Posted on 02/25/2020 6:49:43 PM PST by Olog-hai
The U.S. Defense Department has awarded a multimillion-dollar contract for a system that would knock threatening missiles out of the sky.
A company called Aerojet Rocketdyne was awarded $19.6 million to develop “enabling technologies” for the system, which will be known as Glide Breaker, it said earlier this month.
“Advancing hypersonic technology is a national security imperative,” Eileen Drake, Aerojet Rocketdyne CEO and president, said in a statement. “Our team is proud to apply our decades of experience developing hypersonic and missile propulsion technologies to the Glide Breaker program.”
The Glide Breaker program is part of America’s efforts to counteract hypersonic vehicles, according to the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). …
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
Cool, wait, why are they announcing it?
Got it: It was not Rocketdyne that ran the reactor.
Metalstorm ran into the problem that in as implemented form, it had major problems like the fact that each tube was basically an inaccurate single use weapon. Think about ballistics from variable length barrels.
Serious question: Does it really need barrels if the point is to throw a cloud of liquified metal in a large area at a falling object?
Other problems that came out in testing:
1. Misfires tended to make the whole thing explode.
2. The infantry area denial system turned out to be at *best* as effective as a Claymore mine, while costing a couple orders of magnitude more than a Claymore, being heavier than a Claymore, being far more complex than a Claymore and being far less reliable. And larger/easier to spot.
3. CIWS application testing showed that a Metalstorm unit was less accurate, less able to switch targets, took longer to get steel on target and actually worse at trying to handle a saturation attack at any significant distance than either Phalanx or Goalkeeper, even given the same radar and mount.
This is why other than units for testing, no military ever bought a Metalstorm system. I can see uses for it, but not in this application.
Metalstorm doesn’t throw liquified metal, and the range of liquified projectiles is generally measured in tens of meters. Further, no barrel/, no velocity, no multiple projectiles/cloud depth in a Metalstorm system, or you might as well just use a big Claymore, which would would actually be more effective in most cases per testing.
You’re right, it was.
Yes, that’s it.
Yup
No nets. But we got these badminton rackets to try and catch the falling missles.
As a Daytonian, I suggest the rat hole of Cleveland to be a more fitting target.
Apologies to you and all Daytonians.
Daytonites?
Daytoners?
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