Russian Black Eagle Surpasses America's Abrams

[scandinavian]

You don't need infrared sensors, a normal *digital camera* would work just fine. They come in all sizes and many of them are programmable.
Agreed on that the turning wings or nozzels can cause difficulties, but a model plane or rocket hobbyist would be able to design those with some testing.
As for the electronics, a small microcontroller with I/O ports is all that is needed. (And batteries ofcourse.)

The microcontroller can then be connected to:
-Digital camera
-Electrice engines that control flaps/nozzles
-Detonator

The microcontroller must then run some software that can evaluate what the digital camera sees and then take proper action, ie to adjust the flaps or detonate the explosives.

Balamut, this is not a heat seeker desingned to hunt fast moving aircraft, this is a "video" seeker capable of identifying for example a car or a human, and then launch itself, steer toward it's target and detonate itself.

You are wrong about the size and weight. What makes up for most of the weight would be the explosives, the frame and the engine. (and possilby turning mechanism + batteries)

[Balamut]

First: you wnat digital camera.. ok, but how about software, which can realy track, determine the target. How? By colour, movement?
Second: Maybe weight would not change much. But size - that's what matters in this discussion. You want it small, but it wouldn't be small with all those things. It will be big. Big missles world already has. So it would be easier to by one.
BWT Why do you need this thing? RPG round has very, very, very big speed 300 meters per second. - target practicly can't avoid the hit.

[scandinavian]

The limitations of the tracking system depends mostly on the software, and not the hardware. This is a good thing since it is possible to create very advanced software without the expense of the physichal attributes of the missile.
You can track by color, changes in the image (movement) or by shapes. For example, you could program it to launch itself when it sees a red ferrari moving at 61 mph.

I still don't agree with the size thing, this is a short range missile that targets soft targets. It is not supposed to kill a tank at a distace of 4 km, like a TOW.
I would compare it with a stinger, except it would be much shorter.

Let's say you put one of these seekers close to a runway on an airport, just leave it on the ground in a nearby forest for example, and it would easily be able to take down a passenger jet about to take off or land.

It is not a question what I need it for, rather a question when someone will actually desing one of these.

Stinger


TOW

[Balamut]

Ferrary stops - missle misses.
One shadow or glare - colour changes.
Shape? - You'd be called a genius if'd desigh sush program.(I mean which would not fail if target would turn or bird would fly infront of it; locality isn't a picture afterall)

Problem is that this kind of system would be very unreliable, of course it can be done, but no one makes those thing, because better to use something simplier and 99% trustworthy.

Even soviet RPG rounds(smalest you can get for your invention) look relatively big

With even more things attached, it wouldn't be shorter then Stinger missle.

Scandinavian,

1. RPG (for example) is light, cheap, reliable and deadly weapon. Explain me, why spend hundred million bucks to make it heavy, expensive, fragile and unreliable?

2. Your idea isn't implementable so far. Modern microcontrollers (even with proper software) aren't able to process video signal from camera and locate small moving objects in real time. They aren't fast enough and haven't enough memory. You'll need big (relatively) processor and external memory. Don't forget cooler and power source. You'll get something with size comparable to your PC's system unit. Now imagine how it will look when attached to a rocket.

[scandinavian]

Balamut, you don't need to be a genious to desingn software that can distinguish objects. In fact it has already been done many times. There is for example software available today that can distinguish and identify a humans from blurry camera pictures, but such advanced software would be an overkill for our missile.

I still don't agree on the size thing. Consider the Stinger missile again.



The Stinger is 1,5 meters long, 7cm thick and weigths 10kg. As you can see from the picture most of the length is made up by the rocket engine. Since our seeker don't need to be able to fly 8 km at a speed of 2400 kph (two times the speed of sound) it would have a much smaller engine.
Let's say we only want a fraction of the Stingers performance, perhaps 1km at a speed of at least 500 kph. Our engine would thus be *much* smaller and we would end up with a rocket of about 40-100 cm long, 5-7 cm thick and weighting 2-5 kg. Very easy to transport and conceal, and could be produced anywhere.

The RPG-7 is a relic.

[scandinavian]

Lol! Alex Ivanov, you must have been living under a rock! Technology advences from day to day. I wouldn't imagine anyone trying to mount a workstation on rocket! There are much smoother alternatives..

Check these out:
http://www.gethightech.com/Merchant2...tegory_Code=MB
PDA

Don't you think a computing power of 400 Mhz and 128Mb Ram that fits inside your palm would be enough? And wait a couple of years and even more powerfull small scale devices will be available.

And remember, the missile will only be fully active for a very short time, or it will be set to "idle" to just do the occasional scan. Thus it requires only a small battery and no cooler is needed at all.

Because this seeker would be made up of commercially available parts and many of them mass produced, it would be very cheap.

[Edited by scandinavian on 6th April 2004 at 12:58]