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Post by the light works on Jan 28, 2019 18:03:22 GMT
How many people would you need to transport and set up the air-mines? How many people would you need to keep an eye on the system, and ensure that it isn't activated by a recon flight or a flock of birds? How many people are you going to need on hand to reload and reset the system? Invasions do not consist of a single wave of troops, there will be multiple waves of troops. Your system needs to be able to engage both of them as they come in. You NEED to have personal and observers on hand to verify that any alerts are genuine and provide real time information. Along with maintaining the defensive systems and defending them from attacks. If an enemy knows you have some kind of military presence in that area they may well, and probably will, send in ground troops to disable those defenses in advance of any invasion. You don't need state of the art artillery guns to provide low level anti-aircraft fire. You can drag older guns out of storage or training facilities. All those guns need are ammunition, which if you will either already have or be able to produce far more cheaply than the air mines. A 20mm cannon would only require a crew of two in a pinch (the gunner and someone to run ammunition to the gun) and even larger guns that lack an automatic loader would potentially only need two or three men (Gunner, loader and maybe someone to run the ammunition to the gun when immediate supplies are used up). Aircraft are fragile things and it doesn't take much to bring them down or cause them to abort and head for home. You only need very big guns to be able to throw shells to higher altitudes. Which is not an issue here. The number of personal needed in total would depend on the number of guns, although more would be needed for the initial deployment you'd need those personal to set up an 'minefield' anyway - probably more of them as the gun crews themselves should be able to position the guns once they reach the location. They would also be able to redeploy their guns between waves. Preventing anti-air assets from being briefed on the exact positions of the defenses. You would probably be looking at 50-100 troops, none of whom have to be taken from the front lines. These troops would have an additional level of deterrent; They have big guns, any invasion force would find them sitting behind them right on top of their supply line and of course they are literally holding the high ground. Such a force, small though it may be, would have to be dealt with sooner rather than later. Which means either attacking them before the invasion takes place, which will alert the enemy to your intentions, or deal with them afterwards. Which means redirecting some of your force from the invasion itself to deal with the annoyance. A minefield doesn't STOP an enemy, it just slows them down, and once you get through it it becomes useless. The most effective minefields are those that are backed up by troops who can try and convince the minesweepers to go away or at least delay them long enough that your main force can conduct a counter-strike. The system you are talking about would have its uses, IF part of a layered defensive system. In this case AA guns with the 'mines' being activated when you have a very large force overhead. you're still thinking like someone who has resources to build weapons, and resources to maintain staffing. you're thinking of someone who HAS air assets to fly recon. building the mine really only takes advanced electronics. the ordnance itself can be black powder crude - literally. the actual weapon tech is as old as fireworks. you don't need anybody to keep an eye on it - an ear will be sufficient, and you will be doing that from the position where you DO have your pitiful assortment of guns, pulled way back in the hope of keeping the perimeter small enough not to have huge gaps in it. with the minefield, the people set it up, and then they become available, again. artillery, unless you have advanced AI, has to be staffed. you're also thinking like someone who has the expectation of being able to reuse the same front line after the first wave comes through. the scenario wherein a bouncing behemoth might be useful is one in which any early interdiction method will be expected to be expendable. in short, you're thinking of what the best option for a scenario is. I'm thinking of what scenario would make the bouncing behemoth the best option. the scenario I see is a desperate force needing to improvise defensive weapons. they have access to crude ordnance and moderately decent electronics. it is an expendable delaying device that doubles as an early warning system. and as you say, aircraft are a bit delicate when it comes to flying through clouds of metal. it's a low tech way to force a high tech opponent to slow down.
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Post by wvengineer on Jan 28, 2019 19:11:57 GMT
One concern I would have is the usable altitude of such a system. Taking WWII flack batteries for an example, typical maximum altitudes for these were 22,000-32,000 ft/8,000-9,000m. The largest one I can find is the Japaneses type 5 150mm flak cannon. That had a maximum altitude of about 50,000 ft. Even then, it's accuracy was terrible. No amount of electric gizmos will help if the shell is nowhere near the target.
I don't think you will b able to get much higher than that an just a ground fired weapon. Keep in mind that today, commercial aircraft flu at 35,000-40,000 ft and military combat aircraft commonly fly at 50,000-65,000 ft (F-15). The F-22 has a cruising altitude of 60,000ft and can go 65,000+. So the idea proposed would not be effective. This is why SAM systems are all rocket based today. You need the rocket motors to get it up high enough and fast enough to catch the target airplane.
Launching it with black powder would really limit the effective altitude of such a weapon. Additionally, anything that is not propose built will also suffer from limitations.
So t will come down to what is the world in which this weapon will be used and what is the technology? For story purposes, there would need to be a reason for aircraft to be flying at much lower altitudes than they normally do.
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Post by the light works on Jan 28, 2019 19:31:45 GMT
One concern I would have is the usable altitude of such a system. Taking WWII flack batteries for an example, typical maximum altitudes for these were 22,000-32,000 ft/8,000-9,000m. The largest one I can find is the Japaneses type 5 150mm flak cannon. That had a maximum altitude of about 50,000 ft. Even then, it's accuracy was terrible. No amount of electric gizmos will help if the shell is nowhere near the target. I don't think you will b able to get much higher than that an just a ground fired weapon. Keep in mind that today, commercial aircraft flu at 35,000-40,000 ft and military combat aircraft commonly fly at 50,000-65,000 ft (F-15). The F-22 has a cruising altitude of 60,000ft and can go 65,000+. So the idea proposed would not be effective. This is why SAM systems are all rocket based today. You need the rocket motors to get it up high enough and fast enough to catch the target airplane. Launching it with black powder would really limit the effective altitude of such a weapon. Additionally, anything that is not propose built will also suffer from limitations. So t will come down to what is the world in which this weapon will be used and what is the technology? For story purposes, there would need to be a reason for aircraft to be flying at much lower altitudes than they normally do. the Apache and the A-10 fly as low as 200 feet or less. so assume your defensive installation DOES have SAMs to pick off the high flying aircraft.
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Post by ironhold on Jan 28, 2019 19:52:45 GMT
For story purposes, there would need to be a reason for aircraft to be flying at much lower altitudes than they normally do. NOE -> "Nape of the Earth" -> is when aircraft, especially combat helicopters, fly as low as safely possible in order to avoid detection by traditional means until such time as they arrive on target. Additionally, dedicated ground-attack aircraft, as mentioned earlier, can get dangerously close to the actual surface when they go in for attack runs. Small arms fire is a legitimate threat to these units, and in fact the early model HIND assault helicopters could be taken out by infantry-portable machine guns because the rear portion was inadequately armored; the designers simply never imagined that they could ever be attacked from behind. Aircraft will also end up low to the ground on take-off and landing. Get a lazy or incompetent set of people in charge of these ops, and not only will the behaviors be predictable but so will the flight paths themselves... which is *why* the Mujahadeen took down so many HINDs and other Soviet helicopters.
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Post by wvengineer on Jan 29, 2019 14:09:02 GMT
Regarding take-off and landing operations, there is a reason why airbases are usually well away from combat lines. Airbases represent such a valuable tragic asset that they are well defended and the area surrounding them as well is well patrolled to prevent someone from getting too close. If someone gets close enough to threaten aircraft as they are taking off, then they are also close enough to fire artillery directly at the base and that will do a lot more damage. You can hit multiple aircraft on the ground, disabling them on the ground with artillery, motars, RPGs, etc. That is much easier than trying to hit a fast moving target in the air. In addition, if you attack the airbase directly, you can go after ammo or fuel dumps, and cause a lot more damage than by hitting the airplanes themselves.
Something else to consider is that normal operation when flying at absolute minimum altitude is to have sensors and Radar going full bore to detect any possible threat because they want to prevent someone from taking easy shots at them.
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Post by the light works on Jan 29, 2019 15:07:27 GMT
Regarding take-off and landing operations, there is a reason why airbases are usually well away from combat lines. Airbases represent such a valuable tragic asset that they are well defended and the area surrounding them as well is well patrolled to prevent someone from getting too close. If someone gets close enough to threaten aircraft as they are taking off, then they are also close enough to fire artillery directly at the base and that will do a lot more damage. You can hit multiple aircraft on the ground, disabling them on the ground with artillery, motars, RPGs, etc. That is much easier than trying to hit a fast moving target in the air. In addition, if you attack the airbase directly, you can go after ammo or fuel dumps, and cause a lot more damage than by hitting the airplanes themselves. Something else to consider is that normal operation when flying at absolute minimum altitude is to have sensors and Radar going full bore to detect any possible threat because they want to prevent someone from taking easy shots at them. that last is why I was thinking of a cardboard launch tube buried in the ground. if you also made your shell with a ceramic casing, there would be very little metal for radar to pick up, and an optical trigger, while being a little harder to program, would be mostly passive until launch. the challenge would be if you did a solar charging system, the solar collector would be visible. on the other hand, once a couple mines popped off, you could save on mines by scattering fake solar collectors where you didn't want low level flying to happen. addendum: it also occurs to me that a retreating army might mine an airfield with them in preparation for a possible retreat, as well. if you can get a variable length delay before arming that could last up to days, you could really impede enemy operations, because they would have to clear them before they could confidently use the airfield.
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Post by wvengineer on Jan 29, 2019 17:39:01 GMT
I don't know the military protocol, so this is a guess:
When going to use a captured airfield, or really any captured enemy base, I would think the first thing you would want to do is to go over the whole thing to make sure there were no surprises left for you by the enemy on their way out. Better to take an hour or two and run a minesweeper over the runway than risk it taking out and airplane, shutting you down for a lot longer.
On the other side, I would think that trying to mine a base would be a waste of time when you are in the middle of a retreat. The mount of time to dig up, plant, cover, and then properly disguise your mines would be very time consuming when that is the last thing you want to do is waste time. It would be much easier to just set demo charges and blow everything up. That way you make sure you deny the enemy use of your infrastructure and you are ready to hit the road much quicker.
Regarding the non metalic warhead, I would question how effective a ceramic warhead casing would be. A anti aircraft warhead today is a thick metal tube with grooves (I've seen a couple different styles) cut into the inside to create a fragmentation pattern. Basically a really big frag grenade. When it goes off, the casing will be broken into many small chunks of metal that are flying out in all directions at high speed. Basically a big, 3-D shotgun. A few of these will hopefully tear into the target aircraft and cause sufficient damage to bring it down.* I don't know if ceramics would have the strength to survive being shot into the air, explode, and then have enough energy to do damage to the target. Isn't not going to be effective if the warhead turns to powder when it goes off.
Maybe I'm overthinking all of it. Take a regular AA warhead, metal launch tube, and everything else and put it into a radar absorbing ceramic outer casing. That way you can maintain an effective weapon, but reduce the chance of it being detected.
*Interesting historical note: in WWII, the majority of aircraft losses were due to damage to the hydraulic system. In all those old movie where you see aircraft on fire, trailing smoke, in the vast majority of cases, that is hydraulic oil that is burning, not engine oil or fuel. Hydraulics were usually the Achilles heal for aircraft for many decades. You hit it, and you can cause a airplane wide systems failure. Even in the 60's there were a number of airplane crashes due to hydraulic failure. Modern aircraft (including civilian airliners) use many small, self contained hydraulic units instead of a single aircraft wide hydraulic system. This makes the possibility of hydraulic failure much more difficult to achieve.
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Post by the light works on Jan 29, 2019 18:09:00 GMT
I don't know the military protocol, so this is a guess: When going to use a captured airfield, or really any captured enemy base, I would think the first thing you would want to do is to go over the whole thing to make sure there were no surprises left for you by the enemy on their way out. Better to take an hour or two and run a minesweeper over the runway than risk it taking out and airplane, shutting you down for a lot longer. On the other side, I would think that trying to mine a base would be a waste of time when you are in the middle of a retreat. The mount of time to dig up, plant, cover, and then properly disguise your mines would be very time consuming when that is the last thing you want to do is waste time. It would be much easier to just set demo charges and blow everything up. That way you make sure you deny the enemy use of your infrastructure and you are ready to hit the road much quicker. Regarding the non metalic warhead, I would question how effective a ceramic warhead casing would be. A anti aircraft warhead today is a thick metal tube with grooves (I've seen a couple different styles) cut into the inside to create a fragmentation pattern. Basically a really big frag grenade. When it goes off, the casing will be broken into many small chunks of metal that are flying out in all directions at high speed. Basically a big, 3-D shotgun. A few of these will hopefully tear into the target aircraft and cause sufficient damage to bring it down.* I don't know if ceramics would have the strength to survive being shot into the air, explode, and then have enough energy to do damage to the target. Isn't not going to be effective if the warhead turns to powder when it goes off. Maybe I'm overthinking all of it. Take a regular AA warhead, metal launch tube, and everything else and put it into a radar absorbing ceramic outer casing. That way you can maintain an effective weapon, but reduce the chance of it being detected. *Interesting historical note: in WWII, the majority of aircraft losses were due to damage to the hydraulic system. In all those old movie where you see aircraft on fire, trailing smoke, in the vast majority of cases, that is hydraulic oil that is burning, not engine oil or fuel. Hydraulics were usually the Achilles heal for aircraft for many decades. You hit it, and you can cause a airplane wide systems failure. Even in the 60's there were a number of airplane crashes due to hydraulic failure. Modern aircraft (including civilian airliners) use many small, self contained hydraulic units instead of a single aircraft wide hydraulic system. This makes the possibility of hydraulic failure much more difficult to achieve. if I were writing the story, the mining process would happen as soon as there was a hint that a retreat might happen - with the mines not activated until the day of. it wouldn't take many to require more careful scrutiny, especially if the entire area was plowed before the mines were set. I think thick ceramic, weight for weight, could be effective as a shrapnel shell. probably not something mythbusters could test on TV for fairly obvious reasons. another option would be native rock cast in some sort of matrix that held enough pressure for the charge to explode efficiently.
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Post by wvengineer on Jan 29, 2019 18:25:11 GMT
Maybe use some form of fiber reinforced, high strength concrete?
The other problem with ceramic is it's low density compared to metal. So once the warhead goes off, the fragments will loose their energy much quicker than metal would. Back to the old discussion about stone vs. metal bullets from the old board. I'm not saying it won't work, but at best it would have a much smaller effective range. Cast some ball bearings into your ceramic to give added density?
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Post by the light works on Jan 29, 2019 18:37:32 GMT
Maybe use some form of fiber reinforced, high strength concrete? The other problem with ceramic is it's low density compared to metal. So once the warhead goes off, the fragments will loose their energy much quicker than metal would. Back to the old discussion about stone vs. metal bullets from the old board. I'm not saying it won't work, but at best it would have a much smaller effective range. Cast some ball bearings into your ceramic to give added density? using it against aircraft hopes to have the velocity of the aircraft working against it, so the less dense ceramic might give you a quicker broader dispersal. meanwhile, my work isn't doing itself, so I'll have to come back to it tonight.
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Post by mrfatso on Jan 30, 2019 9:40:55 GMT
But would it be better to use the weapons as delayed action mortars as Wvengineer points out a mortar could be sighted in on features such as fuel dumps, hangars, barracks etc.
Rather than destroying a few aircraft that were flying overhead when the device detects them, your delayed action weapon could then damage an increased number of of aircraft on the ground and kill and injure more personnel. Not just pilots but ground crew as well.
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Post by Cybermortis on Jan 30, 2019 11:29:53 GMT
Some real world information I was able to pull up;
Nap of the Earth flying is usually as low as 200 feet for jets, and around 50 feet for helicopters - the difference is due to the speed of the aircraft. The faster they fly the higher they have to fly in order to react to potential obstacles. This will also differ depending on the nature of the ground over which you are flying. Very open flat ground allows a lower altitude and VERY accurate up to date information can also allow a lower altitude, but no pilots worth their license will trust maps that much.
Typical speed at low altitude is between 400-500 mph for jets, most likely 200-300 mph for prop aircraft and usually 50-100 mph for helicopters.
400 miles per hour translates as 179 meters per SECOND, 100 mph 45 meters per second.
Translation; Your system would have to be capable of detecting an aircraft flying overhead, calculate its flight path and altitude, set a fuse, fire a shell to at least 200 feet and have it detonate all in milliseconds. That is impossible. By the time the shell leaves its launcher the aircraft is going to be well outside the blast radius.
There IS a calculation as to how large a shell you need for a firework for a given altitude; that being 1 inch for 70 feet in height. So a system based on this (using black powder or similar) would need shells ranging from just under one inch to at least three and a half inches. This for shells made of paper or cardboard. If your shell is made of something else, or contains shrapnel, it is going to weight a lot more and therefore need to be even larger.
Translation; You would need four or five launchers each with different sized shells clustered together in saturate a small area well enough to hit a target overhead at a low level. That would be a MASSIVE number of shells you would have to make and most importantly transport for what would be a one-shot system.
At this point you'd be better off using something akin to 40mm grenades, which you might be able to create using existing metal or even plastic piping cut to length. You'd still have the exact same problems in effectiveness, but you (should) have enough 'shells' in existing stores or in production and making the tubing wouldn't require skills beyond being able to use a saw.
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Post by the light works on Jan 30, 2019 17:36:10 GMT
But would it be better to use the weapons as delayed action mortars as Wvengineer points out a mortar could be sighted in on features such as fuel dumps, hangars, barracks etc. Rather than destroying a few aircraft that were flying overhead when the device detects them, your delayed action weapon could then damage an increased number of of aircraft on the ground and kill and injure more personnel. Not just pilots but ground crew as well. at that point, it would be in addition to other acts of sabotage, and they would be placed to maximize collateral damage.
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Post by the light works on Jan 30, 2019 17:45:29 GMT
Some real world information I was able to pull up; Nap of the Earth flying is usually as low as 200 feet for jets, and around 50 feet for helicopters - the difference is due to the speed of the aircraft. The faster they fly the higher they have to fly in order to react to potential obstacles. This will also differ depending on the nature of the ground over which you are flying. Very open flat ground allows a lower altitude and VERY accurate up to date information can also allow a lower altitude, but no pilots worth their license will trust maps that much. Typical speed at low altitude is between 400-500 mph for jets, most likely 200-300 mph for prop aircraft and usually 50-100 mph for helicopters. 400 miles per hour translates as 179 meters per SECOND, 100 mph 45 meters per second. Translation; Your system would have to be capable of detecting an aircraft flying overhead, calculate its flight path and altitude, set a fuse, fire a shell to at least 200 feet and have it detonate all in milliseconds. That is impossible. By the time the shell leaves its launcher the aircraft is going to be well outside the blast radius. There IS a calculation as to how large a shell you need for a firework for a given altitude; that being 1 inch for 70 feet in height. So a system based on this (using black powder or similar) would need shells ranging from just under one inch to at least three and a half inches. This for shells made of paper or cardboard. If your shell is made of something else, or contains shrapnel, it is going to weight a lot more and therefore need to be even larger. Translation; You would need four or five launchers each with different sized shells clustered together in saturate a small area well enough to hit a target overhead at a low level. That would be a MASSIVE number of shells you would have to make and most importantly transport for what would be a one-shot system. At this point you'd be better off using something akin to 40mm grenades, which you might be able to create using existing metal or even plastic piping cut to length. You'd still have the exact same problems in effectiveness, but you (should) have enough 'shells' in existing stores or in production and making the tubing wouldn't require skills beyond being able to use a saw. your trigger would have to be able to detect an aircraft up to 250 meters away, calculate its velocity and trajectory within a second, and decide whether to fire a shell big enough to develop an average velocity of 200 FPS, by my calculations. the fuse could be preset if the blast radius was sufficiently large. if you build your shell with a 150 foot blast radius, then you could preset it to detonate at about 200-250 feet depending on what aircraft you expected. and of course, if you set it up in the right terrain, if you can get the pilot to flinch, you still win.
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Post by Cybermortis on Jan 30, 2019 19:07:20 GMT
If you can make a system that can do that why not just connect it to old machine guns or rifles and add a simple pivot mount and small electric motor? Even a .45 APC round can reach 4000 feet in a fraction of the time and size of a shell. Add in tracer rounds and you'll make pilots (especially transport pilots) flinch.
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Post by the light works on Jan 31, 2019 3:42:03 GMT
If you can make a system that can do that why not just connect it to old machine guns or rifles and add a simple pivot mount and small electric motor? Even a .45 APC round can reach 4000 feet in a fraction of the time and size of a shell. Add in tracer rounds and you'll make pilots (especially transport pilots) flinch. well, they did confirm that is possible to do. all you would have to do is tip walter white's car on its side.
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Post by Cybermortis on Feb 1, 2019 14:37:40 GMT
If you can make a system that can do that why not just connect it to old machine guns or rifles and add a simple pivot mount and small electric motor? Even a .45 APC round can reach 4000 feet in a fraction of the time and size of a shell. Add in tracer rounds and you'll make pilots (especially transport pilots) flinch. well, they did confirm that is possible to do. all you would have to do is tip walter white's car on its side. That is actually a fair example as to how cheap and easy (relatively speaking) using firearms would be compared to trying to use 'fireworks'. You need a frame in which to hold the firearm, and a system that would allow it to be rotated up and to the sides. As shown by the MB rig such a thing can be built using off the shelf items from a local hardware store and be fast and simple to construct on site. You then need suitable guns to mount onto this rig. Ideally you want something in a large caliber, but in this context even a fairly small caliber guns would be adequate; The primary targets are not the actual aircraft but any troops they are carrying, and such transport aircraft are not going to have much much if anything in the way of armor protection. Or put another way your guns only need to be capable of putting holes in the side of a transport and the troops inside and anything beyond that is a bonus. As such you could use something like a Sten or 'Grease gun' for the role. Small cheap light guns intended for mass production that chances are you are already producing. Guns for this role would be even cheaper as some elements, such as the stock, could be omitted entirely depending on the design. Clearly the guns need to be self-loaders (you could and can modify bolt action guns but its time consuming) and you would need to work out a reliable way to provide a much larger magazine or feed system to allow for sustained fire beyond what the standard magazines would allow. Full automatic or semi-automatic might not matter too much, as you would not want the guns to be firing continually but in bursts anyway - such guns would not be designed for sustained fire, so you'd probably need the firing system to be pulling and releasing the trigger as the gun moves. The only difference between full and semi automatic's would be the timing on that firing system. As I said before, I think, any decent AA system needs to be layered so you would ideally want a mixture of different guns being used. Some heavy machine guns and a lot more submachine gun types. This gives you a nice mixture of heavy hitting rounds and simple area saturation that would cover a much larger area than a simple 'mortar' type explosive without the same problems of targeting and fusing. This setup would also allow you to deploy grenade launchers with timed fuses for the flack effect if you have them available. A mechanical system like this is going to be wildly inaccurate, but then it doesn't need to be. The idea is to fill the local airspace with as much lead as possible, and using a purely mechanical system that is set to do this when activated but otherwise doesn't rely on any targeting system is not only fine for this but avoids any problems with enemy ECM systems. The lack of accuracy is also potentially advantageous because there would be no real pattern to the firing zone and therefore no way pilots would be able to evade or predict incoming fire. The 'mine' aspect would still be something that could be useful. First firing off large numbers of fireworks could be part of your early warning system, and a part that an incoming force can't jam unless they overrun the defenses with ground troops before they could be activated. Second is that while such 'mines' would be basically useless. They could possibly be used to rapidly deploy small barrage balloons to give low flying aircraft something else to think about; A system that chances are any incoming force isn't going to know is there even if they detected the guns themselves. Such balloons would give pilots two choices; Try to fly around, possibly risking flying into each other or terrain. Or go over at which point they risk being detected by conventional air defense systems. Last the act of firing fireworks into the sky could blind the pilots making things even more interesting to say the least.
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Post by the light works on Feb 1, 2019 16:00:28 GMT
well, they did confirm that is possible to do. all you would have to do is tip walter white's car on its side. That is actually a fair example as to how cheap and easy (relatively speaking) using firearms would be compared to trying to use 'fireworks'. You need a frame in which to hold the firearm, and a system that would allow it to be rotated up and to the sides. As shown by the MB rig such a thing can be built using off the shelf items from a local hardware store and be fast and simple to construct on site. You then need suitable guns to mount onto this rig. Ideally you want something in a large caliber, but in this context even a fairly small caliber guns would be adequate; The primary targets are not the actual aircraft but any troops they are carrying, and such transport aircraft are not going to have much much if anything in the way of armor protection. Or put another way your guns only need to be capable of putting holes in the side of a transport and the troops inside and anything beyond that is a bonus. As such you could use something like a Sten or 'Grease gun' for the role. Small cheap light guns intended for mass production that chances are you are already producing. Guns for this role would be even cheaper as some elements, such as the stock, could be omitted entirely depending on the design. Clearly the guns need to be self-loaders (you could and can modify bolt action guns but its time consuming) and you would need to work out a reliable way to provide a much larger magazine or feed system to allow for sustained fire beyond what the standard magazines would allow. Full automatic or semi-automatic might not matter too much, as you would not want the guns to be firing continually but in bursts anyway - such guns would not be designed for sustained fire, so you'd probably need the firing system to be pulling and releasing the trigger as the gun moves. The only difference between full and semi automatic's would be the timing on that firing system. As I said before, I think, any decent AA system needs to be layered so you would ideally want a mixture of different guns being used. Some heavy machine guns and a lot more submachine gun types. This gives you a nice mixture of heavy hitting rounds and simple area saturation that would cover a much larger area than a simple 'mortar' type explosive without the same problems of targeting and fusing. This setup would also allow you to deploy grenade launchers with timed fuses for the flack effect if you have them available. A mechanical system like this is going to be wildly inaccurate, but then it doesn't need to be. The idea is to fill the local airspace with as much lead as possible, and using a purely mechanical system that is set to do this when activated but otherwise doesn't rely on any targeting system is not only fine for this but avoids any problems with enemy ECM systems. The lack of accuracy is also potentially advantageous because there would be no real pattern to the firing zone and therefore no way pilots would be able to evade or predict incoming fire. The 'mine' aspect would still be something that could be useful. First firing off large numbers of fireworks could be part of your early warning system, and a part that an incoming force can't jam unless they overrun the defenses with ground troops before they could be activated. Second is that while such 'mines' would be basically useless. They could possibly be used to rapidly deploy small barrage balloons to give low flying aircraft something else to think about; A system that chances are any incoming force isn't going to know is there even if they detected the guns themselves. Such balloons would give pilots two choices; Try to fly around, possibly risking flying into each other or terrain. Or go over at which point they risk being detected by conventional air defense systems. Last the act of firing fireworks into the sky could blind the pilots making things even more interesting to say the least. I think the mine would spread the hazard more uniformly and make it harder to accidentally avoid, unless you had a big field of your sweep guns. part of the consideration is that with an airburst shell, the hazard is expanding inside the covered area, instead of passing rapidly though the covered area. but, again, looking at this from a perspective of "we have a bouncing behemoth, what application can we find for it?" the application I see it best suited for is a "you may have taken this area from us, but you're going to get hurt when you try to use it" application.
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Post by Cybermortis on Feb 1, 2019 16:46:33 GMT
Why not use it to cover areas where landings are most likely?
Airdrops can't take place just anywhere so there would be a limited number of suitable landing/drop locations. There may be more such locations to cover than available troops. So one possibly viable solution would be to set the 'mortars' up at such locations to fire at any aircraft trying to land or hover or parachutists coming down. (Which again would make for a great way to alert any military units in the area as to landings).
You'd then set up large military forces between those locations, ready to advance and engage the invading troops in force.
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Post by mrfatso on Feb 1, 2019 17:15:40 GMT
Why not use it to cover areas where landings are most likely? Airdrops can't take place just anywhere so there would be a limited number of suitable landing/drop locations. There may be more such locations to cover than available troops. So one possibly viable solution would be to set the 'mortars' up at such locations to fire at any aircraft trying to land or hover or parachutists coming down. (Which again would make for a great way to alert any military units in the area as to landings). You'd then set up large military forces between those locations, ready to advance and engage the invading troops in force. IIRC correctly some of the pillboxes built during WW2 to defend RAF bases included gun mounts that covered the airfield not just the approaches to them in case of Germans attempting to land and use them.
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