Aw, c'mon, boys! It's all about ball bearings these days!
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.
He has to finish the bowling ball cannon first!
If this is a centripetal weapon, doesn’t this mean theoretically the opposing force of the exit volicty would be distributed along the entire centripetal loop (or path), thus giving a great force with little true recoil as it is spread evenly around the circle?
you forgot to mention duct tape.. must always have duct tape.
When ball bearings are outlawed, only outlaws will have ball bearings.
or balistic missiles
I get a diameter of about four feet, if you want a "muzzle" velocity of 1,000 ft/sec, and want the wheel to spin at 5,000rpm. How big is your purse? :-)
> described a similar idea to me a number of times
The concept is quite old. Many people thought back in the 1910-1930 time frame that space launch would be by means of giant spinning wheels hurling rocketships into the sky at escape velocity.
A "black box", no matter what its internal workings, will have recoil if it is projecting mass. There is no way around this.
I think they must have meant "no recoil" in a loose human-perceptive sort of way.
I sent them an email requesting a unit for beta-testing!
Okay, I guess I'll have to keep it at home. My purse is big, but not THAT big. Dang it, I work in a bad neighborhood too.
Aw, c'mon, boys! It's all about ball bearings these days!
Ball bearings are notoriously inaccurate, any round object is.
If the ball bearings exceed the speed of sound, they will still make a very loud crack!
Sounds like another way to waste defense dollars.
"or balistic missiles"
Only at the top of the arc, though.
In the atmosphere, I think this would be worthless.
Unless, perhaps you lived in England and they hadn't written the law to ban it yet.
So in laymen's terms it's a high powered sling shot.
There is no opposing force. The mechanism that spins the bearings gives them energy; when the bearings are 'fired', they are mearly released.
Anybody read any Dale Brown? This sounds like a perfect addition to his stories(or taken straight from them). Even has a silly name, "DREAD".
That, and the power/energy requirements for spinning the chamber would be much larger than what a typical handgun/firearm currently uses.
True: all of the energy would be directed outward from the center and contained by the unit until the bearing itself is released.
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