Heh. It's kinda funny to me how stuff like the XREP and MetalStorm and Shear-Thickening Armor keep getting brought up as "new" every few months.
Sorry chum, I wasn't aware that it'd already been posted up, I just saw it and figured I should share.
What I'm enjoying recently is a nice little article advising how 70mm rockets can be fitted with Infra-red smart-guidance systems now...
Ever seen the rippling effect of a 70mm rocket pod?
here's a clip to familiarise yourself.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eud0nwCjgkkthe 00:33 second mark is where it fires 20x 70mm rockets...don't blink or you'll miss it.
Pretty, chunky, but inaccurate
Now the fun news, they've miniaturised an infra-red guidance system so that the whole system (with guide-fins) turns these normally 'dumb' 70mm rockets into guided missiles...
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/05/12/navy_spits_out_6kg_fire_and_forget_missile/Ergo, every one of those 20 missiles could strike a different and moving target (without having to keep the little red laser pointer on the mark...sight target, click fire, fly away...boom.)
For the record, a direct hit from a 70mm rocket with an Armor-Piercing warhead will disable most tanks....but because you can rarely guarantee a hit, they don't normally use this loadout.
http://www.designation-systems.net/dusrm/app4/275in-rockets.htmlSuddenly, helicopters just got a whole lot nastier...and more importantly, RPG's can now become a sneaky, brief-case sized threat with a smart-assassin style guided war head.
This is especially usefulfor the fun battle-copters like this
http://ookaboo.com/o/pictures/topic/12302007/Hydra_70And even little scouty-piss-ants like this could legitimately tell a moving armoured vehicle to back the hell away...
http://www.americanspecialops.com/photos/night-stalkers/ah-6j-parked.phpWhich means that for Shadowrun, we could quite soon see stuff like this:
http://www.cncden.com/cnc3_concept2/NOD_AttackBike_MissilePodsAlt01.jpg