[Lacynth40]

Hrm.... Wonder if the SR Universe is gonna add the DD-X into the mix... IF the US Navy ever gets the thing out and about...

[Charybdis]

Missiles can be spoofed or shot down.  Kinetic kill munitions don't care about EW and are too small and dense to be easily knocked off course.

Correction: Base defense lasers can knock out artillery shells now.
Granted, not all of them, all the time. But still, it's a start.

http://defense-update.com/news/MTHEL.htm
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9V1pkTMCZ0M

[machine73]

Sure wish that had been operational in 04.

[beowulf_of_wa]

Missiles can be spoofed or shot down.  Kinetic kill munitions don't care about EW and are too small and dense to be easily knocked off course.

Correction: Base defense lasers can knock out artillery shells now.
Granted, not all of them, all the time. But still, it's a start.

http://defense-update.com/news/MTHEL.htm
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9V1pkTMCZ0M

that same tech would work on anything with an explosive charge, overheat the shell til it starts burning and explodes, won't work on solid metal (non-explosive) ammo

[The_Gun_Nut]

Exactly.  Kinetic kill weapons use pure brute force to effect damage.  Even if the laser heats it up, the super hard and dense material won't be significantly weakened, even assuming the laser could stay on target for a significant amount of time (small and very, very fast target, after all).

[Teyl_Iliar]

It also depends on the laser's power output. Present tech isn't super efficient when cutting through stuff, but in 60 years it could be much improved.

Back to assault cannons, a break away double barrel frame clambered in assault cannon would be some crazy expensive custom build for a back country hick trog


*edit*: satanic post!

[CanRay]

Which makes the jury-rigged models that they have come up with even more exceptionally scary!

[Charybdis]

Exactly.  Kinetic kill weapons use pure brute force to effect damage.  Even if the laser heats it up, the super hard and dense material won't be significantly weakened, even assuming the laser could stay on target for a significant amount of time (small and very, very fast target, after all).

Actually, if you melt a section of a kinetic kill weapon, you'll throw off the aerodynamics so it will simply land somewhere else.

High-velocity weapons are incredibly dependent on a static shape, so warping any single component via heat stres (and the rapid cooling of high speed) and even a pure tungsten Ortillery object is going to go boom somewhere waaaaaay off target.

[The_Gun_Nut]

Ok, again, how are you going to melt a (for example) tungsten alloy penetrator the size of your forearm in the fraction of a second that it enters effective kill range before it strikes its target?  Assuming, of course, that you have a tracking system that will let you keep a laser beam on a specific point on a small target travelling over five times the speed of sound?

What you say is true, as far as physics go.  But the melting point, or even the plastic temperature range, of a hardened, armor piercing hyper kinetic penetrator is so high as to render it immune to such effects for the extremely limited exposure time.

[Lacynth40]

That, and if you melt it, it's STILL tungsten alloy traveling at five times the speed of sound... It's just liquid... Which will do MORE interesting things to what you are trying to protect, and possibly cause heat ignition...

[The_Gun_Nut]

At mach 5? Hardly.  Aerodynamics will allow the penetrator to slice through the air with relative ease.  It will heat up, of course, but not to the melting point or even hot enough to make the material plastic.

[CanRay]

But it will be hot enough to piss it off and make it want to take vengeance on whatever it hits in a big way.

...

...

I want to make a Tungsten Elemental now.

[The_Gun_Nut]

To put it into perspective, the speed of sound (mach 1) at sea level is 340.3 meters/second.  Mach 5, therefore is 5 * 340.3 m/s = 1621.5 m/s.  In a three second Shadowrun combat round, the hypothetical hypersonic penetrator we are speaking of travels 4,884.5 meters.  Honestly, at extreme sniper ranges, there would be some time between the trigger pull and the impact upon the target, since bullets tend to travel around the mach 2 mark (and thus travelling 680 meters/second or so).  Modelling this in game would probably complicate things a bit, so I wouldn't recommend it.

Assuming a heavy MP laser is used for anti-missile defense (which is about the right size) means that, at extreme range, the laser's targetting system must lock onto and maintain lock, and must traverse the laser aperature onto the projectile, in less than one second from the time it hits effective firing range before it strikes the host vessel.  From aquisition, to traverse, to firing, to holding onto target in order to deposit enough energy to disrupt a solid slug of dense, armor-piercing material in less than one second.  Although it might be possible, I find it highly unlikely (too much is going against it).

EDIT:  Spelling.

[Stahlseele]

But it will be hot enough to piss it off and make it want to take vengeance on whatever it hits in a big way.

...

...

I want to make a Tungsten Elemental now.

Titanium is an Element, not an Alloy.
No reason to not allow an TiElemental!
Fire, Earth, Water and Air ain't elements after all.

[CanRay]

Tungsten and Titanium are Elements, yes.

As for Earth, Air, Fire, and Water (And Æther), those are the Greek Classical Elements.  Which is what the Hermetic Tradition is based off of.  That and high-level mathematics that make nuclear physicists heads assplode.