There were a handful of early ATGMs that launched directly from the ground off a crude launch platform: these were manually guided into the target, not the more modern SACLOS (just holding the crosshairs on target) or fire-and-forget (more favorable). Maybe then what we want is a modern PIAT-type launcher? Or something similar to the American single rail rocket launchers used in the Pacific in WW2 (these were rather cumbersome, but sectionally portable nonetheless.) I still believe using all our vast technical prowess would field us a new generation of very lethal and capable rifle grenades of greater use than the M203/40mm system (similar to the two systems I mentioned earlier, only with the latest ballistics designs, materials, and explosives.) There is an interesting device called the GLF-90, a two-round rifle grenade launcher made by Italy (Luigi Franchi SpA). The only online article I can find is: http://www.probertencyclopedia.com/FYH.HTM (about 2/3 down the page) I have an article in a book some would suggest as "second rate material", but it lists the specs as: 8kg empty, dimensions of 460x400x200mm (18x16x8 inches), elevates from +15 to +75 degress, and can fire all NATO-standard rifles grenades, even traverses 10 degrees L, 10 degrees R, Ranges between 600-900m, depending on round used. Claims to be more accurate than standard rifle-launching, due to its more stable design. Apparently, it has two "barrel configurations", allowing it to use either blank cartridges from NATO 5.56 or 7.62mm ammo. The line drawings and photos in the book are more accurate (for viewing) than the web article above. It appears to have crude sighting/aiming mechanisms, but obviously a level of training/familiarization with the device (as any other) would be required for any amount of proficiency. As it appears the rounds are mounted fairly close together, some of the larger diameter rounds may only work singly. But a lightweight platform of similar design, yet a tad bigger overall, would allow it to fire greater-sized projectiles, yet still be lighter and more compact than a mortar offering similar range (except for the very lightweight "commando" mortars.) Perhaps a method of using higher-powered (12.7mm?) blank ammo would allow such a system enough power to actually launch 60mm and 81mm mortar rounds without using a large and heavy barrel? (Naturally though, this would have considerably shorter range, and accuracy may suffer to the point there's no purpose in it.) Perhaps a bigger model of the FLY-K would be the best option, if not newer and more capable rifle grenades. Titanite SA of France claims the FLY-K, since the rounds aren't actually dropped down into a standard barrel, can be configured to accomodate over-caliber (bigger diameter than the launch mechanism) rounds for most effective payload. .

Disregard that last link: it doesn't work outside the search engine. .

Yimmy RE:disposable mortars and turning on the spigot - nichevo 10/21/2004 7:37:36 AM Surely even a disposable mortar would need a heavy base plate.. That's the point, I don't think so. The baseplate keeps the mortar from sinking into the earth after each shot. There would be no second shot in this case. You would plant the next shell in the earth somewhere else. The launching platform would be destroyed but that's the point. It could be as simple as a Roman-candle setup with a stake in the ground. Or drilled into a tree, or with a fold in the bottom to stand upright on concrete. It could also be set up as a claymore. Perhaps the explosive could be extracted and used as a molded detonation charge.

Perhaps just a cup, if a barrel is even needed (or use a rocket motor or rocket assist), and a stake in the ground. The idea is to skip the baseplate and so forth. This would not work to replace artillery but for a mortar, I think the pressures would be tolerable. I had also thought that the 60mm was insufficient to many; if 60mm would do, so much the better.

I don't think you could cram enough stuff into a rifle grenade to replace a 60mm, 81mm, or 120mm shell. Although it might do useful work. Also, with my concept, the shells could be any eccentric size needed for a given weight or blast effect, not limited to a given breech size. Want 90mm? 105mm? 111.1mm? A 10 pound charge? A 10 pound munition? No problem. No tubes needed. All guidance from fused sensors. Plant a 10x10 array in a field, move back, get GPS binoculars, and fire them off one by one or simultaneously. (This would also have the effect of practically unlimited fire rates; let off the rounds at whatever rate desired, perhaps even using TOT techniques. Nothing left the enemy can use but some scraps of metal or plastic. Nothing to carry back. Crates of shells could be airdropped into the field, to men without a mortar, and distributed for each man to carry. You would eliminate the dedicated mortar crew--each man an artilleryman. For fire-on-the-move, you could equip a HMMVW or ATV with a row of sockets to insert the stakes (and some blast shielding), like a hedgehog with explosive bristles.

Nichevo, now it sounds like what you are suggesting is a land-based weapon similar to the WW2 Hedgehog shipborne ASW weapon (using arrays of spigots to launch munitions.) Fitting out with a relatively cheap munitions such as SADARM or a SLUFAE/CATFAE system for the warhead might offer a suitable, lost cost, short range system. .

dogtag, that would probably be mechanically similar. You seem to be imagining it very big, though, and static. I see it as man-portable, an individual weapon (though indeed scalable to whatever size desired in arrays, you could make a pillenwerfer or Stalin organ or mini-MLRS out of it just by having one of those Mad Max shops weld a couple dozen (wired perhaps for launch, guidance, detonation, or perhaps it would use a wireless system entirely) female sockets all over a vehicle chassis). Make a steel board with 6x6 socket mounts, put it on a mount, and fit it onto any size turret ring, wiring optional (needed for dumb rounds). Would enhance Stryker no end. I don't mean something like a claymore on a squib or a spring, going just far enough to clear minimum safe distance, I mean something perhaps on the low end of mortar velocities. Possibly lower; possibly rocket- or microjet-assisted, possibly winged or rotored (UAV? Its stake could be captive and to land, it would just cut power and sink itself into the ground?). If recoilless principles could be used, so much the better. It could thus be mortar-ranged or perhaps travel quite far, ballistically or not. (On claymores, perhaps it could have a Bouncing-Betty mode, now that I think of it...And like a claymore, its base would be very, well, basic.) It would be multirole, possibly representing a whole format of new weapons. It could carry (or be produced in models featuring) sensors, anti-armor/softskinned, anti-personnel, anti-missile, anti-air, smart munitions, dumb munitions. It could be fired and guided via remote sensors, programmed TOT synchronization at zero hour on inertial guidance to a GPS plot, radiation homing, sound, or by Kentucky windage if you just want to indeed put some short range steel on target. It could fly around and drop bomblets on detected targets or on command. (In a suitable size.) The same class munition could be individually issued, vehicle-mounted, augmented with rocket boosters, set up on a permanent mounting featuring a trainable socket holder (or you could issue more shells without the launcher--interchangeable but for the launcher--to be used on a gun-type mount of some sort, perhaps approximating Mk19 or .50 cal. parameters). It could be pulled out of its wrapper or carry case (its crate could perhaps double as a VLS type launch cell--drop it out the back of a C-130 on a chute, target by fused ground sensors, instant air support. or stick that crate in the back of a truck, fire likewise.), spike base deployed, and stuck in the dirt or sand like a Roman candle on a stick. Or stuck into a rock crevice or a hole cut in a tree; folded, perhaps, to stand on a sidewalk; or perhaps inflated; there could be a model with servos, or a remote control add-on...features of a 'proper' artillery platform could be used modularly as needed. Maybe they could be stuck down a tube and fired with propane a la the potato gun. No mechanism needed to train the weapon within a certain angle, it goes up and seeks its way down with control surfaces, or vectored thrust if you want to be fancy. Perhaps it should fire straight up for all-angle coverage. Or a simple mechanism could be devised. Servos, battery, a chip, another $20. They could be mounted with canister or shrapnel on the perimeter of an armored vehicle to serve as ATGM defense or for CQB antipersonnel--with a sophisticated sensor suite and warhead/fuzing, it could explode in place, directionally, to clear the vehicle of infiltrators like the haji who climbed up on an M1 and shot the tank crew, based on proximity alert--Burglar Alarm Flambee--and with BFT, not killing any friendlies. Produce a million of 'em and get the one-size-fits-all (dumbable-down for allies or "allies" or self-destructible if used by an enemy) electronics under $100 and the size of a Shock-G watch. The key is not the pattern; it is the digital-sensor-fused aspect. Anybody with a wireless PDA or other remote control can order a fire mission. Anybody with a single shell can plan and execute a fire mission. Counterbattery is a joke because you can plant the shells and be long gone or positioned at a safe distance, or fire on the move (low recoil, remember). Range is less important because it's right there with you, not in a firebase 10km back. Perfect for Tora Bora. Drop crates to your guys from C-130s, let them have the arty they missed. Perhaps a man-portable FAE (not familiar with your subtypes, btw?) could be big enough to be useful for hole-smoking. I guess you could even have some way to stick a load on the front of one, or maybe 'strap' a few together to loft something the size of a 55-gallon drum over the mountain ridge into the next cave. I suppose conceivably they could be used as skyhooks; tie a long bungee cord to your alice pack and to the shell (all propulsion and no warhead) and maybe it would carry you (or that 55-gallon drum full o

the baseplate is primarily there to act as a counter to recoil driving the launcher back into the ground (plus other non trivial issues, but I'm trying to generalise to make a point) take away the baseplate and treating it like an angles LAWS launcher will not be effective for sustained grid specific fire. That makes the weapon really only useful for generalised responses, indiscriminate grid work etc... If its going to be portable and able to provide repetitive sustained grid specific fire, then it will need to be on a stabilised mount. Or am I missing the thrust of this??

While it could be a stabilized mount, a) the recoil will be designed to be low, for cheap electronics. It will perhaps have less propulsive charge at firing, but be rocket assisted. Or it will have recoilless rifle characteristics. It will be tuned to recoil softer, to be less shocking to its mount and its payload. Nonetheless, it will certainly recoil, and yes, for sustained application it would be useful that this munition be usable on a fixed mount. Remove this shell's disposable spike/spigot, and stick it on a mounted spigot. Or just package them as stripped shells, and include a throwaway spigot launcher or several in the package. b) it will not be capble of sustained fire. it is a one-shot deal. another shot, another patch of ground where another disposable mortar is set up. imagine a fireworks display. they do not dig out the crater of the first roman candle, they light off the one stuck in the ground next to the first one. (Perhaps these should be a few feet away from each other, depending on firing signature.) it will however be capable of grid specific fire. Its control surfaces will allow it to engage within a certain cone of action. You could have several set up at different angles, you could have some idea of where to aim the firing cone in the first place; you could drop submunitions from the shell like a Beluga; the shell can sprout wings and strike where it likes, or stay airborne with maybe a micro-turbine or on a Sherpa type glider/chute rig. For 360 degree engagement it could be aimed straight up, sacrificing some range (but not straight down, because it steers). and each one can engage independently. Fill a football field with 100x50 spigot shells, and you can fire one a second for over an hour, or you can fire off many or even all 5000 at once depending on your bandwidth, and they can all be TOT, aimed at separate targets, etc., because they are not dependent on passing through the same hose. They do have to be oriented to within perhaps 30 degrees? of their target, but as I mentioned, for another $20-50 they could have a simple remote controlled servo tracking base. Again, gets smashed to flinders on firing, nothing for the enemy to use. You could always use a reusable launcher if say you on a tiny patch of land and it is inconvenient to dig up the old spike, which indeed would be rammed into the ground at perhaps 10x the velocity of the rising shell, and plant another. That is, if you can't plant it an inch away and fire again. Actually, all you need to reuse the site is for it to be a hole in say a rock or a tree stump. Pull spike and reload. But you don;t have to *reload* anything anymoe than you reload a LAW rocket. A cheap holder with aimable, velocity-enhancing, etc., properties could be acquired, like an RPG. It could be the difference between taping a stick to a firework/model rocket, or slipping it on a wire coathanger attached to a clamp and base, or just a wire coathanger stuck in the ground. Entirely dependent on the seeker for accuracy, to be sure. Net data fused, Netfires could even launch them off satellite data.

Keep in mind it could also be fuzed as a claymore, a very sophisticated claymore, maybe one that could count the number of people exiting a door and blow up when the fourth one exits. theoretically it needn't launch at all but be command or sensor detonated in place. minor refinements: the micro-turbine concept could be integrated with the warhead, i.e., to serve as the source of fragmentation, so the hot section is blown up and so the warhead can be all HE. also, you are worrying about a base: it could look like one of those little WWII 37mm or 40mm flak guns on two-wheel carriages (or smaller, perhaps much smaller), no gun, but a gunshield with a number of little spigots or sockets mounted on it; to be towed by an ATV; it needn't be a handful. Maybe it comes off the wheels and just has a baseplate and tripod type setup, a relatively flimsy one, perhaps on an inflatable Kevlar cushion. It could be like a beanbag or like a cup (or, say, a 60s pod chair) that surrounds the base and serves as a flash hider and camouflage. Such a beastie could be dragged, packed or flown into say the White Mountains as easily or easier than a heavy mortar or a pack howitzer. In the Kevlar pod chair concept, it could be dropped atop a mountainside and roll down to you. Perhaps a full exoskeleton armor could be studded with small and medium versions of this bristling in all directions. Truly this would be a Hedgehog... And perhaps I have not mentioned clearly enough that if the base, say, fragments for any reason, personnel should not be within its blast radius. (I assume this could be engineered.) But again, it would be less than a mortar charge.