Lord Herbert wrote on Dec 18
th, 2014 at 7:22am:
The talk was all about the ramjet a few years ago. That was the big hope for fast long distance travel.
That idea seems to have gone the way of that gun that was invented by an Australian.
Metal Storm. I've never heard of it being used in combat.
No, the problem with Metal Storm is that it is a problem looking for a solution, Herbie.
There are many things, despite the slick advertising brochures and videos that haven't been worked out very well with the concept which prevent it's adaptation from a practice point of view.
Perhaps the most basic and glaring are the issues with the ballistics. Each round fired from a single barrel has differing ballistics and hence accuracy, Herbie. Each round has a differing barrel length and muzzle velocity. The result is high dispersion, particularly in those weapons that have extremely high rates of fire.
Then also the weapons that extremely high rates of fire, they appear to have no recoil absorption systems, they are rigidly mounted (usually staked to the ground). This is OK for a proof of concept but for an operational system, particularly onboard a ship (which is where these would be most useful), that means that either some form of recoil absorption system must be created or the deck of the ship needs enormous reinforcing to absorb the recoil from the theoretical "million rounds a minute" rate of fire. Therefore no real advantage and some real disadvantages.
Then there is the problem of changing ammunition types. Most larger calibre automatic cannon fire differing types of ammunition to destroy different types of targets. In most modern automatic cannon or grenade launchers they can change the ammunition fired at the flick of a switch because they have alternative loading systems. In Metalstorm, either you change the barrel in the middle of an engagement or you're forced to carry on the one weapon, multiple barrels each with different ammunition contained therein. That means there is a lot less weight savings than is claimed by Metalstorm (ie "No longer require complex and heavy reloading systems"). Indeed, whereas in a normal automatic cannon, the reloading is easily accomplished from under armour, in Metalstorm there appears to have been no thinking out of that problem. Essentially you must expose yourself to enemy fire to reload the weapon (ie "change barrels").
Still a long way to go on this weapon's development and I suspect it will always remain in a specialist niche, Herbie. It's not the panacea that Metalstorm proclaims it to be.
Quote:The only reason the concorde failed was because it didn't turn a big enough profit to keep all the shareholders happy ~ otherwise it was a magnificent piece of technology.
It didn't turn a big enough profit because it was prohibitively expensive to operate, Herbie. The cabin was too small so only a small number of passengers could be carried, so as the price of fuel increased, so did the cost of the seat with the result that it became too expensive except for the super rich. The days of small aircraft, flying few passengers were long gone even by the time Concorde entered service. This is why we are seeing the A380 enter service - massive numbers of passengers allows you to divide the cost of the fuel to ferry them around between a large number of seats and so the cost of the individual ticket comes down.
Don't get me wrong, Concorde was a huge technical achievement but it was a financial disaster. British Airways and Air France kept them on as long as they did, purely for the prestige. From the accounts I've read and the discussions I've had with the brother of a friend who was an Airframe Engineer on Concorde, it was generally cramped, noisy and quite often hot inside the cabin. I've always envied him though, he used to go on test flights so has flown supersonic more often than most military pilots! Lucky bastard!
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