Spergout on Smart Ammunition

[オプセック]

I stumbled upon this post:

Flak tanks, to no one's surprise, fire fused shells

Which made me recall that there was lots of shillery around programmable, or "smart" infantry 'nade launchers many a moon ago.
I did hazard the speculation that they might do it now, because of drones, which prompted mixed reactions to those off-topic rants.

Most loitering munitions are slow and fly under 200 kph, they might accelerate when diving on a target, but in general they are janky, oversized, r/c planes. fpv drones also buzz around at those speeds, which means we kinda do have the same situation as in WW1 with double-deckers doing strafe runs or outright dropping explosives on peoples heads from the cockpit, just much smaller, harder to hit and today's infantry does lack anything, safe for manpad AA systems (not for fpv drones) and shot guns to engage such targets.

So I began looking into it:

XM29 OICW - Smart and Automatic, never lived past prototyping​

S&T Daewoo K11 - Shmart, but bolt action​

Primitive, hand-held auto-cannons DO seem to have gained some traction:​

QLZ-87 - Buttnaked would've chosen this one​

Neopup PAW-20 - Not smart, just automatic, but looks the part​

So, I don't see an inherent problem with the format.
These things aren't too heavy either and the projectiles do have effective reach between 500 and 1000 meters.
However, all these shortened 20mm shells are a little bit slow, just roughly tripling a drone's top speed. It's all around 200m/s.

And then there already was this thing:​

XM25 CDTE - Got everything, saw some action in Afghanistan​

Are man portable, mass produced air-burst auto-cannons in the cards?
Will there be an upscaling of the supply infrastructure for electronic munitions like that?
Could those things be turned into drone killers with tracking and lead calculating optics and a smaller, higher velocity caliber?
How small could such new rounds be made? What's feasible?

Much DARPA, very hype.
Yes, tell me I'm retarded, if you must, but feel free to drop some wisdom while you are at it.
But I think this shit may have a come-back.

Aside: Formerly outdated, french 20mm Flak Guns are getting upgraded targeting systems to engage in drone warfare.

 

[Breadbassket]

Be at the very least skeptical of anything that markets itself as "smart" in some way.

 

[オプセック]

Be at the very least skeptical of anything that markets itself as "smart" in some way.

It's really just about the ability to time/distance fuse the projectile.
Which is a pretty powerful feature, makes these very nasty trench and house cleaners on the side too.

I did already go a little too far by pondering, if they could even do something around .50 cal with modern, smaller and more robust electronics.
I'm still looking for and at some papers about this to spice up the thread.

 

[The Mass Shooter Ron Soye]

Which made me recall that there was lots of shillery around programmable, or "smart" infantry 'nade launchers many a moon ago.

XM25 got canned. I think I saw it demoed on 60 Minutes or something like that many years ago.

 

[オプセック]

XM25 got canned. I think I saw it demoed on 60 Minutes or something like that many years ago.

Yep, that one got the farthest out of prototyping. I'm still wondering if there were technical issues. The wiki says that they dropped it because the rangers, understandably, disliked having one guy without a carbine, the xm29 had that... but the shorter 20x28 grenade is cited as having been "ineffective"
So it basically didn't integrate well into doctrine without any normal gun part.

In general, I do not understand this "requirement" of the OICW program. Why a combo gun? Ruskie rpgs are carried alongside and used fine by lots of militaries world wide and they're just as heavy. It's weird that's they insisted on it being carried as a battle rifle.

 

[Neo-Nazi Rich Evans]

Most loitering munitions are slow and fly under 200 kph, they might accelerate when diving on a target, but in general they are janky, oversized, r/c planes. fpv drones also buzz around at those speeds, which means we kinda do have the same situation as in WW1 with double-deckers doing strafe runs or outright dropping explosives on peoples heads from the cockpit, just much smaller, harder to hit and today's infantry does lack anything, safe for manpad AA systems (not for fpv drones) and shot guns to engage such targets.

i have brought up before that i think air burst 20mm and 30mm rounds might be a cost effective solution to small drones until lasers are available. in ww2, air burst 20,30,and 40mm were used to shot down fighter planes, they would be devastating against a small, relatively small drone. and unlike in ww2, the tech exists to have computer aimed guns, making it much easier to hit targets with them. a quick burst of 3-4 20mm air burst rounds would probably take out any drone within range.

 

[オプセック]

i have brought up before that i think air burst 20mm and 30mm rounds might be a cost effective solution to small drones until lasers are available. in ww2, air burst 20,30,and 40mm were used to shot down fighter planes, they would be devastating against a small, relatively small drone. and unlike in ww2, the tech exists to have computer aimed guns, making it much easier to hit targets with them. a quick burst of 3-4 20mm air burst rounds would probably take out any drone within range.

Yeah, that was my thinking. They already do re-purpose old 50s AA gear that way, but I'm actually not versed on how they time-fused such small calibers in ww2 or in older <=40 mm guns in general, I do know that they count the rotations in smart munitions however, very precise.

 

[Neo-Nazi Rich Evans]

Yeah, that was my thinking. They already do re-purpose old 50s AA gear that way, but I'm actually not versed on how they time-fused such small calibers in ww2 or in older <=40 mm guns in general, I do know that they count the rotations in smart munitions however, very precise.

the two ways i know how they did air burst back then was timers and proximity detection using a primitive radar in the nose. the timer was simply that, a timer in the fuse that was set right before firing. the proximity fuse used a radio signal that would bounce off the aircraft and when that signal returned to the fuse it would trigger it to explode.

 

[オプセック]

the two ways i know how they did air burst back then was timers and proximity detection using a primitive radar in the nose. the timer was simply that, a timer in the fuse that was set right before firing. the proximity fuse used a radio signal that would bounce off the aircraft and when that signal returned to the fuse it would trigger it to explode.

I don't think they were able to do more than fixed, timed fuzes in 30mm rounds and the likes, settable fuzes were an artillery thing only. But maybe I am wrong, but I always thought autocannon AA relied on direct hits. 88mm def. had settable fuzes tho.

 

[Neo-Nazi Rich Evans]

I don't think they were able to do more than fixed, timed fuzes in 30mm rounds and the likes, settable fuzes were an artillery thing only. But maybe I am wrong, but I always thought autocannon AA relied on direct hits. I think 88mm had settable fuzes, tho.

i dunno, maybe the timed/proxy fuses were only 40mm, im not expert and dont feel like looking it up.

 

[オプセック]

i dunno, maybe the timed/proxy fuses were only 40mm, im not expert and dont feel like looking it up.

Yeah, sounds probable. It's the krauts after all, they had everything from night vision scopes to jet fighters - just never in relevant numbers and always way too late.

 

[Gravemind]

Ammunition can't truly be smart until it's capable of knowing where it is at all times upon firing. It should be able to know where it is by knowing where it isn't. By subtracting where it is from where it isn't, or where it isn't from where it is (whichever is greater), it should be able to obtain a difference, or deviation. This theoretical guidance subsystem must use deviations to generate corrective commands to drive the bullet from a position where it is to a position where it isn't, and arriving at a position where it wasn't, it now is. Consequently, the position where it is, is now the position that it wasn't, and it should follow that the position that it was, is now the position that it isn't.

In the event that the position that it is in is not the position that it wasn't, the system should have acquired a variation, the variation being the difference between where the bullet is, and where it wasn't. If variation is considered to be a significant factor, it too may be corrected by the GEA. However, the bullet must also know where it was.

The bullet guidance computer scenario should work as follows. Because a variation has modified some of the information the bullet has obtained, it is not sure just where it is. However, it is sure where it isn't, within reason, and it knows where it was. It now subtracts where it should be from where it wasn't, or vice-versa, and by differentiating this from the algebraic sum of where it shouldn't be, and where it was, it is able to obtain the deviation and its variation, which is called error.

 

[オプセック]

Ammunition can't truly be smart until it's capable of knowing where it is at all times upon firing. It should be able to know where it is by knowing where it isn't. By subtracting where it is from where it isn't, or where it isn't from where it is (whichever is greater), it should be able to obtain a difference, or deviation. This theoretical guidance subsystem must use deviations to generate corrective commands to drive the bullet from a position where it is to a position where it isn't, and arriving at a position where it wasn't, it now is. Consequently, the position where it is, is now the position that it wasn't, and it should follow that the position that it was, is now the position that it isn't.

I already feel like I am in a DARPA dealership getting a small presentation. Love it, almost a TED talk - almost.

 

[オプセック]

i dunno, maybe the timed/proxy fuses were only 40mm, im not expert and dont feel like looking it up.

Only artillery shells from the looks of it:

It's not like that tube based signal amp ever got smaller before the end of the war and the germans sucked hard at electronics, compared to the allies.
Still makes me wonder when exactly auto-cannon ammo ever got "smart" - My guess would be late 70s, when pocket calcs came around.
As to the ww2 spergery: I think we can discard all other options, there were no settable time-fuze sub 40mm rounds either - I don't see how, even for artillery shells they had to use some "screw" tool to set that per shell, I think they wouldn't have risked 20mm ammo, which is on target, setting of prematurely and thus doing nothing.
Again, only 88mm flak, I think, had time altitude set fuzes, but those shells are still far larger than 40mm.

 

[Type 10 MBT]

I don't think they were able to do more than fixed, timed fuzes in 30mm rounds and the likes, settable fuzes were an artillery thing only. But maybe I am wrong, but I always thought autocannon AA relied on direct hits. 88mm def. had settable fuzes tho.

Some WW2 era AA stuff. Germany and the rest of the world pretty much for smaller and intermediate caliber anti-air relied on hitting the target (mostly). Most anti air weapons featured a large selection of rounds to choose from but the ones use for Anti-Air were primarily tracer munitions that did explode or destruct but only after the tracer burnt out. The ammunition would come from the factory with a set distance before burnout/explosion. Essentially you had two munitions because of this, far burn out and close burn out. The goal was still to actually hit the plane but shrapnel from the self destruct could also be somewhat effective but this wasnt the primary purpose, the primary purpose was to prevent in tact rounds from falling on to friendlies. 40MM delayed/timed fuses were as small as they could reasonably make them as they had enough room for the mechanism. below 40mm there wasn't even enough space for a timer because it required padding and the like to keep it in tact, so the only real option was relying on the burnout of the tracer. That being said, even when timed fuses were available for the 40MM bofors, impact/self destruct fuses were the most commonly used through the end of the war. 40MM Bofors AA mounts were used to good effect in the Naval side of the war mostly because of large investment in to AA fire-directors which assisted in targeting. I would argue Japan's biggest weak point in the navy was a lack of true AA fire directors for smaller caliber AA guns. They (mostly) relied on a guy with a stick to stand near the mount, point at a plane and yell orders. As an aside, 40mm Proxy fuses came about in the late 40s to early 50s when gun AA was still viable. It was use by some of the world through to the 70s. Sweden held on to a few in to the missile age.