Clever Future Weapons

[Markdoc]

Re: Clever Future Weapons

 

other useful ideas:

 

Hopping mines. Something the US is working on now. Mines with radio transmitters. Lay them close enough to be helpful and the strength of the signal keeps them quiet. Clear an area and the mines "sense" an area of diminished signal and hop (via compressed air) into the void zone. Essentially a self-healing minefield and since the mines are not dug in, can be laid by air or barrage. Also the transmitters mean they can tell the difference between friend and foe, if you're wearing a transmitter, so you you can drive or walk through, but anyone without the right code gets a nasty surprise.

 

Plasma guns. No, really. Not the sort that generates plasma in magnetic containment and then squirts it out - that has exactly the same sort of problems associated with lasers - but a railgun variant. People have been keen on railguns for a while now, but they also have an atmosphere problem - fire a projectile really fast, and it starts to burn up in the atmosphere. In fact, fire it fast enough and it turns to plasma (video here: http://www.powerlabs.org/railgun2.htm). In the demo models, the plasma is relatively non-harmful because it's a tiny amount of mass - it just boils away into the atmosphere. But shooting (say) 2 kilos of mass, covered in a skin of plasma, and you have a pretty effective armour-vaporising weapon (actually the impact alone is probably worth more than the plasma, but "Plasma gun" sounds cool and it would certainly set fire to stuff real good)

 

cheers, Mark

[Kraven Kor]

Re: Clever Future Weapons

 

Post-and-run on weapons I intend to use in my upcoming "A Galaxy Apart" campaign:

 

(Some Borrowed from Lois McMaster Bujold's Miles Books, some from the EVE Online game)

 

Small Arms: Nerve Disruptors, Needle Guns, Needle Grenades, Plasma Arcs (picture 20' stream cutting torch), Gauss guns, Gyrojet Guns, Explosive Projectiles, various particle-projection guns as heavy weapons.

 

Emplaced Weapons:

 

Gravitic Lance: This is a new weapon spawned from wormhole and Gravitic Drive research. It distorts gravity in a mono-dimensional space -- creating a short "line" of intense and conflicting gravitic forces. While only capable of reaching a very short range, the damage from such weapons is intense. There is no known defense vs. this weapon, which is the only thing offsetting the often less than 1 kilometer range.

 

Plasma Projectors: Big Beam Guns like those seen in Freespace 2 -- a wide, continuous flow of plasma. Most ships are highly resistant to thermal damage, and have magnetic screens to further protect them. The general concept is to wear down their defenses with a continuous stream.

 

Plasma Cannons: Like projectors, only they fire a large single burst of concentrated plasma. Considered "obsolete" in many parts of the 'verse.

 

Missiles: Still the most common and effective weapon, though easily countered with anti-missile systems and electronic jamming equipment.

 

Railguns: Mentioned here a bajillion times. Second most common weapon next to missiles.

 

Blasters: A railgun-like weapon which uses special ammunition that vaporizes into a near-plasma state. As these weapons do not use ferrous materials for the actual payload of the munition, they are highly effective at bypassing magnetic shielding. They are also a very limited-range weapon, reaching only a few KM.

 

"Lasers": Most oftenly found in a "Pulse Laser" variety, the name "laser" is actually a misnomer. While there are some photonic weapons, they are not very effective nor efficient -- more often used for mining lasers or cutting devices in industrial applications. True lasers are also easily countered by magnetic shielding or even just reflective materials. Most lasers are actually particle streams of various types, essentially "point and shoot" rapid-fire particle accelerators. The term "laser" is used because the visual effect of these devices are very similar. These weapons are also known for being highly accurate at long ranges.

[gewing]

Re: Clever Future Weapons

 

other useful ideas:

 

Hopping mines. Something the US is working on now. Mines with radio transmitters. Lay them close enough to be helpful and the strength of the signal keeps them quiet. Clear an area and the mines "sense" an area of diminished signal and hop (via compressed air) into the void zone. Essentially a self-healing minefield and since the mines are not dug in, can be laid by air or barrage. Also the transmitters mean they can tell the difference between friend and foe, if you're wearing a transmitter, so you you can drive or walk through, but anyone without the right code gets a nasty surprise.

 

Plasma guns. No, really. Not the sort that generates plasma in magnetic containment and then squirts it out - that has exactly the same sort of problems associated with lasers - but a railgun variant. People have been keen on railguns for a while now, but they also have an atmosphere problem - fire a projectile really fast, and it starts to burn up in the atmosphere. In fact, fire it fast enough and it turns to plasma (video here: http://www.powerlabs.org/railgun2.htm). In the demo models, the plasma is relatively non-harmful because it's a tiny amount of mass - it just boils away into the atmosphere. But shooting (say) 2 kilos of mass, covered in a skin of plasma, and you have a pretty effective armour-vaporising weapon (actually the impact alone is probably worth more than the plasma, but "Plasma gun" sounds cool and it would certainly set fire to stuff real good)

 

cheers, Mark

 

 

Years ago I had a thought about a similar idea. If you were to fire a ceramic projectile with powerful magnet in it, and an ablative layer on the outside, you might be able to actually keep the plasma around the projectile. Then when it impacts, the plasma might tend to do nasty things to electronics...

 

or not.

[gewing]

Re: Clever Future Weapons

 

double tap.

[Nyrath]

Re: Clever Future Weapons

 

Hopping mines. Something the US is working on now. Mines with radio transmitters. Lay them close enough to be helpful and the strength of the signal keeps them quiet. Clear an area and the mines "sense" an area of diminished signal and hop (via compressed air) into the void zone. Essentially a self-healing minefield and since the mines are not dug in, can be laid by air or barrage.

That is uncomfortably close to the hideous German S-Mine or "Bouncing Betty" used in WWII.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S-mine

 

When triggered by an unlucky soldier, a small charge would loft the mine up to about waist level, where the main charge would detonate. It was designed to kill by cutting the soldier in two.

 

It worked even better as a psychological weapon. All too often it would fail to actually kill the victim, instead it would only cause the soldier to loose their legs or their genitalia. Soldiers who were brave enough to enter a conventional mine field would not go anywhere near a field of bouncing betties. A truly awful weapon.

[Inu]

Re: Clever Future Weapons

 

That is uncomfortably close to the hideous German S-Mine or "Bouncing Betty" used in WWII.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S-mine

 

When triggered by an unlucky soldier, a small charge would loft the mine up to about waist level, where the main charge would detonate. It was designed to kill by cutting the soldier in two.

 

It worked even better as a psychological weapon. All too often it would fail to actually kill the victim, instead it would only cause the soldier to loose their legs or their genitalia. Soldiers who were brave enough to enter a conventional mine field would not go anywhere near a field of bouncing betties. A truly awful weapon.

From what I'm aware, they were designed to injure, not kill, producing the result you describe (and Markdoc alludes to).

 

An injured soldier requires requires people to drag him back to hospital and take care of him once he's there. A dead soldier requires either a) nothing, or a burial detail. Much less of a drain on resources.

 

Scary reasoning.

[Inu]

Re: Clever Future Weapons

 

Myself, I'm a fan of the Effectors, courtesy Iain M. Banks. A multi-function tool, Effectors were available to virtually any artificial intelligence in The Culture (where Minds - advanced enough AIs - had full right as citizens). Basically, technology that could create effects at a distance. Anything from sensory (including detecting chemical/electrical states in minds to read thoughts) to benign (warming food) to dangerous (heating people to boiling point, disorienting organics, inducing harmonic overload, or generically frying targets). A truly multi-purpose tool. they had dedicated weapons as well, but the Effector was an incredible tool for peace and war.

[Inu]

Re: Clever Future Weapons

 

Well, yes, but I recall reading articles in the 70's and 80's which said exactly the same thing. Lasers today are both lighter and far more energy efficient, but they still have the same maximum range as the 747-mounted dinosaurs of yore (5-6 feet - maybe a tenth of that against hard targets).

 

I agree that (apart from space-based weapons) conventional lasers are unlikely to become real weapons simply because "ya can'na break the laws of physics!" - and to generate enough wattage on the surface of a target that you get explosive heating, you're gonna have to burn a hole through a lot of atmosphere - which is an effective convective coolant.

From what I'm aware, there are lasers available today that are effective against targets... and I seem to recall ground-based lasers that are capable of shooting down satellites. I may have been misled by badly-written news articles, however.

 

It just seems to me that electromagnetic energy, even visible light-based, can penetrate the atmosphere much more easily than people.

 

But one problem I keep hearing about is smoke and fog and other particulate matter. Sure, even if a laser might be able to go out of the atmosphere, a light fog might stop it utterly, making it all but useless to actual infantry.

 

Which I've used in sci-fi settings to create an odd effect, where civilain-available weapons (lasers) are more powerful than military weapons (bullets) due to the fact that the military has to issue rifles that will work in all-weather conditions, whereas civilians don't always worry about that.

[gewing]

Re: Clever Future Weapons

 

From what I'm aware, they were designed to injure, not kill, producing the result you describe (and Markdoc alludes to).

 

An injured soldier requires requires people to drag him back to hospital and take care of him once he's there. A dead soldier requires either a) nothing, or a burial detail. Much less of a drain on resources.

 

Scary reasoning.

 

 

Guys, I may be wrong, but a couple points

 

1) bouncing betty type mines have been used by many countries.

 

2) I was under the impression the main reason they went off in the air was so that the fragments had more chance of hitting people who were on the ground.

[Matt Frisbee]

Re: Clever Future Weapons

 

Having browsed this thread, here's my two cents' worth:

 

POPSICLE (Logan's Run, I think) -- A short ranged weapon which sprays the target with supercooled gasses (or liquid). Very nasty.

 

DALLY GUN (Logan's Run, again) -- A six chambered weapon (like a revolver) loaded with various types of ammunition. In the case of the book, there was an entangler round, a ripper round (explosive), a homer round (to kill runners), and three others which escape my memory.

 

MASER (CP2020, 2300AD) -- A laser with a focused wavelength in the range of microwaves. Generally only stopped by hard armors and detrimental to electronics and cybernetics which aren't EMP shielded.

 

THUMPER (My own idea) -- A focused sonic anti-personnel weapon (weapon fires a targeting/ranging laser to set range for the sonic portion, so it is susceptable to laser aerosols) which essentially hits the target with a pulse of sound designed to force the air from its lungs, leaving the target momentarily immobilized. CP2020 could counter this with an Independent Air Supply, but armor wouldn't. Could be cancelled by a "Barker" which interferes with the sound wave by generating a similar pulse out of phase with the first, cancelling it out.

 

And of course, my all time favorite melee weapon from FGU's Space Opera game -- COAGULATOR which is a short hafted weapon tipped with a varible geometry forcefield which scrambles flesh and other organic materials it touches. Another truly nasty weapon since it makes hideous wounds.

 

And now I'm outta pennies -- good luck with the campaign, even though this thread was kinda dead.

 

Matt "Just-doin'-my-part" Frisbee

[Kaeto]

Re: Clever Future Weapons

 

How about a Tressor aka Rattler. A tractor-pressor beam that changes direction of movement every .01 second.

 

Or the Hellbore from the Bolo stories. A Fusion Plasma weapon using lasers to create a tunnel of vacuum for the plasma bolt to travel down and the bolt is traveling at .6 lightspeed

[Nyrath]

Re: Clever Future Weapons

 

There was an ancient 60's novel called INVADER ON MY BACK by Philip E. High. It had some amusing assassin weapons. Such as bullets that would travel in a straight line for a pre-set distance, then start moving at ninety degrees (used to fire around corners, and to defeat detectors that can back-track to the firing point). They had other bullets that would move at walking speed until they got within a few meters of the target.

 

Igniter shells were nasty. They were made of an exotic chemical that would cause a human body to catch on fire. There were also programmed land mines. These would move around underground. A friendly unit with the movement pattern could walk through. But by the time an enemy unit could try and use the same path, the safe path would have become a deadly path, as the mines changed position.

[Peregrine]

Re: Clever Future Weapons

 

Non-leathal weapons

 

Don't exist.

 

There are a class of what is now called "less-lethal" weapons, ranging from electric shock weapons ('Tasers', et. al.) to rubber projectiles, but any of these can kill, though the death rate is a bit lower than standard bullets.

 

A true 'non-lethal' weapon (meaning 'absolutely cannot kill the target') would have to have effects with a precision level impossible to reach (take into account differences in target body mass, health, etc.).

[tkdguy]

Re: Clever Future Weapons

 

I remember a Doctor Who episode (during the Tom Baker era) where a group of miners had the Pacifier gun. Basically, it fires a ray that calms down an aggressive individual and removes all feelings of hostility for a short time.

[Fitz]

Re: Clever Future Weapons

 

Memory-form flechette - the individual flechettes are manufactured in a spiral form, and then straightened. When exposed to warmth and moisture (such as from being inserted at high velocity into a human body) the flechettes revert to their original helical form, wrapping themselves around bones and arteries and probably doing a bit more tearing in the process.

 

Bleeach.

[L. Marcus]

Re: Clever Future Weapons

 

The Gravitic RIPPER: The weapon projects two beams of artificial gravity, set to oscilate - when one pulls, the other pushes. The target is ripped to shreds, and armor is of no use . .

 

Man-portable G-RIPPER: RKA 3d6, NND (Defense is Gravitic Force Field or Shield, +1), Does BODY (+1); 135 APts; OAF (-1), STR 15 Required (-3/4?), Real Weapon (-1/4), 16 Charges (-1/4?); 60 RPts, or some such . . .

[Matt Frisbee]

Re: Clever Future Weapons

 

Another weapon I remember was from William Gibson's Neuromancer:

 

COBRA -- essentially a bladed whip formed from three lengths of coil spring attached to a handle. Wicked thing to use on someone who isn't wearing armor (or a personal force field) since the whip lengths would wrap around an arm or a weapon attempting to parry it.

 

And from Gibson's Johnny Mnemonic:

 

MONOWIRE WHIP -- a weighted wire formed from a single molecular strand (probably magnetically or electrically reinforced to retain cohesion). So narrow it will cut through anything -- flesh, bone, wood, metal or stone -- in time.

 

And from the movie Minority Report:

 

GRAVITON PULSE GUN -- The weapon fires a burst of gravitons that is primarily designed to generate knockdown or knockback. A less-than-lethal weapon, provided it isn't used in an enclosed space.

 

Once again -- I hope this helps!

 

Matt Frisbee

[Kraven Kor]

Re: Clever Future Weapons

 

We can't forget -- and I hope I didn't miss it being mentioned -- the MD Device from Ender's Game

 

For those who haven't read it, this is a weapon which creates a field at the intersection of two "beams." Inside this field, matter loses its cohesion, molecules breaking apart into their component atoms. The field is propogated by the mass it disintegrates, meaning a ship in the field creates a new field based on its mass. If that field hits another object, the process repeats. A fleet of ships flying in too close of a formation would be almost entirely destroyed.

 

Don't be close by when you shoot this at someone And it is not intended for planetary use. Unless you don't like the planet you use it on, because it won't be there anymore.

 

 

 

Another weapon I liked was in a book called Armor, a very good book really. It was called a Blazer -- a continuos fire cutting laser, capable of mowing down nearly anything the beam came in contact with. A bit of an unrealistic weapon, but you gotta like the image of slicing through 20 ranks of an approaching giant insect horde -- which is what they were designed for, oddly enough

[Wormhole]

Re: Clever Future Weapons

 

How about a weapon that throws a web of carbon nanotubes on the target?

[tkdguy]

Re: Clever Future Weapons

 

There's also that sonic device a cruise ship used to repel pirates off the coast of Africa last month.

[Markdoc]

Re: Clever Future Weapons

 

From what I'm aware' date=' there are lasers available today that are effective against targets... and I seem to recall ground-based lasers that are capable of shooting down satellites. I may have been misled by badly-written news articles, however.[/quote']

 

 

Alas, I fear so. The US development programs has quite powerful, mobile lasers, capable of melting steel. The trouble is that they have a very short effective range, even in normal clear atmospheric conditions - and they require you hold the target still for a while, or carefully track with it so the heat build up. To get explosive heating of anything tougher than, say, water at more than arm's length, you need a laser nearly an order of magnitude more powerful than anything currently under testing.

 

Here's triumphant announcement of successful anti-missile laser tests from last century: http://www.fas.org/news/israel/960209-il-israel.htm. Since then, of course, nada. And I've seen releases like this dating back decades.

 

Specifically, you may be thinking of MTHEL (Mobile Tactical High Energy Laser) developed by (IIRC) Northrop, which had all sorts of claims published about intercepting mortar shells, missiles etc and "shooting them down". However in this case "shooting them down" meant "carefuly plotting the course in advance and setting the test up so that we could track them with a laser, at a relatively close range, so that we had enough time to heat them up". And that from a small-building-sized laser. Northrop was predicting mobile versions ready for the army in 2007. Instead DoD cut the MTHEL program in 2004, essentially killing it.

 

Here's why. "We've been hearing for years that 100 kilowatts is only a year away," says Art Stephenson, the vice president of Northrop's Directed Energy Systems division. "But scaling up that far is a much harder engineering problem than anybody recognized." And not only that - 100 kilowatts is really at the bottom end of the scale - that'd work on short range (a few km) targets in good weather. Tough if there's dust in the air, like (say) Iraq, eh? Realistically, to get quick clean kills at realistic ranges, you need a megawatt laser - and no-one seems to have any idea yet how to build one - or even what you'd build it out of. Standard equipment can't deliver pulsed energy in that range and conventional lasing material would melt if it could.

 

Back in the late 90's, we were promised a megawatt laser operating out of a modified 747 with a range of 200 miles. Remember that guy? All the "artist's impressions?" It was supposed to be ready to enter service in 2005. Instead, in 2005, the team has successfully demonstrated that the laser tracking system works - in a hanger, on the ground, using a benchtop system.

 

Maybe I'm being too sceptical, but I've been hearing "any time, real soon now" for half my lifetime, and while some progress has been made, today, the smallest laser with anything like usable power weighs 310 tons, needs a 6 hour warm-up time and has about the same range as a heavy machine gun. Now that's just not what I'd call a real useful weapon.

 

Battle lasers - including antimissile lasers - *are* under development. But they are not sci-fi type lasers designed to damage the target directly but light delivery systems designed to blind. Think what happens to your nightvision gear when someone shines a 25 kilowatt laser straight into it. For that matter, think what would happen if it was shone directly into your eye. Likewise, IR lasers for plane mounting are being tested - they are designed to blind the heat sensor mounted in the nosecone of an heat-seeking missile - but not to harm the missile itself.

 

cheers, Mark

[Markdoc]

Re: Clever Future Weapons

 

Guys, I may be wrong, but a couple points

 

1) bouncing betty type mines have been used by many countries.

 

2) I was under the impression the main reason they went off in the air was so that the fragments had more chance of hitting people who were on the ground.

 

You ain't wrong (on either count). The US versions were the M16A2 - small charge, explodes about hip height and the M2A4, which bounces up over head height before exploding - has a slightly larger charge and larger area of effect.

 

*Regular* mines are the ones that give "the wound" since they blow upwards out of the ground - giving them a good chance of severe damge to location 13: but they don't hit nearly as many people arond them when they go off.

 

That's why s-mines were so feared in WW2 - not because of "the wound" - but because if someone in your squad set one off, you were all potentially in the hurt zone, whereas if he stepped on a conventional APERS mine odds are only he would take "the 30 foot step".

 

As a note, I'm not sure when the "bouncing betty" name came into use - it may actually be vietnam era slang for the M16 series. US troops in Vietnam hated them - a huge number of US casualties came from their own mines. My dad, who had direct personal experience of the WW2 german verson always called them "s-mines" or "those nasty little bastards",

 

cheers, Mark

[Nyrath]

Re: Clever Future Weapons

 

And from Gibson's Johnny Mnemonic:

 

MONOWIRE WHIP -- a weighted wire formed from a single molecular strand (probably magnetically or electrically reinforced to retain cohesion). So narrow it will cut through anything -- flesh, bone, wood, metal or stone -- in time.

Gibson "borrowed" this from the novels of Larry Niven. The Sinclair Molecule Chain appeared in "The Borderland of Sol". When stiffened with a force field it became the Kzinti variable sword in RINGWORLD.

[Inu]

Re: Clever Future Weapons

 

Alas, I fear so. The US development programs has quite powerful, mobile lasers, capable of melting steel. The trouble is that they have a very short effective range, even in normal clear atmospheric conditions - and they require you hold the target still for a while, or carefully track with it so the heat build up. To get explosive heating of anything tougher than, say, water at more than arm's length, you need a laser nearly an order of magnitude more powerful than anything currently under testing.

 

Here's triumphant announcement of successful anti-missile laser tests from last century: http://www.fas.org/news/israel/960209-il-israel.htm. Since then, of course, nada. And I've seen releases like this dating back decades.

Yep, I was misled by the anti-satellite lasers you linked to. I was reading various reports about the tests, which were confusingly written (I personally wonder whether the authors knew what they were writing about) and gave the impression that the ground-based laser shot down a satellite. Insetad, it appears that the ground-based 30-watt laser managed to track a satellite, or something like that.

 

If that was true, it was still impressive! But not exactly sci-fi yet.

[Matt Frisbee]

Re: Clever Future Weapons

 

Gibson "borrowed" this from the novels of Larry Niven. The Sinclair Molecule Chain appeared in "The Borderland of Sol". When stiffened with a force field it became the Kzinti variable sword in RINGWORLD.

 

Ah, I stand corrected then. *Adds novel to list of books I haven't read yet, which is nearly a book in and of itself*

 

There are some days when I can really understand the guy from The Twilight Zone who read his way through World War III only to sit on his glasses after he had all of the time in the world to read...

 

Matt "The-myopic-menace-to-librarians-everywhere" Frisbee