We had proximity fuses for anti-aircraft artillery during WW2. Why does it seem like it's a big deal to get them working again?
We had proximity fuses for anti-aircraft artillery during WW2. Why does it seem like it's a big deal to get them working again?
a drone is a lot smaller than a giant bomber
then make smol fuze
Drones are also not real, they are fantasy propaganda.
Its like if we tried to build a Sherman tank today, we just haven't maintained the infrastructure.
>We had proximity fuses for anti-aircraft artillery during WW2.
and they still use them
they have even improved on the design by making guided artillery shells
the media just sees them using proximity fuzes for anti-drone weapons and assumes the rounds were invented wholecloth for the purpose instead of simply being a tool they already had and knew the capabilities of being pressed into a role its suited for
this is why the mil blogs like 1945 and TheDrive are pretty fricking shit for understanding what's really going on in military procurement
anyway, proxy rounds are just a backup for these.
LASERS WILL KEEP IT CLEAN
While this is correct and the media is kind of wrong, at the same time you're skipping over the importance of supply chains and doing things with what we've got now. This reminds me of the common space internet question of "why don't we just restart Saturn V F1 engine production? We did it in the 60s so it should be easy now right?" Wrong. Tons of institutional expertise, specific materials, supply chains, manufacturing, skills and so on are all gone. Labor is all different. Even with crazy levels of detail in recording process it still wouldn't make sense. By the same token we wouldn't do WW2 style VT fuses for mass production at this point either. Yes the concept is straight forward but figuring out how to do it as cheaply as possible with current stuff with integration with current/future platforms, network standards etc and then mass produce is still a real endeavor that shouldn't be papered over. They'll get it done of course, but doing it right will take a lot of skilled people a fair amount of work.
they dont use WW2-era VT fuzes because modern microchips are tons more resistant to shock than the vacuum tubes used in WW2
and artillery pieces have been firing not just proximity rounds for decades, but they have been using way more advanced rounds
and proximity shells never left service either, everything from ship 5in guns to 40mm bofors have gotten proximity and programmable rounds
the machining, tooling, and labor are all present
they already have prox fuses for the guns they're issuing prox fuses for, they just weren't being issued to Strykers for drone defense
Putting them on strykers is probably new.
Modern fuses are also very different from ww2 fuses.
Because by the late cold war anti-air artillery had become more niche in the face of missiles often being more efficient against high performance Jet aircraft. Big SAM's can hit aircraft at high altitudes, and a stinger missle is easier for infantry to haul around than an autocannon. Things like triple A still had a place against helicopters, but those would mostly be firing missles at standoff distances. Basically it was felt that since nobody was using bazillions of dive bombing propeller aircraft anymore, you didn't need bazillions of 40mm Bofors against them.
But 2022 is not 1989, and cheap electronics and coding are about as dirt cheap as a pile of plastic and a 50 horse power engine or electric battery. Slap that shit together and you have a quadcopter bomber or a cheap suicide drone that broadly speaking, will attack you at similar altitudes WW1 or WW2 fighter bomber aircraft would, and suddenly it's VERY handy to have a lot of air bursting autocannons.
Lo' the pendulum swings.
if they said they're fielding them then there's no issue getting them working again, they're in the field and they work
>We had proximity fuses for anti-aircraft artillery during WW2.
The Bofors fuze was also pretty expensive, it was just worth it based on what it saved.
I assume the modern prox fuses are much smarter and could potentially be cheaper given consumerisation of electronics.
Smaller means it can go on smaller rounds too and smarter means the rounds won't need as much explosive and frag, also making for smaller rounds so it could be a more portable weapon.
The USA never had Bofors fuzes especially not during world war II where the smallest we could get was 3inch gun rounds. I think the smallest we ever had in practice was 57mm or was it 56mm? I forgot.
>proximity fuses for anti-aircraft artillery
How do they work? How do they detect that there's something nearby? Or they just blow up after a specific time?
the original ones worked by sending out a radio wave to detect reflections.
Shortly after firing they put out a proximity sensor using radar waves, if something comes close the waves bounce back, the shell detects the reflected waves, and explodes
That sounds pretty advanced for WW2 era tech.
There was the US Navy Bat which was a passive radar guided glide bomb. And it was actually fielded. It got fooled easy but it was actually much more closer to today's guided missiles rather than the Fritz X.
it was considered amazingly advanced, and basically revolutionized artillery
it was considered so valuable and ahead of its time, that they werent allowed to fire them at ground targets until mid-1944 for fear the germans might reverse-engineer them
when they did roll them out, they were stupidly overpowered, there are accounts of every single tree in a forest being blown to the exact same height from the shells all detonating at the same height from the ground
the secret was making a vacuum tube, basically a light bulb, that could survive the 15,000 Gs of accelerating from a gun tube
this was done by basically making the smallest possible vacuum tube to reduce the force of acceleration on it and then wrapping the whole thing in wax to further deaden the shock
>That sounds pretty advanced for WW2 era tech.
That's because it was. The Americans and Brits basically considered it a super weapon technology at least somewhat comparable to the Atomic bomb.
I’m a moron, for a brief second i thought the picture was implying they tried to use VT fuse AA as anti artillery base defense type stuff. Cool video though, I’ve read up a lot on the VT fuses but haven’t seen this, thanks anon
>How do they work? How do they detect that there's something nearby?
doppler radar
as it approaches an object, the wavelength of the return signature increases in frequency
and the round can be programmed to detonate at specific frequencies, ie. range
imagine a train, as it gets closer it increases in pitch
and then as it passes you by, it starts to trail off getting lower
the fuze "hears" the radio wave getting higher and higher as it gets closer and closer
Anon, your image is from a porn. I thought I would just let you know in case you didn’t.
It's not profitable for Raytheon or Lockheed to develop cheap munitions.
Are we mounting a 40mm gun on the stryker? Or have we decide a 30mm gun might actually be useable for proximity fuzes with current technology?
Proximity fuzes were for large caliber AA Cannons. Post WWII, SAMS replaced those and rapid fire small caliber AA systems were used for low altitude SHORAD, which don't carry enough explosive payload or fragmentation potential to be effective with proximity bursts. In order to do enough damage to a large aircraft with a burst of proximity fuzed rounds, you would essentially have to have most of the burst actually be on a trajectory to hit it, so little effort was put into miniature VT Fuzes.
Small caliber AA Cannons do carry a large enough charge for air burst to be effective against small drones, which are also slower moving, and therefore easier for a gun based system to get a shot on.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otomatic
>discussing small caliber AA cannons
>posts a modified 3" Naval Gun on a tank chassis
The Otomatic is based, but you're illiterate.
why do you believe the press has the foggiest idea what they're talking about?