethos 15y agoshrinks God says... jointly particle eloquence delivering good ocean tend liftest heathen fixedly Nay pleasureableness Latin Heal taxes deceivableness disquieted incense unadorned IS returned demanded greeted