Got a Real-World Weapon, Armor or Tactics Question? Mk. XXVII

[snowblizz]

That is a thing of absolute beauty :D 40k Orks are so ridiculous and over the top, it's amazing.

It's also a smart way to deliver an anti-tank charge when your ballistic skills means you can't hit the inside of a barn from the inside with a M42 and enough ammo to fill the barn.


The questions about ridiculous weapons for supersoldiers continues to remind me of 40k, specifically the Ogryn: http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Ogryn


Because when you are heading for silly over the top you go directly to the motherload.

[The Jack]

I feel a lot of guilt because my question is probably innane, but knowing ****'s an addiction and I need to know (even if I don't and I should totally just wing it)

Would HEAT rounds against super-tough monsters be more effective than regular warheads, and how would they differ in damaging a fleshy target.
I realise there's a ton of variables and it's a terrible question (though I feel if I knew more about warheads I'd probably enjoy the speculation)



Also how badly can grenades screw over people when it comes to just velocity?
I've listed
40x46 as a fit dude hitting you with a baseball bat.
40x53 and 35x32 as slightly more than 7.62x39... for some reason. This seems wrong to me when I look at it.

(or in WoD terms, 6B, 8L)
Do these grenades have a chance of penetrating the body and exploding, or is it more like having someone trying to kill you with a shot put which bounces off after causing significant damage. Or do they explode before you can possibly register impact damage.

[Mike_G]

Also how badly can grenades screw over people when it comes to just velocity?
I've listed
40x46 as a fit dude hitting you with a baseball bat.
40x53 and 35x32 as slightly more than 7.62x39... for some reason. This seems wrong to me when I look at it.

(or in WoD terms, 6B, 8L)
Do these grenades have a chance of penetrating the body and exploding, or is it more like having someone trying to kill you with a shot put which bounces off after causing significant damage. Or do they explode before you can possibly register impact damage.

Most grenades fired from any kind of launcher are point detonating, so they should explode on impact, not hit, do impact damage and bounce off then explode.

But...as a safety feature, most will not arm themselves until they have gone a certain range, in case you hit a tree or something with your grenade before it's gone far enough that you are out of the blast zone. So if you point blank shoot an an enemy with a grenade launcher, it should act like just a big, heavy, relatively slow slug. So knowing the ballistic damage might be useful

[Jeivar]

I just started thinking about something: Obviously guns eventually overtook every other type of weapon due to simply being more effective... but why did Europeans keep developing them until they reached that level? The earliest handguns were inaccurate, slow-firing, dangerous to the user and not even all that powerful. Yes, it's a lot easier to train a gunner than an archer, but isn't that also the appeal of crossbows?

If I'd been a military leader in the 14th Century I feel I would have concluded that the whole concept was a bust and just focused on crossbows. So why did they stick with it?

[The Jack]

I just started thinking about something: Obviously guns eventually overtook every other type of weapon due to simply being more effective... but why did Europeans keep developing them until they reached that level? The earliest handguns were inaccurate, slow-firing, dangerous to the user and not even all that powerful. Yes, it's a lot easier to train a gunner than an archer, but isn't that also the appeal of crossbows?

If I'd been a military leader in the 14th Century I feel I would have concluded that the whole concept was a bust and just focused on crossbows. So why did they stick with it?

Cannons were great artillery and worth improving.
Guns tended to be faster than the more powerful crossbows, for more power too.
Guns are loud and scary and make horrible wounds. Since a lot of battle is about panicking the enemy and having them run away, that's great.

[tyckspoon]

I feel a lot of guilt because my question is probably innane, but knowing ****'s an addiction and I need to know (even if I don't and I should totally just wing it)

Would HEAT rounds against super-tough monsters be more effective than regular warheads, and how would they differ in damaging a fleshy target.
I realise there's a ton of variables and it's a terrible question (though I feel if I knew more about warheads I'd probably enjoy the speculation)

Very broadly speaking, armor-penetrating and soft-target damage want completely different characteristics in weapon design, so the more you optimize one the worse it'll do at the other - delivering something like a HEAT round against your monsters may be effective at piercing their outer defenses, but it's more likely to just do a flesh wound. There are hybrid designs and iterations to try and work around that, however - in the field of explosive warheads, for example, you get tandem or secondary charges that are meant to deliver a more general explosive or to propel something akin to a normal bullet into the target after the initial strike has theoretically broken the armor.

For your previous melee weapon question - yes, rotating weapons can do impressive amounts of damage. It's on a completely different scale, but 'spinner' weapons have pretty consistently ruled the last few seasons of things like Battlebots. The main problem is they suffer hugely from Newton's laws: That equal-and-opposite reaction thing tends to break them, because they depend on a really finely balanced system to get up to and maintain speed, to the point where one of the best strategies against them is literally breaking their fist with your face: Ram into the spinner with something built tough enough to handle it until the backlash from the strikes sends the spinner off-center or makes it bounce into the floor or something, at which point the forces going through it go through a part that wasn't built for them and bends the blade or breaks the flywheel or something.

If you want something silly/excessive to go on a melee weapon, I'd look at secondary effects meant to enhance the result of a successful strike. A trigger button or impact sensor that results in a pneumatic/hydraulic/combustion-driven spike shooting out of the surface of a hammer. Scything scissor blades that try to sever whatever is caught in between the prongs of a man-catcher styled device. Tazer-like prongs set at the most common points of contact on a sword to deliver a hopefully incapacitating shock to whatever you just cut.

[Gnoman]

I just started thinking about something: Obviously guns eventually overtook every other type of weapon due to simply being more effective... but why did Europeans keep developing them until they reached that level? The earliest handguns were inaccurate, slow-firing, dangerous to the user and not even all that powerful. Yes, it's a lot easier to train a gunner than an archer, but isn't that also the appeal of crossbows?

If I'd been a military leader in the 14th Century I feel I would have concluded that the whole concept was a bust and just focused on crossbows. So why did they stick with it?

Gunpowder artillery eclipsed every other siege weapon almost upon introduction. Once cannon became militarily ubiquitous, there was plenty of opportunities to tinker with personal-scale guns. As for incentive, the anti-armor performance and overwhelming terror the artillery weapons could produce made personal-scale versions exceptionally attractive.

[rrgg]

I just started thinking about something: Obviously guns eventually overtook every other type of weapon due to simply being more effective... but why did Europeans keep developing them until they reached that level? The earliest handguns were inaccurate, slow-firing, dangerous to the user and not even all that powerful. Yes, it's a lot easier to train a gunner than an archer, but isn't that also the appeal of crossbows?

If I'd been a military leader in the 14th Century I feel I would have concluded that the whole concept was a bust and just focused on crossbows. So why did they stick with it?

Gunpowder was capable of sending a projectile much farther and with much more force than any bow or crossbow could, and it was possible for gunpowder weapons to achieve that power while still remaining relatively compact and portable compared to something like say, a trebuchet or ballista.

Spoiler

Show

Keep in mind that when we're talking about "guns" it was quite a while before people really started making a clear distinction between "artillery" and "smallarms", and a lot of guns from the late medieval period do tend to occupy some space inbetween where they might be small enough to be carried and operated by maybe just one or two men, but would be braced on the ground before firing or had a hook that would be used to brace the weapon against the wall of a castle or the side of a wagon. So even back when guns tended to be "less powerful" or have lower muzzle velocities, a lot of them could still achieve quite a lot of power just by being made to fire a bullet the size of your fist and not worrying to much about the recoil. Or very early on there would also be examples of guns used to fire large arrows, which would be able to penetrate much more efficiently than a round ball could.

There were other uses for the many different types gunpowder invented as well. For instance creating explosive bombs, undermining walls, fire arrows, rockets, many different types of firebombs and incendiaries with different combinations of properties such as burning very hot, burning for a long time, being unable to be extinguished by water etc.

Going all the way back to the 14th century in europe at least, the main issue was more that saltpeter was really expensive and it was hard to find many individuals with the expertise needed to prepare the right sorts of gunpowder and then use gunpowder weapons effectively without accidentally lighting themselves on fire. And so as a result due to monetary constraints your army might have just a few guns and gunners tagging along to help intimidate the enemy, but probably not enough to really make a decisive impact on the battlefield.

[The Jack]

but it's more likely to just do a flesh wound.

How? There's a lot to read so My brain's simplified HEAT rounds to 'focuses blast on tiny area' while the rocket still somehow moves forward into whatever the shaped charge is cutting away, which doesn't quite strike me as right but whatever it is sounds like it'd be brutal. How does that make flesh wounds more likely?


Otherwise; So are HE more common than HEDP? Would HEDP be better in this situation?

[tyckspoon]

How? There's a lot to read so My brain's simplified HEAT rounds to 'focuses blast on tiny area' while the rocket still somehow moves forward into whatever the shaped charge is cutting awway. How does that make flesh wounds more likely?

The rest of the warhead gets consumed by the explosive to create the material jet that is the actual penetrating part of the weapon, and it's set to explode far enough away from the target that most of its power dissipates away from the target or is expended into creating that material jet (if you set it off too close to the target the penetrating jet doesn't have time or space to form, and you just end up hitting your target with a weak bomb.) You wind up with a zone of superficial surface damage from the exploding, and then a much much narrower penetrating hole; there needs to be something fairly vital at the point you hit for this alone to score a kill. It's why more advanced designs include a secondary explosive (either just as a bomb or functioning to drive a point-blank slug/shell into the target) so you have something there to follow up on and exploit the damaged point in the armor.

[Mr Beer]

For crazy hand weapons, something like the Wasp Injection Knife may be worth considering as a backup weapon. It's designed to kill dangerous game:

https://knifenews.com/what-happened-...adliest-knife/

[gkathellar]

I just started thinking about something: Obviously guns eventually overtook every other type of weapon due to simply being more effective... but why did Europeans keep developing them until they reached that level? The earliest handguns were inaccurate, slow-firing, dangerous to the user and not even all that powerful. Yes, it's a lot easier to train a gunner than an archer, but isn't that also the appeal of crossbows?

If I'd been a military leader in the 14th Century I feel I would have concluded that the whole concept was a bust and just focused on crossbows. So why did they stick with it?

They stuck with it because the ones who used guns kept winning battles.

In addition to questions of artillery and penetration that other posters have mentioned, I think you may be overestimating how bad early firearms were. If anything, they were quite effective in certain contexts - directed fire at close and medium range probably chief among them. It may be helpful to think of early firearms not as replacements for the bow and crossbow, but as something else entirely, which could be used easily on horseback and in the press of melee to blast through even stout armor.

In addition, while black powder itself may have been quite expensive early in the age of the gun, gun production itself was relatively simple. A crossbow is a ludicrously complex clockpunk monstrosity. A good warbow can take years to manufacture. A firearm, on the other hand? Not exactly trivial, but certainly something that a blacksmith could pick up the basics of without too much trouble.

You may also be underestimating the difficulty of using a crossbow, which is not nearly so simple as it first appears (especially for large crossbows). Even keeping a crossbow in working order can be difficult - somewhat famously, Genoese crossbowmen at the Battle of Crecy failed to unstring their weapons during a rainstorm prior to the fighting, and so suffered water damage. Early guns may have been temperamental, but they were generally pretty durable by comparison.

[fusilier]

They stuck with it because the ones who used guns kept winning battles.

In addition to questions of artillery and penetration that other posters have mentioned, I think you may be overestimating how bad early firearms were. If anything, they were quite effective in certain contexts - directed fire at close and medium range probably chief among them. It may be helpful to think of early firearms not as replacements for the bow and crossbow, but as something else entirely, which could be used easily on horseback and in the press of melee to blast through even stout armor.

In addition, while black powder itself may have been quite expensive early in the age of the gun, gun production itself was relatively simple. A crossbow is a ludicrously complex clockpunk monstrosity. A good warbow can take years to manufacture. A firearm, on the other hand? Not exactly trivial, but certainly something that a blacksmith could pick up the basics of without too much trouble.

You may also be underestimating the difficulty of using a crossbow, which is not nearly so simple as it first appears (especially for large crossbows). Even keeping a crossbow in working order can be difficult - somewhat famously, Genoese crossbowmen at the Battle of Crecy failed to unstring their weapons during a rainstorm prior to the fighting, and so suffered water damage. Early guns may have been temperamental, but they were generally pretty durable by comparison.

This pretty much covers the major points I was going to bring up. The mechanical complexity of a crossbow, and the expense of gunpowder. Up to around 1500, you could still see siege trains with a mix of older style weapons and cannon. I'll have to go over my sources again, but I remember seeing reports showing how many tons of gunpowder being used in a siege in the late 1400s versus one in the early 1500s, and it was a pretty impressive increase.

Armor also improved in response to guns, so guns had to improve too. Then, from about, 1600 onwards, the main developments were in making "firelocks" that were more reliable and less expensive.

[Martin Greywolf]

There's one more factor to guns vs crossbows - arrows and bolts aren't anywhere as cheap as people tend to think. Sure, cheapo crossbow bolt for hunting or unarmored targets was at first less expensive than powder and ball for an early handgun, but as demands on bolts increased, you saw stuff like specifically shaped shafts and hardened broadheads, and those are fiddly to make and therefore not cheap. And you need massive quantities of these, so even a small increase in production time or cost will scale up quickly.

Speaking of scaling up, there's another problem for you, if you want to drastically increase amount of gunpowder produced, it's a question of (mostly) bigger bucket. Scaling up arrow production needs more people to whittle wood, that means more tools for wood whitling and more space to do it in etc. You need comparatively more space and more skilled people to produce more arrows, with guns, everyone can make lead balls (soldiers themselves sometimes had kits to make shot for their guns) and you need one guy who knows how much stuff to pour in with twenty low skill people to do the pouring for powder.

[Yora]

Do contemporary rocket propelled granades actually fall under the technical term grenade? Or is that just a term that was carried over from a time when they used warheads that were actually similar to grenades.

[The Jack]

The russian term 'RPG' translates to 'hand-held anti-tank grenade launcher' and what we got is a backronym.


They were basically always using shaped charges when this tech come out. Modern stuff uses similar, if improved, charges.

A quick google and for grenade you get 'A grenade is an explosive weapon typically thrown by hand, but can also refer to projectiles shot out of grenade launchers.'

If you're wondering if you can throw the rockets as if they were grenades... I don't know. But I suppose some people specify 'hand grenade' and, well, if grenades are all thrown there'd be no need for that. Though I've got some interesting ideas for 'foot grenades' now.

[Brother Oni]

If you're wondering if you can throw the rockets as if they were grenades... I don't know. But I suppose some people specify 'hand grenade' and, well, if grenades are all thrown there'd be no need for that. Though I've got some interesting ideas for 'foot grenades' now.

With regard to using rockets like grenades, it all depends on the fusing mechanism. If it's point detonated then you need to ensure that they hit the target tip first (eg throw it like an American football), so alternate launch platforms would need to be much more carefully designed compared to impact detonated rockets.

There are grenade catapults and slingshots in use from as early as WW1 (Leach trench catapult), WW2, to up to modern conflicts. From reading about them, these weapons are mostly timed fused ones - impact grenades tend to be a lot more dangerous for the operators in case of launch failures.

The WW2 era PIAT was a British spring poweredassisted anti tank weapon.

Spoiler: Finnish soldiers, Continuation War 1941-1944

Show

Spoiler: Syrian rebels, circa 2012

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Edit: On an entirely separate note, I found a WW1-era trench morning star in the Imperial War Museum.

[Pauly]

With regard to using rockets like grenades, it all depends on the fusing mechanism. If it's point detonated then you need to ensure that they hit the target tip first (eg throw it like an American football), so alternate launch platforms would need to be much more carefully designed compared to impact detonated rockets.

There are grenade catapults and slingshots in use from as early as WW1 (Leach trench catapult), WW2, to up to modern conflicts. From reading about them, these weapons are mostly timed fused ones - impact grenades tend to be a lot more dangerous for the operators in case of launch failures.

The WW2 era PIAT was a British spring powered anti tank weapon.

Spoiler: Finnish soldiers, Continuation War 1941-1944

Show

Spoiler: Syrian rebels, circa 2012

Show

Edit: On an entirely separate note, I found a WW1-era trench morning star in the Imperial War Museum.

One small point, the PIAT is not, despite popular opinion, a spring fired weapon. It is a spigot mortar, where instead of a conventional gun having a large barrel around the outside of the round, there is a small barrel that goes inside the round. It is true that the spring does provide some not insignificant assistance with the launch, the spring’s primary purpose was to **** the weapon. The launching charge was strong enough to re-**** the spring, so mathematically it must provide more force than the spring.
A better explanation than what I can give:
https://youtu.be/uk_vS-VdYas

[Brother Oni]

One small point, the PIAT is not, despite popular opinion, a spring fired weapon. It is a spigot mortar, where instead of a conventional gun having a large barrel around the outside of the round, there is a small barrel that goes inside the round. It is true that the spring does provide some not insignificant assistance with the launch, the spring’s primary purpose was to **** the weapon. The launching charge was strong enough to re-**** the spring, so mathematically it must provide more force than the spring.
A better explanation than what I can give:
https://youtu.be/uk_vS-VdYas

I stand corrected, but a 200lb spring is a fair bit of 'not insignificant assistance'.

[Mr Beer]

Thanks Zeus GITP censored the foul word used to describe setting the spring to the desired position. This likely saved several Victorian-era governesses from a nasty fit of the vapours.

[snowblizz]

Thanks Zeus GITP censored the foul word used to describe setting the spring to the desired position. This likely saved several Victorian-era governesses from a nasty fit of the vapours.

Ooooh... see here I wondered what a rooster had to do with anything.

(Sometimes autofilters just cracks me up)

Mind you guys never get to check me on what Swedish historian **** Harrison actually says because I'm never allowed to type out his name.

[The Jack]

At the risk of going on the list.


The Davey crockett nuke.

How much smaller can it be made and how prohibitively expensive would it be?


Also, are PIAT like systems better for larger warheads?

[Brother Oni]

The Davey crockett nuke.

How much smaller can it be made and how prohibitively expensive would it be?


Also, are PIAT like systems better for larger warheads?

More clarification requested.

With the Davey Crockett, the absolute minimum size would the critical mass required to achieve a chain nuclear fission reaction. The W54 warhead used was just above the minimum practical critical mass required at 23kg, so you're not likely to make it much smaller unless you change the fissible material. I suggest looking at Wikipedia for further details if you want more exotic big explosions.

What do you mean by a PIAT-like system? A HEAT style shaped charged weapon? A spring assisted launch spigot mortar? These days, infantry carried AT weapons have been largely dominated by ATGMs or other similar shoulder mounted systems.

[The Jack]

More clarification requested.

With the Davey Crockett, the absolute minimum size would the critical mass required to achieve a chain nuclear fission reaction. The W54 warhead used was just above the minimum practical critical mass required at 23kg, so you're not likely to make it much smaller unless you change the fissible material. I suggest looking at Wikipedia for further details if you want more exotic big explosions.

This is a bit above me, maybe. How big does the mechanism around the stuff need to be.

When i look at the table, it seems Californium is best, but I imagine such a thing heavily controlled/difficult to synthesize or something or such. What can realistically be used?

I am writing for large, well connected corporations that could probably make their own nukes if they worked together, but they can't be brazen about it. A nuclear power plant or mining company could let some uranium slip, but I'm not sure how dangerous synthetic elements could be created and passed around without being found out about. So my question again is now more 'what's the best thing I could get away with' kinda shtick.

A spring assisted launch spigot mortar?

That's the one.

Rockets are good because they reduce recoil, and guided rockets are guided, but if you just wanted to lob warheads with no concern for recoil, would the spigot/spring be better? It seems to me that the 'rocket' part of the RPG could take up valuable warhead space.


Also, spigot/spring means no backblast, and that's rather nice.

[Brother Oni]

This is a bit above me, maybe. How big does the mechanism around the stuff need to be.

When i look at the table, it seems Californium is best, but I imagine such a thing heavily controlled/difficult to synthesize or something or such. What can realistically be used?

Essentially all a nuclear device is a large lump of fissile material and a small lump of fissile material. The large lump is a nice safe amount below the critical mass threshold and the small lump is enough to bring the total mass to above the threshold.
When a nuclear device detonates, a small explosive charge slams the small lump into the large lump with enough energy to kick start the chain reaction, and the now single lump of above critical mass fissile material starts the process to going bang.
As such, the mechanism around the fissile material doesn't need to be very big - you just need to be able to survive carrying it as the smaller you make it, the less shielding you have and therefore more likely to contract radiation sickness. There's a nuclear device smaller than the Davey Crocket (34.5kg for a 10-20 ton yield), the SADM, which was listed to be 273 mm diameter by ~400 mm long, weighing ~23 kg for the whole unit with a 10 - 1000 ton yield.

Californium is very hard to produce, requiring nuclear reactors and particle accelerators specifically designed to produce (and extract) it. For reference, about 0.275g of it is made annually commercially and you need a minimum of 2.73 kg for critical mass.

The default fissile material for nuclear weapons is plutonium-239, which can basically be 'mass produced' in fast breeder nuclear reactors.

TL:DR: Use plutonium-239 with the size of the device being as big as the bang you want, minimum of 23kg for a 10 ton yield explosion.

Rockets are good because they reduce recoil, and guided rockets are guided, but if you just wanted to lob warheads with no concern for recoil, would the spigot/spring be better? It seems to me that the 'rocket' part of the RPG could take up valuable warhead space.

Also, spigot/spring means no backblast, and that's rather nice.

I think you're under a mis-understanding that the PIAT had no recoil. They had at least 200lbs worth of recoil since the charge was intended to reset the spring - again it's worth pointing out that no modern military uses a spring assisted launch for an AT weapon anymore as rockets and ATGMs are far superior, both in range and accuracy.

As for the propellant part of the RPG taking up valuable warhead space, just build a longer rocket. The size of the warhead is limited to what you're planning to kill - there's very little point in overbuilding a charge; if you're hunting rabbits, you don't bring a rifle intended for bears.

I know that for some odd reason you seem obsessed with the biggest weapon possible with no concern for practicality for your setting - if your shadowy corporations are ludicrously rich and powerful, why not skip to the chase and just 'rods from god' werewolf caerns from orbit?

[Max_Killjoy]

Essentially all a nuclear device is a large lump of fissile material and a small lump of fissile material. The large lump is a nice safe amount below the critical mass threshold and the small lump is enough to bring the total mass to above the threshold.
When a nuclear device detonates, a small explosive charge slams the small lump into the large lump with enough energy to kick start the chain reaction, and the now single lump of above critical mass fissile material starts the process to going bang.
As such, the mechanism around the fissile material doesn't need to be very big - you just need to be able to survive carrying it as the smaller you make it, the less shielding you have and therefore more likely to contract radiation sickness. There's a nuclear device smaller than the Davey Crocket (34.5kg for a 10-20 ton yield), the SADM, which was listed to be 273 mm diameter by ~400 mm long, weighing ~23 kg for the whole unit with a 10 - 1000 ton yield.

Californium is very hard to produce, requiring nuclear reactors and particle accelerators specifically designed to produce (and extract) it. For reference, about 0.275g of it is made annually commercially and you need a minimum of 2.73 kg for critical mass.

The default fissile material for nuclear weapons is plutonium-239, which can basically be 'mass produced' in fast breeder nuclear reactors.

TL:DR: Use plutonium-239 with the size of the device being as big as the bang you want, minimum of 23kg for a 10 ton yield explosion.

I thought the plutonium devices used an implosion design, rather than then "gun" design.

[Gnoman]

I thought the plutonium devices used an implosion design, rather than then "gun" design.

This is true. A gun-type device with plutonium runs the risk of reaching a sub-critical mass resulting in a nasty fizzle. Even most uranium warheads use implosion designs, because gun-types produce much lower yields. Gun-types are only used for applications where a small-diameter warhead is needed.

This is a bit above me, maybe. How big does the mechanism around the stuff need to be.

When i look at the table, it seems Californium is best, but I imagine such a thing heavily controlled/difficult to synthesize or something or such. What can realistically be used?

I am writing for large, well connected corporations that could probably make their own nukes if they worked together, but they can't be brazen about it. A nuclear power plant or mining company could let some uranium slip, but I'm not sure how dangerous synthetic elements could be created and passed around without being found out about. So my question again is now more 'what's the best thing I could get away with' kinda shtick.

The only known fissile materials are uranium and plutonium. Even the much-hyped Thorium has to be converted into uranium before it can be used as reactor fuel. The Davy Crockett is pretty close to the smallest size that a nuclear warhead can be.

That's the one.

Rockets are good because they reduce recoil, and guided rockets are guided, but if you just wanted to lob warheads with no concern for recoil, would the spigot/spring be better? It seems to me that the 'rocket' part of the RPG could take up valuable warhead space.


Also, spigot/spring means no backblast, and that's rather nice.

Rockets aren't simply (or even primarily) about recoil reduction. You can get that from a recoiless rifle just as easily. Rockets are used because they have excellent range, and are extremely compact and have superb range.

An AT4 rocket (the current-issue single-use rocket launcher) weighs a mere 7 kilos (8 for the reduced backblast version), is 1 meter long, and fires a 84mm rocket (440 gram warhead) accurately to 300 meters, and can reach 2 kilometers with degraded accuracy. The much lighter LAW is a mere 3 kilos, only .6 meters long while folded for transport, and fires a 66mm rocket to an aimed range of 200 meters.

The PIAT, by contrast, weighs 15 kilos, is 1 meter long, and fires an 83mm (1.1 kilogram warhead) projectile to a maximum range of 320 meters.

In other words, the only advantage of the PIAT is that it fires a heavier bomb. That's much less important than you think, however, because these are shaped-charge warheads. A heavier explosive mass does help, but the biggest determiner of effectiveness is the diameter - and the PIAT bomb is almost identical in diameter to the AT4.

If you're in a "I'm not getting weapons from a factory, so I have to improvise my own!" situation, a PIAT is an even worse idea. Rockets are easy to build, but a PIAT needs a lot of fairly precise metal working, and a massive spring - which isn't something that's just lying around.

[Max_Killjoy]

This is true. A gun-type device with plutonium runs the risk of reaching a sub-critical mass resulting in a nasty fizzle. Even most uranium warheads use implosion designs, because gun-types produce much lower yields. Gun-types are only used for applications where a small-diameter warhead is needed.

The only known fissile materials are uranium and plutonium. Even the much-hyped Thorium has to be converted into uranium before it can be used as reactor fuel. The Davy Crockett is pretty close to the smallest size that a nuclear warhead can be.

Don't most unstable isotopes decay by fission?

Or do you mean something more specific than that?

[Gnoman]

Don't most unstable isotopes decay by fission?

Or do you mean something more specific than that?

Any material that can undergo fission at all is called "fissionable".

"Fissile" means "Can sustain a chain reaction." Theoretically, any element above 90 will have fissionable isotopes, but they are only confirmed in Uranium and Plutonium.

[The Jack]

RE- Spiggot/Spring
Oni, Yes, I'm aware they have big recoil. I think we've had a miscommunication. I think, in the context of the setting they have a huge advantage in that there's no backblast like you'd get from a recoilless gun or RPG, which'd be much better in a setting where the 'tanks' your fighting are also ninjas that sometimes flank you from the ceiling. If you don't have to worry about hitting your allies with exhaust that's a huge plus.
Does anyone have any idea how dangerous backblast usually is? Like how much force is exerted?




I'll trust you on plutonium 239.
If plutonium 239 can be set off with 10kgs, how does that compare to a double-weight Davey?
Do these elements blow up with similar force per weight or are the lighter-criticals more powerful?


Curium or neptunium?
Like, if you were deliberately funneling off byproducts or otherwise making materials for trying to make small, cheap nukes, what materials would you be giving in? Plutonium does seem like a good bet the more I think about it, but say you're a collection of companies trying to do bad things whilst getting away with it...



Also, would Civilian companies making huge conventional explosives (that don't end up in the military) be something that'd pop up on the radar?. Perhaps a company that makes stuff for the military but has a few things fall off the shelf, a few dudes in a shed, a company in a corrupt country that's secretly exporting... how good is the radar?