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.
Nice one! :o)
On a positive note, if you were driving under the influence, the cop behind you would never see you weaving down the road. 'Course, otoh, you might not be able to make any right turns either, and you could never go home again! ;-)
Nah, couldn't be! :-)
Uber-cool-gotta-check-it-out-later BUMP!
But it does not recoil in that direction. The release of force is perpendicular to the direction the projectile leaves. The force the projectile is applying to the gun barrel is very nearly perpendicular to the motion of the projectile at any given moment. At release the barrel suddenly stops receiving that outward force. The projectile continues moving in the direction it was moving in at the moment of release and the rotating barrel suddenly (instantly) experiences a lack of force in the radial direction. Imagine you are holding two buckets of water and spinning around. The moment you release one you are unbalanced and the remain bucket causes you to wobble in a circle. effectively your center of rotation was moved very suddenly. The actual acceleration of the buckets was absorbed long ago by your feet pushing in circles on the ground.
,,, I read years ago that the East Germans [before the Wall was taken down] had a weapon called the SM52 or SM70 - can't recall the numbers. This thing spat out ballbearings with little razor like edges, designed to rip flesh as they spun. This was the stage escapees would encounter after they had scaled electric fences, negotiated a narrow strip minefield and avoided the eye of any border guards and their dogs. The projectiles were launched from a vent-like pipe that was above ground, but fed from underground, much like a vent pipe on a ship's deck... that's how I remember it. The article gave no info on dispertion angles.
,,, I see you've been reading too.
Heck, I built one of these in HIGH SCHOOL with a couple of buddies. It spun at about 1000RPM and had an extremely simple electric release system that allowed it to be reasonably accurate. I have no idea what the exit velocity was (1000RPM with a 24 inch flywheel diameter, if anyone wants to do the math), but it easily fired our .40 caliber lead shot through our plywood target at 10 feet.
We had two problems with this thing. First, in order to get the motor up to full RPM it had to be balanced perfectly. When we released our shot, the weapon went out of balance and it was everything you could do to keep a grip on it. Second, the high speed flywheel meant that the weapon suffered from a gyroscopic effect. It was easy to fire if you had it stable, but it was very difficult to control the weapon if you tried to move or change directions while it was powered up. It would literally try to tear itself from your hands! We ended up only using it a few times before tucking it into the garage rafters.
Hmm...I wonder if my parents still have it out there...
Just getting a bird's-eye view.
A clear application for anti-gravity technology. Use it to reduce the spinning momentum to zero.
Yep, it'd sure make it tough to acquire moving targets! I've got to wonder how practical this gizmo can be.
The mass is already accelerated before it is released. When released there is no acceleration of the balls. They are already in full speed motion.
Before being released, the centrifugal force is equally and oppositely counteracted by a centripetal force which holds the ball bearing in place (centripetal prevents the ball bearing from flying out)
When the balls are released the centripetal force goes to zero and the opposing centrifugal force goes to zero but the ball bearing continues its motion tangentially without any real loss of energy, or change in total inertia (ideally).
Thus when the bearings are released there is no loss of energy in the system (or gain of energy as in a shell explosion) so there is no recoil.
[Note: It may be difficult to hold the aim on target since the angular torsion will vary as the mass is unequally released from the circumferance of the spinning device.]
In other words, at the time the projectile is released, the propelling force has already been imparted to it. So there would be no recoil.
Or another DREAD spinning the opposite direction?
What a missed opportunity! The logical name for this weapon is the "David".
Then there is the HTML sandbox issue...
"It would literally try to tear itself from your hands!"
An unpleasant example of the same principle that keeps a motorcycle upright at speed, I suppose --- very difficult to get the parallel spinning wheels to change plane of rotatation.
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