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Military use of consumer technology
- gaius 17y agoAll technology is military technology. That's the first thing they teach you.
- TriinT 17y ago"All technology is military technology." In what sense? Would you care to elaborate on that?
- HeyLaughingBoy 17y agoIt means use whatever technology you need in order to get the job done.
- potatolicious 17y agoI took it to mean that most technologies seem to be applied to military use first, before they find civilian use. Radar? First a weapon, then civilian. Nuclear power? First a weapon, then adapted for peaceful purposes. The list goes on: radio, flying, submarines, even the internet was developed with military funding.
- TriinT 17y ago"An iPhone app called Bullet Flight enables snipers to calculate range and trajectory for their shots, and built-in satellite-positioning allows local weather conditions to be taken into account. The basic version costs $3.99 and the full military one--which even calculates how the Coriolis effect from the rotation of the Earth will influence a bullet’s flight--costs $29.99." Am I the only one who find this strange? Even with local weather information, there's a lot of uncertainty on wind speed and direction, humidity, etc etc. Does the Coriolis effect actually matter or is it negligible?
- aarongough 17y agoAgreed. The shooter would still definitely have to make local estimations of wind speed and direction, there's no way the app could get that data in real-time or in sufficient resolution. My understanding is that the Coriolis Effect only comes into play at very long ranges. That being said snipers nowadays are more and more using heavy caliber (generally .50BMG) rounds and taking their shots at much longer distances than in previous times. As an example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rob_Furlong http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rob_Furlong Rob Furlong made a shot against a target that was 2,430 meters away. At that range the bullet's flight time was just under 3 seconds! At that sort of range pretty much anything can affect the bullet enough to deflect it off target...
- ramchip 17y agoHave a look: http://www.gunatics.com/forums/showthread.php?t=5003 http://www.gunatics.com/forums/showthread.php?t=5003 Yes, there's some uncertainty, but I'd assume snipers are used to estimating or measuring these values pretty well.
- TriinT 17y agoDefine "pretty well". I am no sniper, but I suspect these guys are used to hitting targets at distances of 1,000 meters. Wind speed, air temperature and humidity vary over time and space. A good sniper can probably estimate these with some accuracy, but there's still a lot of uncertainty left on what the bullet will hit. If the Coriolis effect contributes with very little uncertainty by comparison, then accounting for it is not going to help much. Let's face it: without the numbers, we're talking plain nonsense.
- cake 17y agoNot much info in this article. Would have love to have more details of other consumer grade products they buy.