Re: RR, High tech and misc - was RE: [SG2] weapons

Imre Szabo wrote:

> >Weight yes, width:length ratio no. For a given liner shape (usually a
cone
> >or a kind of trumpet bell-shape) the length of a HEAT warhead is by
> >necessity very close to proportional to its diameter. If you just
increase
> >the diameter without increasing the length you have to use a flatter
cone,
> >and reduces the penetration:diameter ratio.
>
>Supposedly using gold for the liner can increase penetration without
>increasing diameter or length.

You can do lots of things with the liner material to increase
penetration 
without increasing the diameter, but most of them - including using
gold, 
I'm afraid - don't improve the performance very much compared to today's

best in-production warheads even theoretically, much less in lab 
experiments :-( (And as for putting them into mass production, well...)

> >There are plenty of two-stage RR rounds available - eg. every single
one
> >fired from an RPG-7, or the modern Carl Gustaf HEAT rounds (551 and
751).
> >The speed increases provided by their in-trajectory engines are
relatively
> >moderate though, due to the accuracy problems mentioned above - it's
> >biggest in the RPG-7 (some of its grenade types are boosted from
about 100
> >m/s to about 300 m/s), but the accuracy suffers accordingly.
>
>Basebleed rounds is way to retian velocity without decreasing accuracy.

Irrelevant for this particular part of the discussion, I'm afraid. In
the 
above section we're talking about the problems with INCREASING the
velocity 
from whatever the RR can provide (a few hundred m/S, in the case of a 
shoulder-launched weapon) to fast enough that a PDS can't stop it (1500
m/s 
or more - preferrably a lot more!), without losing any accuracy in the 
process.

Basebleed units are utterly unable to do that - all they do is to reduce

the drag on the round (and thus its *de*celeration) to a minimum by 
eliminating the wake in the air behind it. If you want a hyper-velocity 
basebleed round, it needs to be hypervelocity by the time it leaves the
muzzle.

Regards,

Oerjan
oerjan.ohlson@telia.com

"Life is like a sewer.
  What you get out of it, depends on what you put into it."
-Hen3ry