Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!usc!sdd.hp.com!ucsd!pacbell.com!att!cbnews!cbnews!military From: john%ghostwheel.unm.edu@ariel.unm.edu (John Prentice) Newsgroups: sci.military Subject: Re: Hyper velocity missiles?? Message-ID: <1991Feb15.070501.10569@cbnews.att.com> Date: 15 Feb 91 07:05:01 GMT Sender: military@cbnews.att.com (William B. Thacker) Organization: University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM Lines: 53 Approved: military@att.att.com From: john%ghostwheel.unm.edu@ariel.unm.edu (John Prentice) In article <1991Feb13.220248.4292@cbnews.att.com> hon@hans.scs.carleton.ca (Edmund Hon) writes: >A number of years ago I read an article saying that the US is developing >a kind of anti-tank missiles that does not require explosives - chemical >energy - but instead uses just kinetic energy to kill a tank, like the >depleted uranium AP rounds used on most modern tanks. It is a long, thin >missile, which flies at something like mach 2-3. Has anyone heard of this >missile? What is the status of this program now, canceled? Gone "black"? We have used DU rounds fired from tanks for many years. However, the ones used currently are not hypervelocity (to my knowledge). The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency has funded a program called the Armor/Anti-armor program for several years now to the tune of about $250 million a year to develop exotic armor and anti-armor (the program has about vanished I think now). A major thrust in that program has been developing hypervelocity impact weapons. Probably the most promising are spaced rods. These are just normal anti-armor DU rods (there are many other materials besides DU used), except they are cut up with the pieces spaced a bit apart from each other. The idea is that the shock wave from the impact does not travel up the rod and slow it down before it hits the armor. This is only important if the impact velocity is less than the sound speed of the rod (say 5 km/sec), but I no of nothing outside of the laboratory that can propel these projectiles that fast. There has been much work on using EM railguns for this purpose, but it is a long ways from a real weapon and I don't think they have ever been real successful anyway. I don't know of any "missiles" designed for this purpose, if by missile you mean something which is self propelled. However, my speciality is penetration mechanics, not ordinance, so it could be. If you are interested in more about this, go check out the Journal of Impact Engineering. There was an issue from three years ago or so that was devoted to the proceedings of an irregularly held meeting called the Hypervelocity Impact Symposium. However, that is mostly research info, it won't tell you much about actual weapons. By the way, I know of absolutely no effective anti-armor weapons which are not kinetic energy penetrators. Some use high explosives to get the kinetic energy (shaped charge jets for instance), but a chemical explosive is pretty useless direclty against armor. Also, most of these weapons do not kill by actually penetrating. Instead they set up a shock wave in the armor that spalls the inner surface and kills by fragmentation. It is no mean trick to actually penetrate armor all the way (though it can happen). John -- John K. Prentice john@unmfys.unm.edu (Internet) Dept. of Physics and Astronomy, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM, USA Computational Physics Group, Amparo Corporation, Albuquerque, NM, USA