• UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    Notably absent… the explosives.

    But sure, if you are wondering how folks out in Yemen or Gaza managed to retaliate against their oppressors for so long, this is a textbook example of how and why. What’s being proposed is collection of technology we’ve had since at least the 1960s that’s slowly made its way into civilian circulation.

    Also…

    Khojayev’s just-launched prototype has no effectiveness track record

    I mean, we’re seeing what “just-launched prototypes with no effective track record” have accomplished on the Ukraine-Russia front-lines and it’s a decidedly mixed bag.

    I think a harder question to answer is “Who would be interested in putting one of these into practical use?” And that gets to the real value-add of a Stinger MANPAD. Namely, the humans willing and practiced enough to use it.

    Also - and again, this cannot be overstated - the model above has no explosives installed. Idk how confident I’d be around one of these things if it was actually armed.

    • FauxLiving@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      It’s not a MANPAD really.

      The sensor package has no IR sensor (or radar unit) and no way to proximity fuse.

      It has GPS, accelerometer and barometric pressure. It’s more like a rocket powered artillery shell than an anti-air weapon.

      Or, given the lack of payload, it’s more like a high speed burrito delivery device.

    • Riskable@programming.dev
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      2 months ago

      You don’t need explosives. It has a spot in the front for a camera. One of the new microcontrollers with AI accelerators can do face recognition extremely quickly. It would be possible to use it as an assassination tool.

      Even if you changed nothing about the design, the speed and mass of the thing hitting a person in the face could kill.

      • chaogomu@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        As the bps space YouTube channel has shown, reliability is paramount in any launch, especially a guided launch.

        That and people duck when shit flies at them, unless it’s supersonic, which again, as bps space has shown, control of a supersonic flight is extremely difficult to get right.

        This is a guy who landed a hobby rocket like a tesla booster.

        But at $100 a pop, you could have backups. (or payloads)

      • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        It would be possible to use it as an assassination tool.

        Khojayev’s just-launched prototype has no effectiveness track record

        :-/

        I think

        it’s more like a high speed burrito delivery device.

        Is a more accurate assessment.

    • RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      You can deploy a lot of $96 semi-effective hardware and improve it vs something that might be thousands or even tens or hundreds of thousands to deploy.

      • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        You can deploy a lot of $96 semi-effective hardware

        Khojayev’s just-launched prototype has no effectiveness track record

        :-/

        I mean, time will tell. To date, this particular iteration of technology has a 0% success rate in doing anything but farming clicks.

      • Captain Aggravated@sh.itjust.works
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        2 months ago

        The United States has a variant of the AGM-114 Hellfire missile that replaces the explosive warhead with six scimitar blades. Because fuck That Guy, the whole That Guy and nothing but the That Guy.

        • Blackmist@feddit.uk
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          2 months ago

          Which would come as a surprise to hundreds of dead Iranian schoolgirls.

          Turns out the military under Trump is more a “fuck that town in particular” affair.

          • Captain Aggravated@sh.itjust.works
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            2 months ago

            You know, I’m still struggling to believe the story I’ve been told about that. “The US bombed an elementary school.”

            For my entire life, the US has demonstrated precision munitions. The AGM-114 Ginsu is an air-to-ground laser-guided rocket that can kill an individual passenger in a car. We can fly a Tomahawk cruise missile into a specific window of a building. I’ve seen a bridge in Iraq bombed seconds after the last car crossed. Not saying GI Joe is a paragon of virtue, I’ve seen the pictures from Abu Ghraib, but…That shit sounds a lot more like Israel than us.

            Even in the “no kill like overkill” “We don’t target coordinates, we target grid squares” “enemy fire is coming from that way, destroy that way” United States, that shit sounds a lot more like Israel than us.

            We’re certainly attacking Iran because Israel wanted us to.

            • AnyOldName3@lemmy.world
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              2 months ago

              One of the stills from one of the videos that the BBC showed identifying it as a Tomahawk showed it at a very un-cruise-missile way up, so it could just have malfunctioned during terminal guidance or been clipped but not destroyed by air defence, and then hit the wrong target. It could also just have been a governmenty-looking building close enough to an intended target that whoever was checking it didn’t notice it wasn’t the target. It’s a lot easier to get everything right when the whole mission is to hit one person with one missile when everyone’s got enough time to do their job perfectly and everything’s been rehearsed than when there are thousands of targets and people are doing things in a rush, especially if orders are coming from people who don’t care about international law.

    • WorldsDumbestMan@lemmy.today
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      2 months ago

      I have this idea: Scientists some time ago, discovered they could knot light into loops.

      Would it be possible to make a curved laser for laser artillery?

      • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        Certainly possible. But you’re still stuck on the r2 problem of diminishing returns at a distance. Light doesn’t like staying in a tight beam. The vortex loop is typically not much bigger than the wavelength. I don’t see much of a solution for transmitting energy long distances through air.

    • MonkderVierte@lemmy.zip
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      2 months ago

      Atomize* some propelant, boom, explosive.

      * english choose the dumbest word for “zerstäuben”.

      • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        Atomize* some propelant, boom, explosive.

        The trick is to get the atomized propelant to “boom, explosive” at the target and not in your backpack.

        Also, you probably want a “boom” sufficient to accomplish whatever demolition you’re planning, which - again - raises the stakes regarding what’s in your backpack.

        There’s a classic little film called “The Wages of Fear” that explores the hazards of amateurs transporting high explosives over long distances.

          • chaogomu@lemmy.world
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            2 months ago

            Tannerite comes to mind. It explodes from a high impact, and little else. I’m not sure what sort of yield you’d get. That stuff mostly just makes a pop and smoke.

            I have heard of people using it on stubborn tree stumps, but that’s several pounds of the stuff.

        • MonkderVierte@lemmy.zip
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          2 months ago

          I mean, spray the leftover fuel into the oxygen-filled head only on target? It wouldn’t stay atomized for long anyway. And for the boom, the shell needs only be strong enough. Wouldn’t that work?

          Sure, there’s more effective explosives.

          • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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            2 months ago

            Wouldn’t that work?

            Idk, you wanna find out?

            Listen, if you’ve got the specs for military ordinance and want to say “We’ve done this a thousand times, it works fine” that’s one thing.

            But it’s very much another to just wave your hands and announce “you know, the boom-boom juice goes here and the detonator goes there and it’ll probably do something.”

      • chaogomu@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        Atomize, from the original Ancient Greek adjective atomos, meaning “uncuttable” or “indivisible”.

        Seems pretty apt to me. You have rendered it into its smallest constituent pieces through physical means, any further reduction requires chemical processes, or high energy physics. Coincidentally, a simple spark provides both.

      • frongt@lemmy.zip
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        2 months ago

        Does that literally mean “make dust”? I think “powderize” might be a better translation in this context, if it’s a solid, or “aerosolize” if it’s a liquid. I’ve never been a big fan of the word “atomize” in any case.

        • FauxLiving@lemmy.world
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          2 months ago

          I’ve never been a big fan of the word “atomize” in any case.

          Mate, I’ll have you know some of my relatives are made of atoms