Sci-fi Weapons, Vehicles and Equipment

Because missiles and rockets are apparently rather ineffective against shields. Weapons like the Torpedos and other Energy weapons are more effective. I remember that from a TNG episode.

Why waste time beaming old tech when they can beam mines and torpedos instead. That and apparently accuracy on a ship in combat manuevers with a teleporter is apparently a bit tricky. The blurb also pointed out transporters can suffer from a lot of interference.

Much easier to just shoot them.

edited 3rd Dec '13 7:08:26 PM by TuefelHundenIV

Who watches the watchmen?

^ Well given that Star Trek ran on the traditional definition of shields in the hard barrier sense it made more sense that explosives and such didn't work as much as beam weapons. After all, straight HE rounds don't do jack diddly to well-armored vehicles and ships even using RHA but lasers go right through em given enough time and/or power.

Nowadays shields exemplify a sort of non-Newtonian fluid properties (specifically shear-thickening fluids) where high-velocity stuff like bullets and certain beam weapons are easier to deflect than "low-velocity" stuff like explosions or plasma.

The shear thickening doesn't deflect so much as behave as another layer of force absorbent.

Using things like enhanced compounds like ceramics laced with carbon fiber nano-tubes. Or carefully layered ceramics similar to abalone shell.

Hell the future armor will very likely have woven carbon fiber nano-tube threads.

edited 3rd Dec '13 8:12:47 PM by TuefelHundenIV

Who watches the watchmen?

It's actually a bit of both. Shear-thickening fluids in reality grow harder the more force or velocity is applied to it (to the point of failure for the material anyways). Say you use cornflour (itself a shear-thickening fluid), it feels doughy and sticky and soft to a light touch but slam it with a forceful strike with a hammer and the hammer recoils off it like you were dealing with a stone counter-top.

They are both deflective and force absorbent. That's why such properties became popular for use in shields. It ignored the old and cliche hard barrier like in Star Trek and had some properties grounded in real world physics. Mass Effect kinetic barriers and Halo shields work on this principle.

Its not both. It also is not becoming harder. It is increasing its viscosity due to shearing forces. Any rounds bouncing is not deflection so much as the round has had nearly all its energy dispersed and the recoil of the energy bouncing back out into the projectile.

They are also not looking to use it by itself for a few very good reasons but are instead looking to blend it with existing or future soft armors.

It is not a hard plate insert it is a soft armor. Even then all armor is designed specifically to absorb the force of an attack and disperse it. Deflection is a happy accident of incident rising from location, angle, and type of attack in the strike. That is how all armor works.

As I understand pretty much all scifi shields push back against whatever is hitting them.

edited 3rd Dec '13 10:27:59 PM by TuefelHundenIV

Who watches the watchmen?

So what exactly is the difference between a missile and a torpedo (and a rocket for that matter) in that setting? Just port a lot of stuff that makes a big bang.

edited 3rd Dec '13 11:41:55 PM by MattII

Rockets and missiles are impact and chemical warheads or even possibly weak energy weapons. The Photon Torpedos are warp capable Matter/Anti-matter weapons.

Still the point stands. Why waste your time with older conventional weapons when you have something more powerful. Just far simpler to fire guided weapons.

Not really big into how they explain their weapons and verse.

edited 4th Dec '13 3:17:31 AM by TuefelHundenIV

Who watches the watchmen?

Semantics, there is a differentiation now between the two now because they travel in different mediums (missiles air, torpedoes water), in space that difference will not exist, so the difference is marginal at best. My whole idea was to stick a lot of really big weapons in one small area right on their shields and watch as the shields pop.

edited 5th Dec '13 1:08:30 AM by MattII

I am afraid you are wrong it is not just simple semantics. There are distinct differences in weapon types in the scenario for the setting. One uses tech that is considered dated and for a good reason as it is utterly ineffective in the verse. That would be the missiles and rockets.

The Torpedoes have their own unique capabilities set and use something quite a bit different then a chemical reaction for a warhead and are used instead because they are more powerful and effective.

Shooting or even managing to beam a few torpedos at a spot will have quite a bit more effect then doing the same with the rockets and missiles. You are talking about wasting time, energy, and effort on a comparably more inefficient approach then what they normally use.

They already pointed out it is not quite so simple to easily beam things around as you please and that the transporters are not magical super devices.

So again. There is no point so why waste your time trying beam something at the shields when it is far easier and more reliable to shoot something at them? Last I checked the verses torpedoes don't suffer the same kind of interference from shields or other occurrences that the transporters do.

It would be like trying to drop hell fires on a tank with crane after arming the warhead when shooting it works much better.

Who watches the watchmen?

^ A better example is using armed Hellfires as an IED rather than shot from a mobile platform.

Really? So the fact that the Ferengis mount both weapons on their D'Kora class Marauders doesn't play into it? Also, Photonic Missiles are seen in several Voyager episodes. The difference appears to be only minor, and since the internal consistence of any of the series appears to be close to null on most technical points...

Since many of the battle in the universe appear to take place at broadside range (as in opposing ships within a km or so of each other) anyway, I don't see an issue with it, beyond perhaps interference.

Interference, difficulties in accuracy, and the fact that simply shooting them is far more effective then hoping you get lucky laying the equivalent of a mine on a shield directly. In that regard why waste a projectile and instead of a bomb or a mine?

"Excuse me Mr Romulan? Would you mind terribly not maneuvering while we are fighting? I am trying to drop a bunch of projectiles on your shield directly in a specific area with my transporter."

Yeah don't think that is going to work out to well.

There really is no way to get around the fact shooting the projectiles as designed is more effective then the equivalent of using a sling shot to shoot them hoping you get lucky. Again harder to neutralize the projectile then do something that may screw with the transporters.

Or the fact that pretty much every ship has beam or pulse weapons of some sort its also more effective to just shoot them, then trying to play tag with a transporter.

There is nothing saying they are not fighting it out across a few miles of space. The scale of the ships is quite large being comparable or bigger in size then modern aircraft carriers. Two such ships even a just a couple ship lengths from each other could be up to a few miles apart.

What about shields? Last I checked ship shields interfere with transporters a lot. Attempting to transport through them was very difficult at best.

It might work as a one off situational but I highly doubt it would be more effective then just shooting your target with your weapons designed to be fired in the first place.

Who watches the watchmen?

Ok back on track.

Big gun aircraft for ground attack.

Now in an age of compact but highly effective smart weapons, what would make a big gun support viable?

Platforms like the AC-130 are not going to be realistically a viable option. So I was thinking more back to WWII ideas where fairly large guns and autocannons were mounted on or in aircraft.

The problem with using big guns like that is they weigh quite a bit, produce a lot of recoil, the ammo is pretty hefty and compared to rockets or missiles they are shorter ranged.

I was thinking something like a shell that has glide wings to help increase stability and flight time as well as potential accurac increase with added folding fins with articulation.

Personally i was thinking of a ground attack support drone with dual aerodynami in wing pods with 40mm Autocannons firing compacted caseless ammunition of varous types.

Thoughts or ideas?

Dumb fire rounds at high velocity would be more difficult to track and intercept in general.

Also thinking of alternate dispersal systems for multiple munition systems. Something for example that ejects a cluster of drifting projecting projectiles that give the munition time to orient, find, and track targets before releasing from the drifting mechanism and then firing off a small rocket or other projectile or EFP type weapon.

edited 7th Dec '13 1:16:09 PM by TuefelHundenIV

Who watches the watchmen?

@Tuefel:

One idea that occurs to me is that perhaps the compact smart weapons just don't have large enough (or potent enough) warheads that can defeat all the armour it's likely to come up against.

Furthermore, perhaps there has been a proliferation of powerful electronic warfare systems on the battlefield that make it tricky to reliably get a lock on targets in situations where the airwaves are heavily saturated with ECM, EA, etc. The cannon, meanwhile, might have a minimum of electronic wizardry to allow it to be utilised even in the most adverse EW environment.

Or hell, perhaps the smart weapons have a minimum arming range that makes them somewhat situational - yes, you can wallop that tank from BVR, but if the smart weapon refuses to arm below medium-short distances then that limits its utility somewhat.

As for the drifting cluster munitions, I'm envisaging a mechanism similar to dandelion seeds or possibly even "jellyfish" powered by lightweight electrical batteries that can drift easily on the wind^* There is in fact a jellyfish robot that weighs only 0.2 grams and floats in the manner I described.

This could be combined with computerised gunsights to allow for a tracking/prediction capability; you lock on to the target, fire the cannon, and the rounds automatically steer themselves toward the target. If the lock is degraded/lost, then the rounds might continue toward the last known predicted position.

Locking you up on radar since '09

In My 'verse here's the take on ground attack

edited 23rd Aug '14 6:24:55 PM by TairaMai

All night at the computer, cuz people ain't that great. I keep to myself so I won't be on The First 48

I was kind of thinking of the dandelion kind of dispersal. One idea was light pressure ejection by airpressure from a exposed container airscoop or low power explosive pneumatics.

I was also thinking of some of the modern on craft or stand off WCMD weapons that project them outward with force and the force of the airspeed deploys the ballutes or drogue chutes.

Fin retard versions would work at altitude.

I was thinking light weight smart munitions using balluts or lightweight disposable drogue chutes.

Dumb high velocity shells with caseless compact ammo would be useful in ECM/EW saturated enviroment meaning you don't have to hunt down every emission source to get potent fire support the otherwise smart munitions would provide.

edited 31st Mar '14 8:35:47 PM by TuefelHundenIV

Who watches the watchmen?

Both of those are good ideas. I'd also possibly suggest a gravity system where the munitions are sealed inside a container, which splits open to allow the munitions to fall down into the airflow. A more unreliable (?) proposition would be similar, but this time rather than relying on gravity it would expose the retarding system (plus explosive) to the airflow so that it catches it and pulls it away from the aircraft. That's pretty much what you're suggesting in your next paragraph, though.

Exactly.

I suggested the computerised gunsight more as an auxilliary feature for cases where EW isn't so heavy or it would be desirable to have a limited tracking function. That was mostly prompted by your mention of articulated fins, though.

Locking you up on radar since '09

"Big gun support"...hmmm.

There are Railguns, and I suppose that helicopters will find a way to mount recoilless weapons.

The AC-130 would mutate into variations large and small. If colonies are on other worlds, they'd be used as a way to get artillery around while saving on the cost of transportation and a separate vehicle.

The Sensor Fused Weapon did a number on Iraqi armored formations. So I'd suspect that further developments would make it smaller and more lethal.

The problem with ground attack craft is that they'd be dead weight if you're moving forces from planet to planet. However they're cheaper if you defending a planet (provided that they are backed up by SpaceFighters and cheaper jets).

All night at the computer, cuz people ain't that great. I keep to myself so I won't be on The First 48

Taira: This is more for a war that is effectively in atmo only.

Apparently the gun system I thinking of was already done. The 37mm auto-cannons on the Stuka. The self contained pods held 12 rounds apiece. That was just inside those pods. Now imagine if the craft had internal room for munitions.

edited 7th Dec '13 3:21:07 PM by TuefelHundenIV

Who watches the watchmen?

Good points. There might be ways to get a conventional gun to fire in a vaccum. Or a large space fighter / small frigate that can do the ground attack mission. The trouble with lasers is atmo and laser vs. armored target (or bunker).

All night at the computer, cuz people ain't that great. I keep to myself so I won't be on The First 48

Like you noted the rail gun would be a good option for a space to atmo attack craft like that.

I was thinking higher effeciency compact propellants using caseless tech.

The German 37mm Autocannon is very close to the 40mm gun systems. I was thinkign a high velocity lower weight take on the Bofors L/60 or L/70 guns. The munitions for the L/70 are pretty wicked. I will dig up the vid for the munitions at home.

Who watches the watchmen?

Magnetically accelerated caseless munitions. They don't have to be hypervelocity style rounds.

I do that as part of an idea for my game project Alexandria with the Protectorate Thunderhawk. It's armed with two 57mm railguns that fire Composite-HE munitions at 240 rounds per minute per gun at a muzzle velocity of roughly 4000 ft/s.

edited 7th Dec '13 5:20:56 PM by MajorTom

A thought.

What about scram canons instead?

Who watches the watchmen?

57mm 3P ammo

Who watches the watchmen?

^^ Aren't those the ones where the round is like a finless rocket?