cavelamb wrote:
Could be the first real advance in hand held weaponry since gunpowder?
The Dread
http://www.defensereview.com/modules...rticle&sid=526
But, what is the DREAD, really? How does it work? In a sentence, the
DREAD is an electrically-powered centrifuge weapon, or centrifuge "gun".
So, instead of using self-contained cartridges containing powdered
propellant (gunpowder), the DREAD's ammunition will be .308 and .50
caliber round metal balls (steel, tungsten, tungsten carbide,
ceramic-coated tungsten, etc...) that will be literally spun out of the
weapon at speeds as high as 8000 fps (give or take a few hundred
feet-per-second) at rather extreme rpm's, striking their targets with
overwhelming and devastating firepower. We're talking about total target
saturation, here. All this, of course, makes the DREAD revolutionary in
the literal sense, as well as the conceptual one.
Round balls, and probably with a healthy spin on an axis that's
transverse to motion so you're guaranteed to have curveballs?
Do they advertise shooting around corners as a feature?
And how heavy is a barrel of the ammo that's big enough so you can shoot
for any reasonable amount of time? And how big is this gun? And how
easy is it to move around?
"Imagine a gun with no recoil, no sound, no heat, no gunpowder, no
visible firing signature (muzzle flash), and no stoppages or jams of any
kind."
Lessee. No recoil means you can't be throwing anything out the front,
or that they've gotten a special dispensation from God from Newton's
third law. No sound means that there's no moving parts. No heat means
that there's no energy transfer. No stoppages or jams means that the
mechanism is perfect in every way. Sure.
OTOH, I can believe the no gunpowder and no muzzle flash; I suppose that
2 of 5 is a good thing, kinda.
"Dismantled for security purposes". Sure -- the inventor didn't want to
get arrested for fraud.
(yes, I'm skeptical)
I really shouldn't be so down on the thing -- after all, it's
undoubtedly electrically powered, which means it's eco-friendly. (Why
didn't they mention that as a feature?) Perhaps the army can get more
urban recruits if they conduct "green warfare".
--
Tim Wescott
Wescott Design Services
http://www.wescottdesign.com
Do you need to implement control loops in software?
"Applied Control Theory for Embedded Systems" gives you just what it says.
See details at
http://www.wescottdesign.com/actfes/actfes.html