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From: sysmgr@KING.ENG.UMD.EDU (Doug Mohney)
Newsgroups: sci.military
Subject: Re: Power Armor
Message-ID: <1991Jun29.013842.1828@cbnews.cb.att.com>
Date: 29 Jun 91 01:38:42 GMT
References: <1991May24.030024.8386@amd.com> <1991Jun6.063339.5887@amd.com> <1991Jun12.012726.25617@amd.com> <1991Jun14.080221.20535@amd.com> <1991Jun18.074541.15334@amd.com>,<1991Jun27.020204.3941@cbnews.cb.att.com>
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From: sysmgr@KING.ENG.UMD.EDU (Doug Mohney)
In article <1991Jun27.020204.3941@cbnews.cb.att.com>, kash1@cs.aukuni.ac.nz (Kemp Ashby) writes:
>>Or even more effective, a squad of soldiers with radios calling in
>>air dropped smart weapons. This idea of armor seems of limited value.
>
>Yes, but that means that you need to have at your disposal a large number
>of aircraft to target a possibly highly mobile enemy - this doesn't sound
>very economic either.

Why bother with that? SADARM munitions (Search And Destroy ARMor) are 
currently being fielded. Launchable by 155mm shell now, but the form factor is
such that you could fit it down a mortar tube. 

SADARM is about the size of a tomato can and fires a self-forging fragment
down into the engine compartment of a vehicle. Given current processor
advances, it would be easy enough to design a smart munition to find a PA-sized
target and punch a SFF through it.

The Merlin 81mm (?) mortar shell also is a smart weapon which could be reworked
to counter the PA threat should it evolve.


     Signature envy: quality of some people to put 24+ lines in their .sigs
  -- >                  SYSMGR@CADLAB.ENG.UMD.EDU                        < --