Heavy weapons

I am heavy weapons guy... and this... is my weapon.

She weighs 150 kilograms and fires 200-dollar custom-tooled cartridges at 10,000 rounds per minute.

It costs 400,000 dollars... to fire this weapon... for 12 seconds...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mY5qJHZCz2I

Large yield

Vacuum bomb

This displaces the explosive charge into the surrounding air (in the form of powder or liquid spray) before the detonation takes place.

• Russia's "father of bombs", tested on 9/11, 2007, is a response to US MOAB (conventional bomb) used in 2003.
• The FOAB is 4 times as powerful as the MOAB, and thus comparable to the smallest nuclear weapons.
• The dispersed explosives of the FOAB are apparently produced using nanotechnologies.
• It's unclear whether this kind of ordnance will trigger a new arms race.

(What is clear is that no one will use this except against 3rd parties. geyser)

German article

http://www.tagesspiegel.de/politik/International-Vakuum-Bombe;art123,2377878

English article

http://www.russiatoday.ru/news/news/13954

Russian video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z1ee_cDX7ys

Auto-aiming

Sentry guns and smart guns are common in science-fiction.

The closest real-world counterpart is CIWS (close-in weapon systems)

You can see this weapon in Ghost in the Shell 2 - Innocence (battleship firing at the puppet master location).

The Sturmanderung-Camp is supposed to have a CIWS too. The current placeholder is "MARS" (mobile anti-rocket splatter).

(MARS is already the German name for MLRS. BTW, stop making placeholder acronyms already: they suck ^_^ geyser)

Long-range machine gun

Rail Gun

Mechanism: A rail gun use electricity to accelerate a projectile between two rails, simply said.

How it look like: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jrpOCqwW3Rw

The real speed is limited by various factors:

• rail material (because of abrasion)
• limited electricity
• air friction (which can completely burn the projectile in worst case)

statistics from newest test on 31.01.2008

• the projectile reached Mach 7, that's approximate 7 x 1235 km/h, so 8645 km/h
• shooting range: about 370 kilometres while the accuracy is 5 meters
• projectile weight: 3 kilogrammes
• rails length: 30 meters

ammunition types

• soft projectiles: the air friction breaks the projectile in numerous pieces which hits the target(s) like a shot gun
• hard projectiles: solid materials are used to get a bullet piercing effect

future plans

• US-NAVY plans a public demonstration in 2016
• real military use on warships is planed for 2020

sources

• A German TV news report http://www.n-tv.de/913309.html
• A video from the Discovery Channel: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4OqlTXwLG40

Long-range bombardment

Project Thor

What could be simpler than metal rods, maybe with fins for stability, dropped precisely from a satellite orbiting Earth at 7,000mph (that's 9km/s, or Mach 10)? But what metal to use that can withstand this heat? Easy: tungsten. Melting point of 6192°F (3422°C). Boiling point is so high that it would stay liquid on the surface of the Sun. This has never been tried, so we don't know what it would look like when deployed. Obviously you wouldn't see the rods, only the result of their impact; could you see a plasma trail left behind in the atmosphere? Has the power of a railgun, or more, with the advantage that you don't have to deploy the weapon on or near the battlefield. No insanely high electrical consumption. Of course, there's that minor initial cost of orbital installation....

• Kinetic bombardment

Fast firing rate

Gatling guns

Gatling guns AKA chainguns AKA vulcan guns AKA miniguns ("If that's a minigun, I wonder what a maxigun is!") are often featured in video games (DOOM, Serious Sam, Gunman chronicles, etc, etc).

They use multiple barrels combined with a single loading and firing mechanism, which allows every barrel to cool down between two of the barrel's firing cycles.

The firing rate is roughly that of a single barrel times the number of barrels, the limiting factor being the cooling rate.

Kashtan etc

The fastest chainguns in operation are Kashtan and AK-630 (6,000 and 5,000 round/min, respectively)

They equip Russian Navy cruisers.

GAU-8_Avenger

That one is used on the famous A-10 Thunderbolt II "tank killer" aircraft.

The ammunition is stored in a large cylinder-shaped container and fed to the gun by a belt.

A similar, but much smaller variant is carried by the Vulcan Raven in Metal Gear Solid.

Metal Storm

That one is closer to a volley gun than to a chaingun, the only difference being that a volley gun uses several barrels.

Bullets are loaded/reloaded in a single barrel as a "tube" of specially designed, assorted rounds, and fired in a sequence.

The theoretical firing rate of 1,000,000 round/min is as usual limited by the cooldown of the single barrel, and by the feeding rate of the ammo.

The guns are intended for CIWS systems, and in that respect are similar to the more conventional gatling gun arrays.

photos

http://www.metalstormserver.com/freedomweb/index.php?submenu=Graphics&src=photo&category=Photos

video

http://www.myvideo.de/watch/1355388 ( alternative http://video.google.de/videoplay?docid=-7993209051502788528 )

Related

• The German Infanterist der Zukunft program: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IdZ
• For an overview of similar projects worldwide, see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Future_Soldier