Nanoenergetics set to revolutionize Weaponry

Just came across this article here that discusses the various efforts underway to come up with new ways to blow stuff up, The new field of Nanoenergetics is working on Superthermites which they say can increase the chemical reaction time by a thousand times. Just imagine if they implement this technology on a MOAB. Check out the article, interesting stuff even though they could't get any details as most of the work is classified...

Clean Super Bombs, here we come!!!

This also might revolutionize firearm cardridges!! yikes, scary stuff...

Originally posted by GrOuNd_ZeRo
Clean Super Bombs, here we come!!!

This also might revolutionize firearm cardridges!! yikes, scary stuff...

Yeah I agree it is scary but one thing it will do as well...Clean Rocket boosters with 1000x the initial thrust. It could revolutionize that realm as well.

Here is another link about this new field.

amptiac.alionscience.com...

That's good stuff, sardion. I was first introduced to nanotechnology through Crichton's "Prey"(an extreme example of nanotechnology gone wild). This is the wave of the future. Though, it is developing slower than originally anticipated, I'm not surprized that it has been used to enhance weapons. It seems that a lot of revolutionizing/innovative technology is developed for warfare before anything else.

Slower? I heard it was going faster I thought they would have practicle nano-tech by 2015....

maybe they could make a scramjet, solely powered by aluminium nanoparticles reacting with the compressed heated air rather than hydrogen/methane

Originally posted by GrOuNd_ZeRo
Slower? I heard it was going faster

I thought they would have practicle nano-tech by 2015....

Yeah it is going faster, and we already have some Nano products on the market today, allthough I'm pretty sure thats not what you were reffering too. Nanobots and Nanofactories are at least a decade away and around 30 years away at the most. I am leaning towards the more optimistic timeframes considering that 2004 was the hallmark year for Nanotech progress. Now I don't wanna dig up ALL the links but here is one link that should say it all...now off to bed for me!

www.betterhumans.com...

American is ingenious in building of better and better weapons. There has been some talk on this forum about increasing the destructive capablity of a bomb by 1000. Thus creating a weapon of mass destruction. Let me for a moment become absurd, lets create antimatter weapons or drop huge air fuel bombs from orbit, seed a local airspace with a genetic specific viral weapons. My pride as a American swells at very idea, a thermobaric bomb vaporizing thousands both civilian and military personal alike. When I hear that the Air Force is expermenting with anti-matter weapons, weapons that will make nuclear bombs look like fire crackers, I sing loud the Star and Stripes forever. America's legacy when passes in history in some distant future, we made possible the extinction of the human race. Not even the Roman could say that.

[edit on 24-1-2005 by Kuehn06]

I'm thinking that while this development will lead to nuclear-esque weapons, a more practical usage would be to just pack the destructive power of today's conventional bombs into smaller packages. Like a MOAB that weighs only 200 pounds instead of 20000 pounds.

Originally posted by BeefotronX
I'm thinking that while this development will lead to nuclear-esque weapons, a more practical usage would be to just pack the destructive power of today's conventional bombs into smaller packages. Like a MOAB that weighs only 200 pounds instead of 20000 pounds.

I dunno, thats still pretty scary. They would probably still make really big 20000 lb bomb though too "Shock and Awe".


[edit on 30-1-2005 by sardion2000]

Maybe we could resurrect Project Orion, using nanoenergetic explosions rather than nuclear blast in the earth atmosphere.

This would seem like an ideal solution for NMD. It would make the system far more feasable if it had a warhead with a much larger blast diameter.

Already the increasing knowledge of nanoenergetics and fine particles has led to Solid Fuel Air Explosives

The Air Force has been experimenting with a "solid FAE (SFAE)" filling that apparently disperses a fine cloud of aluminum particles, while the Navy has been working on an "interhalogen oxidizer" filling, possibly based on fluorine. Initial tests of the BLU-118/B were conducted in mid-December 2001, and by late winter 2002 the weapon was in use in Afghanistan, performing attacks on tunnels occupied by Taliban and Al-Qaida forces.

www.vectorsite.net...


Based on the SFAE idea I would like to propose the concept of a Hollow Shaped Charge using halogen oxydizer.

Since WW2 the Hollow Shaped Charge grenade uses the Monro effect to generate a concentrated high temprature, high kinetic metallic plasmajet .

Now, what if we were to replace the single metal liner with two different liners, made from substances that react very violenty witch eachother ?

Let's assume the reaction of Fluorine and Boron, this is about as violent as you can get with non-nuclear chemistry. Exactly why you don't see them in convential explosives, too dangerous , the two react prematurely upon the slightest contact without any external ignition.

In my hollow charge concept, there would be no need for interhalogens as the boron and fluorine are simply physically spaced appart and smashed against one another.

One halve of the hollow charge would be made of fluorine, the other of boron, when both collide in the middle that would not only form a plasma jet, but this plasma jet would be perhaps much denser, because fluorine is the most electronegative element known and boron much more positve. This would perhaps aid in preventing the plasmajet from getting warped by countermeasures and higher plasmadensity would aid in penetration depth.

also one could expect the reaction of boron with fluor to give a lot of extra heat to the plasmajet, again aiding in penetration depth ?

Perhaps supercapacitor could be used to make the fluorine even more negatively charged and the boron much more positively charged a split second before impact, that would result in an even denser shortcircuiting plasmajet, maintaining its own integrity using electrostatic attraction.

throw some deuterium into the mix and one could even get a very small amount of thermonuclear reactions started, wich yield perhaps could be impproved by nano-engineering, using molecular vapour deposition to create a liner sandwich of alternating layers of boron and fluorine, all a few atoms thick, to maximize combustable surface area and seperated by deuterium "interhalogen" layers.

I guess that could be called a Z-pinch grenade,.



[edit on 3-2-2005 by Countermeasures]

Originally posted by Countermeasures
Already the increasing knowledge of nanoenergetics and fine particles has led to Solid Fuel Air Explosives

The Air Force has been experimenting with a "solid FAE (SFAE)" filling that apparently disperses a fine cloud of aluminum particles, while the Navy has been working on an "interhalogen oxidizer" filling, possibly based on fluorine. Initial tests of the BLU-118/B were conducted in mid-December 2001, and by late winter 2002 the weapon was in use in Afghanistan, performing attacks on tunnels occupied by Taliban and Al-Qaida forces.

www.vectorsite.net...

This doesn't seem to be a true FAE as they use ( as the name implies ) air as the oxidizer. The oxidizer isn't contained within the actual bomb as it seems to in the BLU-118/B.

Based on the SFAE idea I would like to propose the concept of a Hollow Shaped Charge using halogen oxydizer.

Since WW2 the Hollow Shaped Charge grenade uses the Monro effect to generate a concentrated high temprature, high kinetic metallic plasmajet .

Now, what if we were to replace the single metal liner with two different liners, made from substances that react very violenty witch eachother ?

Let's assume the reaction of Fluorine and Boron, this is about as violent as you can get with non-nuclear chemistry. Exactly why you don't see them in convential explosives, too dangerous , the two react prematurely upon the slightest contact without any external ignition.

In my hollow charge concept, there would be no need for interhalogens as the boron and fluorine are simply physically spaced appart and smashed against one another.

One halve of the hollow charge would be made of fluorine, the other of boron, when both collide in the middle that would not only form a plasma jet, but this plasma jet would be perhaps much denser, because fluorine is the most electronegative element known and boron much more positve. This would perhaps aid in preventing the plasmajet from getting warped by countermeasures and higher plasmadensity would aid in penetration depth.

Wouldn't this disrupt the coherenece of the jet as the 2 elements wouldn't have the same detonation velocities. Most hollow charge research concentrates on refinging the coherence of the jet. Tantalum liners seem to be the element of choice for new warheads.
Whilst I am not a physicist, but the reaction between fluorine and boron would be too unpredictable for an explosive.

throw some deuterium into the mix and one could even get a very small amount of thermonuclear reactions started, wich yield perhaps could be impproved by nano-engineering, using molecular vapour deposition to create a liner sandwich of alternating layers of boron and fluorine, all a few atoms thick, to maximize combustable surface area and seperated by deuterium "interhalogen" layers.

Umm, convenional explosives don't produce a fraction of the heat and pressure to be able to fuse helium. Therefore any nuclear reaction using deuterium couldn't happen using any non nuclear explosive.



[edit on 3-2-2005 by Countermeasures]

Originally posted by rogue1

Originally posted by Countermeasures
Already the increasing knowledge of nanoenergetics and fine particles has led to Solid Fuel Air Explosives

The Air Force has been experimenting with a "solid FAE (SFAE)" filling that apparently disperses a fine cloud of aluminum particles, while the Navy has been working on an "interhalogen oxidizer" filling, possibly based on fluorine. Initial tests of the BLU-118/B were conducted in mid-December 2001, and by late winter 2002 the weapon was in use in Afghanistan, performing attacks on tunnels occupied by Taliban and Al-Qaida forces.

www.vectorsite.net...

This doesn't seem to be a true FAE as they use ( as the name implies ) air as the oxidizer. The oxidizer isn't contained within the actual bomb as it seems to in the BLU-118/B.

Based on the SFAE idea I would like to propose the concept of a Hollow Shaped Charge using halogen oxydizer.

Since WW2 the Hollow Shaped Charge grenade uses the Monro effect to generate a concentrated high temprature, high kinetic metallic plasmajet .

Now, what if we were to replace the single metal liner with two different liners, made from substances that react very violenty witch eachother ?

Let's assume the reaction of Fluorine and Boron, this is about as violent as you can get with non-nuclear chemistry. Exactly why you don't see them in convential explosives, too dangerous , the two react prematurely upon the slightest contact without any external ignition.

In my hollow charge concept, there would be no need for interhalogens as the boron and fluorine are simply physically spaced appart and smashed against one another.

One halve of the hollow charge would be made of fluorine, the other of boron, when both collide in the middle that would not only form a plasma jet, but this plasma jet would be perhaps much denser, because fluorine is the most electronegative element known and boron much more positve. This would perhaps aid in preventing the plasmajet from getting warped by countermeasures and higher plasmadensity would aid in penetration depth.

Wouldn't this disrupt the coherenece of the jet as the 2 elements wouldn't have the same detonation velocities. Most hollow charge research concentrates on refinging the coherence of the jet. Tantalum liners seem to be the element of choice for new warheads.
Whilst I am not a physicist, but the reaction between fluorine and boron would be too unpredictable for an explosive.

throw some deuterium into the mix and one could even get a very small amount of thermonuclear reactions started, wich yield perhaps could be impproved by nano-engineering, using molecular vapour deposition to create a liner sandwich of alternating layers of boron and fluorine, all a few atoms thick, to maximize combustable surface area and seperated by deuterium "interhalogen" layers.

Conventional explosives don't produce a fraction of the heat and pressure to be able to fuse helium. Therefore any nuclear reaction using deuterium couldn't happen using any non nuclear explosive.

PS. Do you have any information on the energy released by a fluorine/boron reaction. I'd be very intersted, thanks.

bond energy of BF3 = - 271.75 kcal/mol if I searched correctly

I can see why they are toying with tantalum liner. The element is very hard and has a melting point exceeded only by tungsten and rhenium., so I guess you would have a more "solid" less warpable plasmajet .

Tantalum is allmost completely immune to most chemic attacks at low temperatures except LOL Fluorine and fluoric acid.

You were right about difference in velocity, one should contemplate a homogenous boron or tantalum liner instead and a little straw containg fluor gas at the implosion center.




[edit on 4-2-2005 by Countermeasures]

The idea that you want to create cleaner weapons is interesting, some people would like the opposite. the radiation from a nuke can serve as a long time reminder of the past and it may even prevent future mistakes.

[edit on 4-2-2005 by razorsdescent]

Originally posted by razorsdescent
The idea that you want to create cleaner weapons is interesting, some people would like the opposite. the radiation from a nuke can serve as a long time reminder of the past and it may even prevent future mistakes.

[edit on 4-2-2005 by razorsdescent]

Tell me about it, I am more insterested in how this technology will clean up rocket launches, it could be a boon for space exploration.
NASA and RSA have had very big problems with contamination this might be able to fix that problem right up. Hopefully that is...