Guns... Lots of Guns...

[Aristotle]

Holy Shit!

Is This What War Will Come To?

A KINETIC MISSILE THAT FLIES AT MACH 7

Picture this: A massive destroyer receives the location coordinates of an enemy headquarters more than 200 miles away. Instead of launching a million-dollar Tomahawk cruise missile, it points a gun barrel in the direction of the target, diverts electric power from the ship's engine to the gun turret, and launches a 3-foot-long, 40-pound projectile up a set of superconducting rails. The projectile leaves the barrel at hypersonic velocity--Mach 7-plus--exits the Earth's atmosphere, re-enters under satellite guidance, and lands on the building less than six minutes later; its incredible velocity vaporizes the target with kinetic energy alone.

The U.S. Navy is developing an electromagnetic railgun that will turn destroyers into super-long-range machine guns--able to fire up to a dozen relatively inexpensive projectiles every minute.

A LASER CANNON THAT BLASTS FROM THE AIR

If all goes according to the U.S. Special Operations Command's plan, within a decade or so the Advanced Tactical Laser may introduce a new class of weaponry to the battlefield.

The weapon's first incarnation, expected by 2010 at the earliest, will be a megawatt-class chemical oxygen-iodine laser (COIL) fired from a rotating turret beneath the nose of a C-130 gunship. The beam could be up to 4 inches in diameter and have a 20-mile range--enabling it to burn through vehicles and machinery with a precision and millisecond timing that missiles and cannons can't achieve.

...

Lasers are also tunable, which adds versatility: When less-than-lethal force is required, such as in urban areas or when hostages are present, the beam's duration can be reduced so that it disables technology but only injures people. "We want a system that can generate a variety of effects on the battlefield, from damaging something to totally destroying it, to just kind of harassing with it," Panetta says. "This seems to offer us that."

SPACE-LAUNCHED DARTS THAT STRIKE LIKE METEORS

This technology is very far out--in miles and years. A pair of satellites orbiting several hundred miles above the Earth would serve as a weapons system. One functions as the targeting and communications platform while the other carries numerous tungsten rods--up to 20 feet in length and a foot in diameter--that it can drop on targets with less than 15 minutes' notice. When instructed from the ground, the targeting satellite commands its partner to drop one of its darts. The guided rods enter the atmosphere, protected by a thermal coating, traveling at 36,000 feet per second--comparable to the speed of a meteor. The result: complete devastation of the target, even if it's buried deep underground.

A GUN THAT FIRES A MILLION ROUNDS A MINUTE

The Australian company Metal Storm has an answer: Bring digital technology to what has been one of the battlefield's last holdouts from the electronics revolution. Metal Storm's solution--now being examined by the Department of Defense--is to remove virtually every moving part from modern guns and replace them with electronic ballistic technology and computerized controls. Bullets stacked in the barrel fire at rates of up to 60,000 rounds per minute, even a million in certain multi-barrel configurations. Coded electric signals ignite propellant embedded within each specially designed bullet. The pressure created by the small explosion pushes out the bullet while at the same time enlarging the bullet behind it, sealing the barrel and preventing the other charges from igniting until commanded to do so.

[Gilgamar]

I was in the barber shop one day and was reading a technology magazine while waiting. It had an article about a cannon that is already being tested by the military that sends out sonic waves which force some kind of reaction within the bodies cells making them agitate. This agitation causes the person or persons it is pointed at to quickly get a burning sensation, as though they were on fire. While highly painful it causes no long term damage other than possibly psychological. The article stated that the area it was effective in could be made as small as 1 inch by 1 inch or as large as 25 feet.

Basically it's a non-lethal cone of imaginary fire.

[Dalaena]

That sounds like a microwave gun. Microwaves work by agitating water molecules and, thus, creating heat.

Maybe they figured out how to set it so it doesn't kill a person but merely annoys them a whole heck of a lot.

It's so weird that we're coming up with so many ways to kill people more efficiently all the time.

[drasoini]

Wow...um, just the snipped parts of the article you posted amazed me. Really, I'm glad that SOMETHING new is being developed that isn't going to cost a few million each time it's fired.

And, I had thought that there was already a Metal Storm variant for the M1-Abrams, but perhaps that was something I read in a sci-fi novel...

[Aristotle]

Gilgamar, if you search the forums you can probably find a post by me where I linked to articles about those microwave guns.

Their main designed use is riot control. They can actually spread them out in a very wide area.

They gun works just like a microwave oven, basically. It excites water molecules (of which there are a lot in your body) to make you very uncomfortable. The degree of discomfort can range from mildly irritating to painful enough that you fall to the ground in agony. It is non-lethal and the results are temporary.

The military wants to use them for things like protecting embaassies abroad.