Re: [SGII] Fire of AT Missiles at disperesed tagets

At 7:15 PM +0100 1/25/05, Oerjan Ohlson wrote:
>Ryan Gill wrote:
>
>>>Other than directly ahead of the ATGM, even a small mortar round 
>>>has a considerably greater lethal effect.
>>
>>I had always thought the HE was focused towards the shaped charge, 
>>but that there was a secondary annular blast that was still not to 
>>be shrugged at.
>
>The secondary blast is nasty enough to cause concern for the gunner 
>at very short firing ranges - ie., if you fire enough of them at 
>short ranges (eg. in training) you run a non-negligible risk of 
>getting hit by shrapnel from your own weapon at some point in your 
>life.
>
>It isn't enough - that is to say, the "lethal radius" is too small - 
>to be consistently useful against dispersed targets (and you don't 
>have enough missiles to fire them at such targets hoping that it 
>*might* work). Pretty much any SGII squad not inside a vehicle or 
>building, even if all the figures are in base-to-base contact, is 
>effectively a dispersed target since each figure's base is some 5 - 
>10 meters across in the SGII ground scale.
>
>Because the users want to be able to use our products at ever 
>shorter ranges, and also because any energy that isn't going towards 
>the primary target is wasted in an anti-armour weapon, there's a 
>*lot* of work going on to minimize the amount of blast and shrapnel 
>that goes anywhere else than into the primary target.

So that's a design goal of at least some of the current crop of 
ATGMs. Not a general factor of HEAT warheads in general.

>
>>To modern Shaped charges have any kind of restricting material 
>>around the HE component to optimize the blast towards the cone?
>
>Yes. In HEAT rounds this casing is usually designed to form as few, 
>as large and as slow fragments as possible in order to maximize the 
>amount of energy that goes into the armoured target. In HEDP rounds 
>it is frangible, but HEDP rounds give up a quite significant 
>proportion of their armour penetration in order to play second-rate 
>HEF - generally speaking HEDP warheads are effective against lightly 
>armoured targets like light APCs or aircraft, but don't try to use 
>them against tanks.
>
>>Granted there generally isn't any fragmentation component on them 
>>but even something like IPDSM is nasty to be near as they have an 
>>area frag effect and a shaped charge piercing effect.
>
>I suspect that you mean "DPICM" rather than "IPDSM" - not least because
I

Brain fart. The little bomblets. I was thinking Improved Dual-purpose 
Scattered Munitions....

>>Gosh, thinking about the general cone shaped effect of old WWII 
>>style artillery (HE rounds) is there a similar effect with lower 
>>velocity ATGMs?
>
>If you're thinking of the "butterfly-shaped" shrapnel distribution 
>patterns typical for WW2 HE rounds, there is a similar effect with 
>ATGMs but with a quite different shape to the pattern.

Looks like a butterfly on the ground, but its really a 3 d cone as
I understand. Angle of incidence effects it too. Of course they also 
airburst more too.
-- 
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