DREAD Weapon System: 120,000 rpm, silent, no recoil.

maximus otter

maximus otter

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Jul 20, 2002
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"Imagine a gun with no recoil, no sound, no heat, no gunpowder, no visible firing signature (muzzle flash), and no stoppages or jams of any kind. Now imagine that this gun could fire .308 caliber and .50 caliber metal projectiles accurately at up to 8,000 fps (feet-per-second), enjoy an infinitely variable/programmable cyclic rate of fire (as high as 120,000 rounds-per-minute), and enjoy a 360 degree field of fire. What if you could mount this weapon on any military Humvee (HMMWV), any helicopter/gunship, any armored personnel carrier (APC), and any other vehicle for which the technology were applicable?

It will be 40 inches long, 32 inches wide, and 3 inches high (20 inches high with the pintel swivel mount). It will be comprised of only 30 component parts, and will have an empty weight of only 28 pounds. That's right, 28 pounds. The weapon will be capable of rotating 360 degrees and enjoy the same elevation and declination capabilities of any conventional vehicle-mounted gun/weapon. The first generation DREAD (production version), derived from the tactically-configured pre-production weapon, will most likely be a ground vehicle-mounted anti-personnel weapon. Military Humvees (HMMV's) and other ground vehicles (including Chevy Suburbans) equipped with the DREAD, will enjoy magazine capacities of at least 50,000 rounds of .308 Cal., or 10,000 rounds of .50 Cal. ammo."

Click here for full article & video.

maximus otter
 
It sounds like someone has been smoking a lot of funny cigarettes and wants some government to buy a lot more. :confused:
 
It smells a bit like CloneAid to me, but if this really is true,
we have just entered a whole new generation of war.
scary.
 
Interesting. I wonder how much gyroscopic effect there is and how it affects the platform vehicle.
 
Interesting. I downloaded the movie and there was alot of animation with about a 2 sec glance at a working prototype. It was as impressive as fair ground air machine gun they use to shoot out the red star with. But that is just the beginning.

I suppose it could be automated and used to whack RPG's ala Phalynx system.


Paul
 
It sounds possible.

And don't forget that what we're talking about here is a change of paradigm. It's a whole new approach to the old goal of hurrling bits of metal at your opponent at high velocity. There's an old saying (at the risk of offending cat lovers), "There's more than one way to skin a cat." Gun powder is the way we've accellerated metal projectiles at our opponents for centuries. It's a very entrenced paradigm. But if you can step out of that paradigm -- and that can be a difficult thing to do -- then you realize that there are a lot of ways to accellerate metal projectiles and it's just a matter of reducing one to practice.

But, as for being silent, the speed of sound is nominally 1100-1200 feet/second depending on temperature. If you accellerate a projectile beyond that, there will be a sonic boom. That can be reduced some by the aerodymamic design of said projectile, but a round ball is very close to being exactly the wrong shape to minimize sonic boom. For a .3-.5" diameter ball, the sonic boom will be small, but not non-existent. On a battlefield with lots of conventional munitions being fired, heavy vehicles moving around, etc., it may be practically silent. But, in other settings, not nearly so.
 
Can it be adapted for paintball?
Click to expand...

The paintball gun (or marker to be politically-correct) is a good example of stepping out of the gunpowder paradigm. It propels a projectile using air pressure. Compared to a conventional pistol (even with a supressor) paintball markers are virtually silent.

As for using this centrifuge technique, my guess is that paintball balls are not strong enough to withstand the forces involved.
 
Very interesting. Great idea. The video didn't mention anything about the power source. I doubt if this thing runs on AA batteries.

I know why they didn't show much footage of DREAD: it would probably have to include the giant electrical cable running from the HUMVEE to the tank-sized battery/generator that follows it around in the field.

Heck, when you run out of ammunition, you can just roll the whole device and it's electrical power source within a half-mile proximity of the enemy and let them succumb to the deleterious effects of the EMF's. . . . .
 
This may sound wierd, but I have actually been giving thought as to how a centrifuge-type weapon would work, and how it would have to function.

Seems to me that the dimensions given are a bit optimistic. In order to provide sufficient velocity for a useful military weapon, your centrifuge will either have to be rather large, or spin ferociously fast. (I'm a little weak on the math here, guys, but surely someone can figure out what sort of RPM we're talking about to impart a nominal 3000 fps to a projetile with a centrifuge of given diameter.

Gonna need some serious bearings...

Then there's the accuracy and performance aspect...Those round balls are none too stable, and on-target effectiveness will be less than a conventional projectile.

Still, I think such a weapon could well perform area-fire duties quite well, and no expensive cartridge cases either.
 
Let's see. If I remeber it right, v=w*r, where w is the angular velocity. So

w = 2*pi*nrps radian/s (nrps is rotations per second)
=> v = 2*pi*r*nrps m/s
=> nrps = v/(2*pi*r)

3000 fps is about 1000m/s
if v=1000m/s and r=1m

nrps = 1000/6.28 = 160rps

v=1000,r=0.2 (8 inch radius)

nrps = 800 rps ... pretty fast ;)
 
How's that million round a minute gun work, I think it was a million? Does it still use gun powder? Pretty neat set up and there doesn't even have to be anyone there to pull a trigger. Talk about a boobey trap, sheesh!
 
flava said:
Let's see. If I remeber it right, v=w*r, where w is the angular velocity. So

w = 2*pi*nrps radian/s (nrps is rotations per second)
=> v = 2*pi*r*nrps m/s
=> nrps = v/(2*pi*r)

3000 fps is about 1000m/s
if v=1000m/s and r=1m

nrps = 1000/6.28 = 160rps

v=1000,r=0.2 (8 inch radius)

nrps = 800 rps ... pretty fast ;)
Click to expand...


I'm sorry, what did you say? :confused: :confused: :confused: :confused:
 
800 revs per second would translate to....48000 rpm? Thats pretty fast for a machine that would experience a considerable amount of "loading" at the periphery of the centrifuge. That would depend on the rate of fire, of course.

I'm not an engineer by any means; does any existing machinery operate in this range? How long would it take for this device to "spin up"? What's the power source?

Of course, that 3000 fps figure was just a nominal one I pulled out of a hat as average-y for military weapons. For anti-personel work at closer range, less velocity would still be useful.
On a larger machine, one could see using something like mag-lev bearings.
No friction, but I don't know if they'd work in a rotational plane. They're obviously powerful enough to hold up trains...

I entered "48000 rpm" into Google, and got a large number of hits on industrial items (mostly pumps) that operate at this speed and above. One pump was tested at a heady 70,000 rpm.
 
Oh, it can be done. I used to work, decades ago, for a hospital fixing X-ray equipment. One of the labs there had a centrifuge capable of 150,000 (if I remember correctly) RPM. The thing had armour plating all around it because if something broke loose at those velocities it would be like a bullet fired inside the machine. I do remember that it had an unusally-large 240V three-phase electrical service. It had a large cooling system. And I do remember that it spent more time down-for-repairs than it was in-service. That was twenty-five years ago or so. I also remember that when they ran it, you could definitely hear the sonic boom as it spun up.

I have a good friend who works for a local company here. He is an engineer and he designs some of the fastest machines in the world: dental drills. Those things get over a 100,000 RPM. The surfaces of the bearings move at over mach 10. Part of the design challenge is to deal with the sonic shockwaves, the sonic booms, going on inside the drill.

The point is that mechanisms that go at these speeds are certainly possible.
 
HMM...

12,7 mm ball of steel has a mass of about 21.4 g
8000 fps is about 2438 m/s
so the ball has kinetic energy of 63.7 kJ
2000 rounds/second gives power needed, 127.2 MW

That is a small power station.

I would say that one of those numbers given should be fixed.

TLM
 
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