How about a kinetic energy mine

Reading about the high killrates of the "silver bullet" kinetic energy projectile rounds as fired by the M1A1, i came up with the idea of using the same principle for a budget anti-tank mine:

Buried in the ground is a long barrel of concrete on the inside lined with teflon, at the bottom rests a sabot kinetic energy round wich would fire at the bottom of a tank from close distance, the long DU or Tungsten dart would probably exit through the roof of the tank.....

Considerations:

- It's a one-shot only barrel, so it can be made of cheap materials and may get destroyed in the process of firing the sabot dart

- the very close proximity of the target means the dart will loose virtually no speed, as opposed to darts fired from a tank flying for several kms, this means one could get away with substantially less explosives to fire the round.

- the ground in wich the concrete barrel is buried serves as buffer to prevent the barrel flying appart before optimum energy is transferred to the dart (therefore the barrel would not work properly above ground, energy would dissipate prematurely in the air as the barrel gets destroyed.

- the barrel is assmebled on site by stacking modular pre-casted mini-barrels for easy transport

- in this example concrete is used as barrelmaterial to defeat metal/magnetic
mine detetors other material could be used as well, as long a good balance is found between effectivity and detectabillity of the barrel and the weight of the barrel modules.

- the round and the explosives sit at the bottom of the long barrel providing the distance to possibly defeat synthetic aperture radar and or explosive chemicals sniffers.

- concrete is cheap and abundant in urban warfare areas.

One for the road


[edit on 5-12-2004 by Countermeasures]

Even better try a kinetic mine as an anti-sub weapon. Water conducts sound waves very nicely so I'm sure a kinetic mine would work well underwater. It would practically shatter the subs structure. I can see it would be a useful anti-tank weapon seeing as they put so much weight down it would transfer energy very well.

I think a SABOT round is overkill, I think a HEAT round would be all it would take, it will DEFINITLY penetrate the bottom and maybe have a timed-fuze explode when it's inside the tanks totally destroying it from the inside leaving no dangerous (and hazardous) DU-Penetrator flying and possibly causing collateral damage...

but definitly not a bad idea...

Sounds like an interesting idea, but could you answer a few questions for me please?

1. Is the round discharged via a railgun type scenario up the tube?

2. How are you going to bore the holes for the mines? An auger of some kind would do the job but those kind of machines arent exactly built for service in a combat environment.

3. Pre-cast concrete piles in tube form are great for the foundations of your house but have to be driven in after the hole has been bored. If these are pre made units, would the ammunition be lowered into the base of tube post construction. The coefficient of friction for concrete and earth is quite high and the concrete tubes would likely have to be driven into the ground, this is usually accomplished by brute force from a driving machine. The large impact vibrations would surely be enough to the trigger the device if it went in with the first tube.

I think I can answer this:

1. Is the round discharged via a railgun type scenario up the tube?

Doubtful, It will probably be discharged by a charge much like a tank cannon.

2. How are you going to bore the holes for the mines? An auger of some kind would do the job but those kind of machines arent exactly built for service in a combat environment.

That is probably what the author intended, but IMO it would be easier to make a system that can be burried underground and fired from a small tube when it detects the tank above it, I don't know how detection would work...presumably a pressure sensor.

3. Pre-cast concrete piles in tube form are great for the foundations of your house but have to be driven in after the hole has been bored. If these are pre made units, would the ammunition be lowered into the base of tube post construction. The coefficient of friction for concrete and earth is quite high and the concrete tubes would likely have to be driven into the ground, this is usually accomplished by brute force from a driving machine. The large impact vibrations would surely be enough to the trigger the device if it went in with the first tube.

The system sounds OK, but it wouldn't have to be encased in concrete IMO...

Originally posted by GrOuNd_ZeRo
That is probably what the author intended, but IMO it would be easier to make a system that can be burried underground and fired from a small tube when it detects the tank above it...

One problem, what if enemy refuses to collaborate and uses other route?
THis kind of mines would be much harder to place in than normal AT mines so you couldn't mine so many routes in same time.

True, I doubt most soviet-era tanks can survive an AT mine these days anyway, but I like discussing about hypothetical weapon systems :p