• skillissuer@discuss.tchncs.de
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    3 days ago

    this kinda happened with antitank weapons and highest iteration now is antitank missile paired with anti-anti-antitank missile. it’s rpg-30, russian wunderwaffe manufactured in symbolic numbers which only caused western militaries to develop countermeasures and was never used on large scale in any war

    • Soyweiser@awful.systems
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      3 days ago

      Not really what I meant, but interesting.

      That reminds me of the star wars missile defense system, which according to some stories was never real and just intended to make the Soviets waste a lot of resources on trying to counter it.

      • skillissuer@discuss.tchncs.de
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        3 days ago

        from what i understand, it was real as in r&d was real, but not much came out of this. in regard to nukes, maybe this programme provided some new fancy sensors. one of the logical responses to things like SDI is to increase number of ICBMs and decoys, which is exactly what soviets did, it doesn’t require developing similar ABM system. (nukes are ultimately tools of diplomacy, not really tools of war) of other things, we know that neutral particle beams work. some western weaponeers are toying with idea of high power lasers, but star wars era stuff were chemical lasers and what is used now are fiber lasers, so it’s not directly transferable

        also Teller was insane and x-ray lasers never worked

        • 🆘Bill Cole 🇺🇦@toad.social
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          2 days ago

          @skillissuer I have no idea how they could have been *needed* against Ukrainian tanks. My impression was that they didn’t have any tanks with active defense until they got EU/NATO models, but I could be wrong.

          • skillissuer@discuss.tchncs.de
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            2 days ago

            what makes me think that APSs are not a real factor either way is that everyone slaps ERA and anti-drone mesh on everything, which would interfere with radar. APSs historically had a huge blind spot on top, which is a bad thing in a war with drones. also, major user of APSs, IDF, slapped anti-drone grids on top of their tanks at the beginning of current Gaza war, so kinda probably that means that they are not really sure that it works good enough