What will be the most important invention in the military of the next century!

[James Kidder]

I think the most important tech. advance in the next century will be with ICBM's. The Russians are developing a manoeuvring warhead for their SS-27's:



Interesting to say the least, if the Russians can actually pull it off, America's NMD will surely never work (it doesn't now anyways). If the Chinese and other states get this tech into their hands, it changes the balance of power yet again.

I think that huge devastating attacks with cruise missiles are on the way out. Patriot systems are getting better and you would have to destroy them for the big missiles to be effective on the stronger countries.
I think the best invention for the military would be a perfect espionage device, one that could watch any person without them knowing that they were being watched. Then all enemies of the state would have to be very careful about what they were seen doing because they would have to assume they were being watched at all times. Surprise attacks would be impossible.

 

[kmguru]

I agree, provided the next generation cruise missiles does not use stealth technology. In these type of scenarios, the party that has the latest technology may win. It is difficult to track with high precision and then communicate with the anti-missile assuming all the computation is done on a base, then if the opponent uses counter measures then it is who has the technology edge.....

 

[cosmictraveler]

Forget new nuclear weapons, hypersonic bombers, or cyber-warefare, supercavitating weapons will lead a brand new form of warefare in the next fifty years. Supercavitating weapons, or propulsion in water may in the near future allow submarines to travel some at well over 150 mph. Russia has a fairly unknown torpedio that travels at approximatly 230 mph, and is planning to sell them to France, Iran, China, and the Ukraine. To get a better overview on the whole subject, now that I've surely got you hooked click on this link:

http://www.sciam.com/2001/0501issue/0501ashley.html

For anyone intrested in the Navy, military weapons or combat in general this should hit the spot. Very exciting!

There are 2 things that will help more in the future. 1 of them is better intelligence gathering and the 2nd is better communication between governments to prevent a world war from ever happening.

 

[RonVolk]

More, better, Automated combat systems. Dead troops look bad on TV why not send a machine to do it?

 

[Undecided]

I think that huge devastating attacks with cruise missiles are on the way out.

With ICBM's? I don't think so, what is going to replace it? What will provide as the deterrence? Obviously Bombers are not going to replace the missiles that were supposed to replace them in the first place. If anything more ICBM's will be built by the Chinese, and possibly India, and North Korea.

Patriot systems are getting better and you would have to destroy them for the big missiles to be effective on the stronger countries.

I think you are getting the wrong impression (are you?) ICBM's are multi-staged rockets. By the time of re-entry they are zooming by at Mach 18, no Patriot would ever destroy a warhead coming down. Patriots have a hard time destroying Scuds to this day. Russian missiles will easily thwart any American NMD anyways.

 

[James Kidder]

What about the up and coming systems? As weapons improve so do defenses. The was once a saying that the bomber always got through. Not many people saying that now? Radar was invented and flak improved and pretty soon those bombers came down. Same thing will happen with missles.

 

[kmguru]

Watched CBS 60 minutes. It turns out that the Patriot missile does work - that is anything that flies overhead gets knocked down - friend or foe. A minor technical glitch.

The up and coming system is based on hypersonic missiles (Russia). Soon there will be particle weapons close to the speed of light. The one I like is to speed up pea size metal alloys at speeds of 30,000 mph to shoot down anything.

 

[one_raven]

The same inventions that have been most important to warfare for centuries:
The next advancement in making mass propaganda more accessible and believable.

 

[Julixa]

If you want to get real futuristic, imagine putting a geneticly modified food in some country's food supply, one that could be detected by some radiation detection system known only to the perpertitrator; then perhaps a pernicious frequency could be emitted which destroy all those who have injested this modified food.trictlu personnel-not property, the ideal spoils.

 

[kmguru]

Work is probably underway in a basement somewhere to create a weapon of genocide - making the women infertile. That will dwindle down the population quietly.

The worst one is a modified flu virus -

Far future - time bombs, literally - that can accelarate 100 years in a matter of minutes in a small zone. But you never know, if it will wipe out the people in the zone or make them more advanced. Fun to speculate!

 

[Stokes Pennwalt]

Nice thread necromancy, whoever resurrected this anarchronism. Sorry for the long post, but there's a lot going on in here.

how do you make the lasers ionize air?

It's very easy actually. All you need to do is project a beam with such a wavelength as to be easily absorbed by the gas, and with enough power to not be attenuated after traveling 100 meters or some other such menial distance. When the air absorbs enough of the beam's energy, the gas atoms lose their electrons and become a positively charged plasma. Because the plasma state is not one-dimensional throughout the beam path, it is more of a soup if ions in varying states of temperature.

A good example of how this works is in the directed energy research the US DARPA was working on during the 1980s as part of SDI. One of the ideas was to generate a very high powered pulse of electrons and launch it in a tightly-focussed beam at a distant target, through the atmosphere. We're talking pulses over 5 megawatts in under 1/100th of a second. When the accelerator would fire into the air, the charge would go in a random direction influenced by a multitude of chaotic elements such as temperature fluctuations, air viscousity, wind, and humidity - in a bright wad of ball lightning. Amazingly destructive, but also completely uncontrollable. What was needed was a means of producing a conductive path for the electrons to find favorable so that they would go where desired.

Enter the Nitrogen laser.

A Nitrogen laser produces a number of different wavelengths in its cavity, not the least of which is at 337 nanometers - deep into the short-wave UV spectrum. This wavelength is absorbed by the atmosphere very rapidly, being dissipated as heat. This heat would in turn create a plasma, which would result in a channel of ionized gas being drilled through the atmosphere. Because Nitrogen lasers are pulsed devices, a series of high powered pulses from one of them would blast a column of electrically conductive gas over a large distance. When the electron gun was aligned coaxially with the Nitrogen laser, everything fell into place.

The N2 laser would fire a few hundred times in under a second, blazing a path through the air composed of ionized gas. Immediately following this (and sometimes at the same time or close to it) the electron gun would fire. This time, rather than going wherever mother nature dictated, the electrons would follow the path of least resistance right down the laser beam to the target. Think of it as laser guidance of another flavor, if that helps. Keep in mind that the N2 laser is merely one of many lasers that could and has performed such a task, and I'm using it as an example not intended to be considered wholly exclusive.

For those of us who work in this field, we really do not want you to believe in it for a moment until we make it public.

Quoted for God's truth.

Re. Clancy's 'Hunt for Red October': the bit there was magneto-hydrodynamic propulsion. Best part for me was seeing a copy of 'Proceedings' on the Captain's desk in his stateroom.

You know, when I first saw that movie I was expecting it to really suck and be yet another time when Hollywood completely gaffed depicting all things military. The Proceedings issue was a nice touch of realism, I have to admit.

Re. the Kursk: It was the supercavitating torpedo that made a mess of the pride of Russian's submarine fleet (brand spanking new), two of them actually, and why they are going to recover the Kursk. They don't want to take a chance on us trying to do again what we tried to do about twenty or so years ago.

What's your source on this? It could've just as easily been any old fish. Russian torpedos, to the extent of my knowledge, have always been hypergolically fueled. Sort of like the USN/RN's OTTO II fuel, only much more volatile; producing hydrogen sulfide gas instead of nitrogen when combined with seawater. The AARs I can disclose all dealt with a fuel spill in the forward torpedo room leading to an explosion as the HS gas exploded. Being that she was at depth when the casualty occurred, it's not hard to see why the Kursk never came back up again. Otherwise she probably would've been fine. Those Oscar II hulls are damn near indestructible from an accident standpoint. They're the whole reason why we've got the Mk.48 ADCAP nowadays.

Interesting to say the least, if the Russians can actually pull it off, America's NMD will surely never work (it doesn't now anyways). If the Chinese and other states get this tech into their hands, it changes the balance of power yet again.

Except that, even with a fully functioning tiered NMD system in place, the Russian missile fleet would easily be able to saturate it. GBI NMD is only intended to have 20 interceptors when fully activated, and multiple interceptors would be allocated for each incoming threat. Conservatively, assuming a 50% engagement success rate per EKV, I'll say that it could probably handle a maximum of 3-4 missiles at one time. As you can see, that is only enough of a capability to mitigate a token threat from a rogue entity, not the entire strategic arsenal of a (vestigial) superpower.

MARVs are completely unnecessary to circumvent an ABM system. The Russians are just using the American NMD as a thread to upgrade weapons they would be upgrading regardless. Furthermore, the SS-27 has not shown itself to be MARV capable yet in test firings, so the jury's still out on whether or not it really is.

 

[Undecided]

MARVs are completely unnecessary to circumvent an ABM system.

For Russia yes, for China no... With the whorish state of the Russian arms industry as of late. I would not be surprised if the Russians would compromise their security and give this very important tech to the Chinese.

Furthermore, the SS-27 has not shown itself to be MARV capable yet in test firings, so the jury's still out on whether or not it really is.

I haven't read anything to say otherwise, I have read that the Russians have tested it. Again we don't know the actual testing parameters so it's a pretentious at this stage to say anything.

 

[Stokes Pennwalt]

I haven't read anything to say otherwise, I have read that the Russians have tested it.

They have, but not with a MARV in the PBV. It'd be pretty public if they did test it, too, given the level of scrutiny all nations of the nuclear club afford each other's respective tests.

Again we don't know the actual testing parameters so it's a pretentious at this stage to say anything.

Indeed.

 

[d3u5_3x_m4ch1n4]

While you all may be infatuated with the offensive aspect of military innovation at the moment, I think that you are also forgetting about military defense. I am not suggesting abolishment of offensive tactics, as I personally also prefer them, however, a country with an effective defense will be able to deflect/avoid attack without causing harm to others. Defense technology allows us to come to peaceful resolution in the absence of violence.
The first issue of defensive technology is stealth. Stealth and safety from direct human observation is easily obtained. Primarily because humans are chiefly dependant upon sight as their dectecting sense. And becoming invisible is not as far-fetched as you may think. Adaptive camouflage http://www.unusualresearch.com/drreno/adaptivecamouflage.htm is, more and more, becoming a reality. Unfortunate flaws include heat production, energy consumption and cost.
Now, a note on 'passive energy shielding'. Energy is defined as "the ability to cause matter to move". The Passive in 'passive energy shielding' implies that this energy is completely inert: impossible. ENERGY itself is always on a positive scale, as anything on a negative scale is considered endothermic. Passive energy is an oxymoron.
A more practical shielding technique would be, as I would put it, Electro-shielding. The surface to be shielded would be coated in a checkerboard-like fur coating. Every-other hair would be positively charged, while the others negative. If the hairs were firm enough, or the electric field perfectly balenced, a thin sheet of electricity would be projected between the hairs, visually turning the object into a ball of plasma. Any matter which attempted to pass through the field would be ionized (incinerated for vocabulairily-challenged [burnt for the stupid]) nearly-instantly. This would also yield offensive possibilities, as a trooper wearing a suit of this would be a million-degree, walking fireball. And, on a final note, the UV light given off by the spark-gap barrier would probably blind anyone looking at it whilst unprotected. The chief flaws of energy shielding are energy consumption and protection: if the barrier only superheated a particle, then the target would not be protected at all.... Rather than be shot by flying lead, they would be shot with molten ouch....
Most practical shielding methods would also work similarly, if viewed from a practical standpoint. An alternative, involving solid-state protecton would be to suspend a number of magnetic particles in a tight cloud around the user using (duh) magnets. One flaw with this system is that the user would also be blind. Not literally, but, well, human eyes cannot see matter through a cloud of solid iron. Also, a large number of these shields used in close proximity could interact with each other to create a very messy flak bomb. Not good. The magnetic field would also disturb all nearby transistor electronics and any magnetism-based navigational equipment.
Now, back on the topic of Offensive military technology. Some reading, both on the internet and in magazines has revealed to me that the Pentagon wishes to research non-lethal warfare technology, so toss your phasers and lasers out the window. (or at least the government would have us believe that...)
One such non-lethal military device in research right now is the so-called Pain-Beam. Causing less damage to the body than a sunburn, the pain-beam works by essentially cooking the body with microwaves. The frequency of the microwaves is such that it would not cook you like a steak, but would damage nerve tissue to the point of making your body feel as if it is burning.
Another Offensive military tactic that has been long in research is ELF: Extra-low-frequency modulations. More or less, these are radio or sound waves projected in such a manner that they are not detected consciously, but by the acclaimed "subconscious". They are not always used upon the enemy, but on allies as well. While they could be used to cause an enemy to reconsider an attack on 'friendly' soil, they could also be used to entice friendly civilians to join military forces. Unconscious propaganda. Scary.
The final topic which I will discuss is the matter of Human Nerve disruption. Currently, it looks like Trekkie technology. Impossible? Perhaps not. One example akin to nervous disruption that we can observe is in tesla Coils. A could, passed through a magnetic field, is induced with an electric current. Now, what do parts of the body use to communicate, aside from hormones. Everybody, say it with me...ELECTRICITY! So, if we were able to induce current into human nerves as we induce it into circutry, BAM! Insta-seizure. And I mean full-scale seizures! Just like an EMP grenade will destroy any semi-conductors in the blast radius, A nervous signal inductor would cause massive nervous disruption, probably either instantly killing or retarding the victim. Not exactly non-lethal....
Military technology is a very touchy discussion. On one side, you have humanists. "Don't hurt them! They're innocent" You know who I'm talking about. But then again, there are also the more agressive people. You know who you are. "Why are you sending troops into Iraq? NUKE THOSE SOB's!" Military technology would be an even more sensetive discussion if there was no propaganda and brain-washing though....

 

[kmguru]

Great stuff d3u5_3x_m4ch1n4. I forgot this thread still going....

 

[cosmictraveler]

Peace.

 

[Brains]

Orbital Railguns Which would probaly exist late 21st century would be able to make a crater with a bit of tungsten the size of a pea by accelrating to over 21000kph.
That will cause a lot of hurt if it collides with the ground in a vertical fashion into a very large city e.g. beijing

 

[Stokes Pennwalt]

Orbital Railguns Which would probaly exist late 21st century would be able to make a crater with a bit of tungsten the size of a pea by accelrating to over 21000kph.
That will cause a lot of hurt if it collides with the ground in a vertical fashion into a very large city e.g. beijing

You will have a hard time getting it down to sea level at that velocity.

Also, a few hundred grams of Tungsten won't do dick to anything like a city no matter what its velocity.

 

[Brains]

The crater in arizona was caused by a bit of rock that hit the ground at 14000kph(note speed is lower than the railgun) was less than half meter across of material less(note less) dense than tht of a tungsten bullet.
Also most of the tungsten would be left as it has a boiling point of 2300ish
when the temperature of the outside of a spaceshuttle which is much larger hits 1600C.

So this concludes that a tungsten bullet would cause a massive amount of damage at that god damn speed.

 

[d3u5_3x_m4ch1n4]

The railguns currently in development by scientists and civilians can achive speeds up to about 9 miles/second. The slug they fire is about the volume of a shot glass, but a bit longer. The railguns require 1,000,000 amps to fire and the rails are about 15 feet long. Current technology would only be useful if you wanted to snipe someone a few (hundred) miles away.
When I was 13, I thought about a concept: making a one-way glass cube with the reflective side facing in. If you could make one that was verry friggin effective, you could store nearly infinite amounts of light inside of it. Of course, the cube would have to be vacuum sealed AND the inside chemically polished to a microscopically perfect surface. BUT, if you made one and left it outside for a few...I dunno.... days, and then broke it open, the light would be so bright....about equal to that amount of time in the sun. The only problem would be that since that sort of perfection is impossible, and the imperfections would absorb the light's energy, and the bomb would eventually explode on its own if continually exposed to light.
I also thought about something that someone I know actually tried. A CD bomb. He collected a bunch of CD's and jammed a modified M80 in the middle. He was hiding behind a half-inch wooden fence and when it went off, a piece of shrapnel pierced the fence right by his ear.
The relevance of this is that today's shrapnels are FAR outdated. I think that we need to start focusing on different shrapnels for different things, EG. Powder for non-lethal dispatching, but needles for armored targets. The only shrapnels in today's arsenal are ball-bearings and lead flak. Although they will suffice for today's technology, we are eventually going to need better grenades (Electric napalm, anyone )

that's all for this post.undefined