On Tue, 6 Jan 2004, Edward Becerra wrote:

         Actually, and no offence is intended here, very few
people on this list are familiar with the number of exotic
"personal weaponry" projects that the US military is currently
toying with.

Alas, no. Lately I've been looking at some of the military's
directed-energy weapons research. Improved systems integration
are heavy man-served weapons are (IMNSHO) going to be the
most important part of this war.

         That's right.. a _RAMJET_ engine, no larger than
your thumb. It's not launched, it's fired like an ordinary
bullet, in the same way. Good old fashioned gunpowder. This
micro-ramjet is inserted into a brass cartridge just like a
standard lead bullet, and is fired from a (mostly) standard
firearm. At short range, it's just a bullet, and does the
same damage. Once it self ignites, however, it picks up even
more speed and has a much greater impact with very little
recoil for the person firing it. Think of an elephant rifle
with the recoil of a .22 rimfire. Nasty.

Nasty, though I suspect that are a bunch of engineering problems
related to this micro-ramjet round, nevermind the cost of
deployment. Would suck for a youma hit by one, though, but I
suspect that it's AP characteristics are going to be severely
degraded.

         On top of that, there's a project in the works to
develop a self-guided bullet, a project straight out of
Tom Selleck's movie, "Runaway". Aim the pistol at the target,
let the micro-seeker head take an infra-red image of the
selected target, then fire and watch the fun while the
projectile _chases_ the target.

Deployment almost certainly is a long-ways off. I somehow
doubt that any such device will be ready by the time of
this postulated youma invasion. Just the control surfaces
alone seem like a nightmare, nevermind miniaturizing an
IIR sensor or the power supply and microprocessor for it.

         I could go on, but I risk moving off topic. My
point is this.. most of these weapons are research only,
because we have no real urgent NEED for them at the moment.
However, an actual invasion of meta-beings, aliens, or
demonic creatures _WOULD_ result in the rapid movement of
such projects from the backburners of military research to
a status of "GET THEM BUILT NOW, IDIOTS!"

I'm not so sure. These projects seem to be rather complex, and
I cringe at the thought of their reliability in the field,
nevermind the great expense of them. The last thing we need
in this campaign against Metallia is to fall into the trap that
Nazi Germany did -- they produced scores of prototypes and
designs and all sorts of things, but they didn't actually sit
down and produce effective, reliable tools for their soldiers.

Technological refinement of existing weapons (perhaps what with
little magical enhancement may be available, it at all) will
work wonders. That, and improving their systems integration,
which is really only affordable for First World nations. Places
like Africa or the Arab world are frankly screwed. They can
get the firepower, but things like command ability are generally,
uh, subpar (maybe except for S. Africa), nevermind the usual
technical inferiorty of their C4ISR systems.

IOW: Our happy youma, fresh from their raid on Tokyo and with
a favorable kill ratio attempt the same in, say, New York City.
There, they are greeted by Mr. RPG from the NYPD and killed
en masse.

         If anyone is interested in this sort of subject for
their fanfics, and needs help with the research, I'd be
happy to put the information I have at their disposal, much
as I have for Gary Kleppe.

It is rather interesting, could you email me your sources off
the list?

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