Posted on 05/11/2005 1:07:57 PM PDT by LibWhacker
A gun that spits out ball bearings after spinning them to extreme speeds is being developed by a US inventor. The novel design has already caught the imagination of some defence industry experts.
The weapon, called DREAD, was invented by Charles St George, a veteran of the US firearms industry who founded the company Leader Propulsion Systems to promote the idea. He claims a major US defence company has shown an interested in developing it further and has produced a promotional video showing a prototype in action, which can be seen here (Quicktime). He says a new prototype will be developed in August 2005.
The gun consists of a mounted circular chamber that spins the metal ball bearings to high speed. A release mechanism on one side spits the balls out one behind the other, a handful at a time.
St George says the projectiles travel at around 300 metres per second upon release from the weapon, about the same speed as a handgun round. He claims a fully developed DREAD gun would be quieter than a conventional gun, less prone to malfunction, and could contain more ammunition.
DREAD also releases its balls in extremely rapid succession, which allows it to unleash formidable firepower against a target. Promotional material for DREAD states: "Due to its extraordinary high rate of fire capability, it delivers its bullets 8.5 millimetres apart, thereby delivering more mass to the target than any other weapon."
Overwhelming and devastating
St George would not specify the range or accuracy of the most recent prototype or explain precisely how the system works, because he says this information could be commercially sensitive.
But a patent issued to him in February 2003 has been found by Marc Abrahams, editor of science humour magazine Annals of Improbable Research. It refers to a "Weapon for Centrifugal Propulsion of Projectiles". In this design, balls are stored inside a series of narrow chambers that radiate from the centre of a circular chamber and which are rotated with the chamber at high speed.
A mechanism beneath each narrow chamber automatically manoeuvres a single ball into a smaller compartment at near its edge. When the trigger is pulled, these balls are released into a guide rail and shoot from the disc rapidly, from a hole at its edge.
"The system seams absolutely feasible," says David Crane, editor of the website DefenseReview.com. The weapon could strike targets with “overwhelming and devastating firepower - we're talking about total target saturation."
Terry Gander, who edits the defence industry journal Jane's Infantry Weapons, adds that similar concepts have been developed in the past. But Gander notes that these have had low projectile velocity and have been proposed as crowd control weapons. "It all depends on the sort of power source you have," he told New Scientist. "I'd be very interested to know what its range is."
But Abrahams finds the idea outlandish. "Anything that seems so far beyond anything else is worth a moment's thought before you completely gulp it down," he told New Scientist. "It is way out on the side of the scale that deals with high levels of imagination.
I'd probably be better with a gun than I would a screwdriver anyway. Though I prefer margaritas. Oh wait!, that's another subject...
LOL
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The patent is probably for a specific type of this device. There are number of ways to build something that uses this principle.
The recoil you have on a normal weapon occurs as the mass you are projecting (i.e. bullet) is sped up. I would guess that the recoil in this weapon also happens as the mass is sped up. As the disc begins rotating, the force pushing back against the direction of rotation is equivalent of the force pushing back against the gun when it is fired. If the rounds were dropped into the disc after rotation has already started, the disc would experience a force opposite to its direction of rotation for each added round. This is the equivalent of recoil.
The problem with a weapon of this sort is that it has a large rotational momentum. If you tried to fire it while driving over bumps which change the axis of rotation, the top of the vehicle could be ripped entirely off if the system were not well reinforced.
This is a very revolutionary weapon. Ammunition would be lighter and cheaper because explosives would be unnecessary. The electrical power source is already built into many tanks. Accuracy is better without recoil and the speed at which mass is projected is simply incredible. One of the best advantages is that you have immediate 360 degree coverage because the ammunition can be released programmatically at any point in rotation. This means that you could give 4 gunners 4 scopes and have them all fire at a degree of rotation using the same weapon.
The "recoil" is angular, a torque impulse, in the opposite direction of the spin. Also, as Tom says, it occurs at load or spin-up, separated in time from the release. There would be little or no recoil at the moment of release.
There could be considerable vibration when loading, but if the projectiles distributed evenly in chambers around the circumference, there need not be a lot of vibration when loaded but not firing.
Cool! I believe you guys if you've seen the math. I certainly haven't. What is the velocity of the tip of the scoop and what is the velocity of the ball as it leaves the scoop? Is it double? Or just some small percentage faster?
At the moment of release, momentum is perserved by virture of the fact that neither the wheel or the ball change their momentum. The only change in momentum would come from the constant spinning of the wheel.
He's right, you've got to rememeber that the ball moves in the scoop. The ball leaves the scoop faster than the tip of the scoop is moving.
Okay, cool . . . That's PERFECTLY clear! Interesting, guys, thanks.
And then the wheel is instantly out of balance, causing the device to recoil in the opposite direction of the released projectile.
Voila! The laws of physics are obeyed!
Yes, conservation of momentum always applies but a 'traditional' recoil is not based on F=MA and not conservation of momentum. So there is a reactive force it is just unlike a normal gun's recoil.
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