Weapon from the pass
The topic of the article is ultra-high-speed kinetic weapons. This topic arose from the analysis of the tragic events at the Dyatlov Pass in February 1959. The death of nine tourists according to the sum of the available facts, even in the official investigation, is qualified as violent with the use of an unknown weapon. This was stated in articles directly devoted to these events: "Unclassified materials - the truth is somewhere nearby" and "The dead do not lie."
Since the damage on the bodies of the dead corresponded to the power of the rifle bullet, and the nature of the damage indicated the very small size of such a bullet, it was concluded that this bullet, in order to maintain its destructive power, must have microscopic dimensions and a speed of about 1000 km / sec.
In the previous article, "Weapons from the Pass," the possibility of super-high-speed movement of a bullet through the atmosphere without destroying it due to friction against the air was substantiated; in this article, an attempt will be made to reconstruct the weapon itself.
Once again about the version of events at the Dyatlov pass. I believe that back in February 1959, our state (then the USSR) carried out an operation to seize an unknown high-tech facility. At least 9 people died, most likely this unknown object “didn’t seem a little”, otherwise the state would not have made so many efforts to conceal its participation in these events.
This is only a version, I could be wrong. The sum of the facts is not enough for an unambiguous interpretation of those old events, but it is not important in the context of the current topic.
It is important that the question is raised about the reality of the existence of ultra-high-speed kinetic weapons.
It is important that the bullets of such weapons can effectively move in gas (air) environments.
The important thing is that such a weapon can actually be created on the basis of the technologies at our disposal.
But let's talk about this in more detail, we can of course say that if a "micro-bullet" is a product of unknown technologies, then the weapon itself is also based on physical principles unknown to us. Maybe so, but the technologies we know are capable of accelerating the bullet to speeds of the order of 1000 km / s. I am not talking about exotic things, such as Gaussian weapons, railguns, the most common powder technologies, only in new, modern packaging.
Let's start with the existing technologies of high-speed kinetic weapons, and only then move on to fantasy.
Artillery limit
For traditional artillery systems, the theoretical ceiling of the projectile speed has been reached to date - about 2-3 km / sec. The speed of the combustion products of gunpowder is just at this level, namely, they create pressure on the bottom of the projectile, accelerating it in the barrel of the gun.
To achieve this result, it was necessary to use a sub-caliber projectile (to lose a significant part of the energy), caseless technology (the case wedges at high pressures in the breech), shots with normalized powder combustion rates and a multi-point detonation system (to create uniform pressure throughout the movement of the projectile along the barrel) …
The limit has been reached, a further increase in the speed of the projectile in this technology rests on the limiting pressures withstood by the barrel, which are already on the verge of the possible. As a result, we have such a projectile, a snapshot of a real shot, at the time of resetting the calibration tabs:
Pay attention to the arcs near the flying projectile liners, these are the shock waves that were written about in the previous article. In a shock wave, gas molecules move faster than the speed of sound. To fall under such a wave will not seem a little. But the sharpened core of the projectile cannot create such a wave, the speed is not enough ….
But at the disposal of modern civilization there is another technology for creating high-speed kinetic weapons, literally cosmic in scale.
Arrows of god
Burning thousands of tons of fuel of maximum energy intensity, mankind has learned to launch objects weighing tens of tons into space and at speeds of the order of 10 km / sec. It is a sin not to use these space "projectiles" with huge kinetic energy as a weapon. The idea is not original, since 2000 the USA has been working on this project, its original name is "the arrows of God". It was assumed that objects on the ground would be hit by tungsten arrows about six meters long and weighing about one hundred kilograms. The kinetic energy of such an arrow, at such speeds, is approximately 0.1-0.3 Kilotons of TNT equivalent. This is how this project was presented then, more than 10 years ago:
In recent years, the project has gone into the shadows, either it was forgotten, or vice versa, it entered the stage of serious design work and, accordingly, acquired the "Top Secret" stamp.
The second is more likely, a painfully tempting prospect, only from the satellite, as it was originally supposed not to use this weapon effectively, the laws of ballistics are inexorable. Aiming at an object will lead to a sharp decrease in the speed of such a tungsten arrow, and therefore it will not carry all the energy to the point of destruction, at best the speed of the arrow at the point of destruction will be 5-6 km / s.
There is only one way out, the initial targeting is done by correcting the orbit of the satellite itself, and for this they use not the usual satellites, but maneuvering orbital systems, for us it is the "Spiral" that has died in the Bose and its carrier "Arrow". For the Americans, the topic has not died, on the contrary, right now the next Shuttle X-37B is in space. This is how it looks:
One of the obvious uses for this unmanned vehicle is a space bomber armed with the “arrows of God” already described.
So, orbital kinetic weapons are the future of local conflicts, ideal, by the way. But this is not our topic, let's return to “our rams”, traditional powder technologies.
Kinematics of projectile acceleration
The gun mount, according to the principle of its action, has not changed since the moment of its invention, it is a cylinder (barrel), a piston (projectile) and a charge (powder) placed between them. In this scheme, the speed of the projectile in the limit is determined by the speed of expansion of the combustion products of the charge, this value is a maximum of 3-4 km / s and depends on the pressure in the combustion volume (between the projectile and the bottom of the piston).
Modern artillery systems have approached the theoretical limit of the projectile speed in this kinematic scheme, and a further increase in speed is almost impossible.
So the scheme needs to be changed, but is it generally possible to accelerate the projectile to a speed higher than the combustion products of gunpowder can provide? At first glance, it is impossible, impossible to push the projectile faster than the speed of the gases carrying out this high-speed pressure.
But sailors have long learned to accelerate their sailing ships to speeds greater than the wind speed, in our case this is a direct analogy, a moving gas medium transfers its energy to a physical object, here is their latest achievement:
This "miracle" with a wind speed of 40 km / h due to the "oblique" sail is able to move at a speed of 120 km / h, that is, three times faster than the air moving this sailboat. This, at first glance, paradoxical result can be achieved due to the fact that the speed is a vector quantity and movement at an angle to the direction of the wind with the help of the "oblique" sail is possibly faster than the wind itself.
So the gunners have someone to borrow new principles for dispersing shells, tailors have a suitable principle, or rather, their main tool - scissors.
Closing Blades Effect
There is such a concept, "thought experiment", everything that concerns further presupposes the presence of imagination, at least at the everyday level … of an eleven-year-old child.
Imagine a pair of scissors, they are divorced, their tips are supposed to be divorced by a centimeter, and the blades have a closing point at a distance of 10 centimeters from the tips.
We begin to close them "all the way."
So, during the time the tips pass one centimeter, the closing point will move ten centimeters.
In such a system, the speeds of movement of physical objects will be maximum at the tips of the scissors. But, most importantly, the point of application of forces (the point of closing of the blades) will move at a speed 10 times greater than the speed of physical objects in such a system. Since during the closing time (while the tips of the scissors pass one centimeter), the closing point will move 10 centimeters.
Now imagine, at the intersection of the blades (at the point of closing) a small physical object (for example, a ball) is placed, and so it will move at the speed of the displacement of the point of closing, i.e. ten times faster than scissor tips.
This simple analogy allows us to understand how, at a given speed of a physical process, it is possible to obtain a point of application of forces that moves much faster than the physical object itself.
And moreover, how this point of application of forces can accelerate physical objects to speeds much higher than the speed of movement of physical objects involved in acceleration (blades in our example).
For simplicity, we will call this acceleration mechanism for physical objects "Closing scissors effect".
I think it's easy to understand even to a person who does not know the basics of physics, at least my 11-year-old daughter immediately, after I explained it to her, gave me an obvious association, saying: ".. yes, it's like shooting a lemon seed with your fingers …".
Indeed, children of genius in their simplicity have long been using this effect for their pranks, pinching the slippery seed with their thumb and forefinger and “shooting” from such an impromptu booster set. So this method has already been used by many of us in practice in childhood …
Acceleration of bullets by the methods of "closing scissors" and "vector addition of velocities"
Someone may think that the author is the discoverer of new technologies, to someone, on the contrary, it may seem that he is a dreamer. No need for emotion until I come up with something new. These technologies are already used in real-life artillery systems based on the cumulative explosion principles. Only the words are used there too tricky, but as you know: "as the ship is called, so it will … fly."
The cumulative effect was accidentally discovered in the 30s of the last century and immediately found application in artillery. A shaped charge for accelerating a jet of gases uses two of the above-mentioned effects at once - the effect of the vector addition of velocities and the effect of closing scissors. In more advanced implementations, a metal core is placed in the cumulative jet, which is accelerated by this jet to the speed of the jet itself, the so-called "impact core".
But this technology has a physical limit, the detonation speed is 10 km / sec (limiting) and the opening angle of the cumulative cone is 1:10 (physical ultimate strength). As a result, we get the gas outflow velocity at the level of 100-200 km / sec. In theory.
This is a very inefficient process, most of the energy is wasted. In addition, there is a problem with targeting, which depends on the uniformity of the shaped charge detonation and its uniformity.
Nevertheless, the technology has already left the laboratories and has been used in standard weapons since the mid-eighties of the last century, this is the well-known anti-tank "mine" TM-83 with a kill zone of more than 50 meters. And here is the last, and moreover, a domestic example:
This is an anti-helicopter "mine", the range of "spitting" shaped charge is up to 180 meters, the striking element looks like this:
This is a photo of the shock nucleus in flight, immediately after its departure from the cumulative gas jet (black cloud on the right), the trail of the shock wave (Mach cone) is visible on the surface.
Let's call it all by their proper names, the shock core is High velocity bullet, only dispersed not in the barrel, but in a stream of gases. And the shaped charge itself is Barrelless artillery mount, this is exactly what we need for the reconstruction of weapons from the pass.
The speed of such a bullet is 3 km / s, it is very far from the theoretical technology limit of 200 km / s. Let me explain why - the theoretical speed limit is reached in the course of scientific experiments in laboratory conditions, there it is enough to get at least one record result in the course of experiments. And in real weapons, equipment should work with a hundred percent guarantee.
The method of accelerating an object with a cumulative jet at small closing angles of the explosive cone (25-45 degrees) does not give accurate aiming and often the impact core simply slips out of the focus of the gas jet, leaving what is called "milk".
For combat use, a cumulative recess is made with a closing angle of more than 100 degrees, at such angles of a cumulative recess, a speed of more than 5 km / s cannot be achieved even in theory, but the technology works reliably and is applicable in combat conditions.
It is possible to speed up the process of "closing the scissors", but in this case the detonation method should be abandoned to form the point of application of forces in the explosive channel. To do this, it is necessary that the explosion passes along the bullet acceleration path at a higher speed than the detonation mechanism can provide.
In this case, the detonation scheme should ensure the simultaneous detonation of explosives along the entire length of the explosive channel, and the scissor effect should be obtained due to the conical arrangement of the walls of the explosive channel, as shown in the figure:
The creation of a scheme for the simultaneous detonation of an explosive in the bullet dispersal channel is quite a feasible task for a modern technological level.
And besides, the issue of physical strength will be immediately resolved, the tube from the detonating substance will not have time to collapse during the flight of the bullet, since the mechanical load will be transmitted more slowly than the explosive process.
For a bullet, it is the point of application of force that is important, the only problem is control over the speed of movement of the point of application of force, so that the bullet is always at this point, but more on that later, this is already a technique, not a theory.
It remains to figure out the scaling of the overclocking process of such a bullet, namely, in what mass-dimensional parameters to implement this theoretical mechanism in practice.
RTT scaling law
We live in persistent delusions, an example of such delusion is the associative bundle of concepts: "more means more powerful." Artillery science is very conservative and completely obeys this principle so far, but nothing lasts forever under the moon.
Until recently, this associative paradigm was in many ways correct, and less expensive in terms of practical implementation. But now this is no longer the case, technological breakthroughs are carried out where the principles are changed to the exact opposite.
I will give an example from my profession, computers in 20-30 years have decreased in volume by 1000 times, and their computing power has also increased by a thousand times.
I would generalize this example to a global scale, formulating it in the form of a law, for example: “ The increase in the efficiency of the physical process is inversely proportional to the volume used for the implementation of this process .
I will call it the R_T_T law, by right of the discoverer, what if the name will take root?
I will become famous!
It's a joke, of course, but there is some truth in every joke, so we will try to prove to the artillerymen that their engineering science also obeys this law.
Let's count “our rams”, knowing the pressure of the gases of the combustion products of explosives, the mass of the “micro-bullet”, its effective surface can be calculated the acceleration distance, in other words, the length of the barrel in which the “micro-bullet” is accelerated to a given speed.
I got that such a "micro-bullet" up to 1000 km / sec can be accelerated at a distance of only 15 centimeters.
Our "scissors" close with a doubled velocity of the gases of the explosion products - 20 km / s, which means that to obtain a closing speed of 1000 km / s and an input gauge with a diameter of 1 mm for an explosive channel 150 mm long, the output gauge should be 1.3 mm..
It remains to understand how much explosive is needed for such acceleration, but everything is simple here, physics is universal and its laws are unchanged, to disperse a bullet a million times easier and a thousand times faster than our standard, a rifle bullet will require exactly the same energy as for acceleration of a conventional rifle bullet.
Consequently, the energy of the explosive must remain unchanged, but the nature of the explosive must be different, the gunpowder does not fit, it burns too slowly, a detonating explosive is needed. In other words, you need to make a tube 150 mm long from 5 grams of explosive, such as RDX. and an inlet diameter of 1mm. and the weekend is 1, 3 mm..
For the strength and concentration of the explosion inside the passage channel of the "micro-bullet" it is necessary to place this structure in a strong metal cylinder. And to manage to produce simultaneous and uniform explosive detonation at the entire distance of the "micro-bullet" flight.
To summarize, physical principles for accelerating a bullet to speeds of 1000 km / s are available even on the basis of powder technologies, moreover, these principles are used in real weapons systems.
Just do not rush into the laboratory and try to implement such an explosive acceleration system, there is one significant problem, the initial velocity of the "micro-bullet" in such an explosive channel must be greater than the speed of closing the explosive fronts, otherwise the effect of "closing scissors" will not work.
In other words, in order to inject a "micro-bullet" into the explosive channel, it must first be accelerated to a speed of approximately 10 km / s, and this is not at all easy.
Therefore, we will leave the technical details of the implementation of such a hypothetical shooting system for the next part of this article, so to be continued….
