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| laser sights and railguns, oh my | |
| Posted By: Anaphiel <anaphiel@earthlink.net> | Date: 4/9/01 10:36 a.m. |
In Response To: Re: Problems with your theories... (Physalis) The reason you'd see rail-type or gauss guns in tanks first would be simple matters of size and weight. A tank has the horsepower to carry the gun and the power supply and still be mobile; the tank's turbines could even contribute power to the coils of the gun. Until power supplies can be made much smaller and lighter a man-portable rail weapon is unlikely. Laser sighting is used precisely to eliminate the need for highly skilled gunners with direct line of sight to a target. They also allow the turret on a tank, for example, to automatically turn and level to track a designated target. The laser designator doesn't need to be in the tank either: a scout/spoter unit could paint the target with the laser, and missiles/rounds fired from a variety of weapons can home in on the laser, even when the firing unit has no LOS to the target. And many modern anti-tank rounds currently in use aren't explosive rounds at all. KEAP (kinetic energy armor piercing) rounds are just big "nails" of high-density metals (depleted uranium, anybody?) driven at extremely high velocities, often with a shaped explosive charge that "drives the nail" when it strikes. The "nail" penetrates the armor of the target, which shatters and fills the interior of the target with shrapnel. US armored vehicles have their interiors coated with special materials designed to prevent this shattering. | |
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