Re: Railgun Research: Barrrel Design or Power Supply

From: Gregory L. Hansen (glhansen_at_steel.ucs.indiana.edu)
Date: 02/24/05 

To: sci-military-moderated@moderators.isc.org
Date: Thu, 24 Feb 2005 15:35:13 +0000 (UTC)

In article <384nltF5l2mtqU6@individual.net>,
Dirk Bruere at Neopax <dirk@neopax.com> wrote:
>Gregory L. Hansen wrote:

>> The LOSAT is line of sight, that's what LOS means. Dragons and TOWs are
>> line of sight in that the operator needs to keep the cross-hair on the
>> target; if suppressive fire forces him to take cover the shot is ruined.
>> Some missiles like the Hellfire can home in on a laser spot placed on the
>> target by a separate designator, e.g. an infantryman can paint a target
>> while the missile is fired from behind a hill.
>
>But things are not going to stay that way.
>Moore's Law applies to intelligent missiles but not railguns.
>
>> For the most part, seekers are still in the future. I think the
>> Copperhead was an artillery shell that could home in on certain IR
>> frequencies reflected by metal objects. But if it's known something like
>> that is being used in significant quantities, it's not hard to imagine
>> ways to defeat it.
>
>If an infantryman can recognise a tank, so will a missile.
>If not now, then long before railguns see deployment.

"If an infantryman can recognize a tank, so will a missile."

I find that a rather optimistic statement. They still haven't figured out
how to make a vehicle drive on its own yet, which is something that any
bumpkin drafted from the backwoods can do perfectly well. Even getting a
machine to recognize tanks sitting in plain sight hasn't been very
successful so far.

Rail guns already exist that can put a hole in a tank. Reducing them to
something that can be used in the battlefield is still something for the
future, but I think it's more likely to happen before fielding a system
that can match human pattern searching and decision making abilities. 

-- 
"Coincidences, in general, are great stumbling blocks in the way of that 
class of thinkers who have been educated to know nothing of the theory of 
probabilities." -- Edgar Allen Poe

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