Revolutionary material dramatically increases explosive force of weapons

Yeah, now we'll be even more efficient at destroying all of mad dictators anti-air capability whilest leaving them in power and not actually doing anything with the air superiority advantage.

For the past 10 years or so, our military's problem has not beena lack of advanced, effective weapons, but rather a lack of competent Strategists at the presidential office, the Congress, and the Generals at the Joint Chiefs.

The Pentagon and the Presidents are incompetent at the strategic level both in terms of politics and actual engagements of war.

This most recent helicopter which was shot down is a perfect example. They trained 20-something elite covert operatives, aka, SEALs, only to load them all on a transport and fly into a hostile arena, getting shot down by a lone terrorist armed with an anti-tank weapon...

What the heck is the point of "covert" ops if they enter the arena through non-covert, high risk transports whereby all of them are killed in a single attack?

I hate to say this, but anyone good enough to be RANKED at a real time strategy game would not have made this mistake, but our generals did.

Anyone good enough to be platinum or above in Starcraft 2 would not have made this mistake, but our generals and president did...

Do you realize how INCOMPETENT our military strategists really are?

God bless their souls, but none of the SEALS training even mattered, because of the complete strategic incompetence of our government.

They still don't understand guerilla warfare, even after vietnam and 10 years of fighting terrorists in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Haven't learned a damn thing...

You're better off sending them in on foot, instead of on a helicopter where one shot (or crash) kills an entire platoon of people. My God...

So is this new alloy itself explosive? That's what seems to be implied here, but the article doesn't come right out and say that it is. Explosive shrapnel!

@Techno
Dude, my guess is you know about this much || (a little less actually) of the reality of the circumstances surrounding that chopper going down. To follow that up with your insistence that RTS video-gamers know more about applied warfare just convinces me you are talking out of your arse.

So is this new alloy itself explosive?

In short, yes.

http://en.wikiped...material

@Techno
Dude, my guess is you know about this much || (a little less actually) of the reality of the circumstances surrounding that chopper going down. To follow that up with your insistence that RTS video-gamers know more about applied warfare just convinces me you are talking out of your arse.

So is this new alloy itself explosive?

In short, yes.

http://en.wikiped...material

Several of the best RTS players ended up going into the military.

Also, while I was never in active duty, I actually was in ROTC for 4 years, and I spend a lot of time in my life on the history of warfare.

The technology does not help as much as it might, because our leaders either do not understand the strategies and tactics they need to employ, or else do not have the stomache for it.

Like Ghadaffi, can ANYONE give one good reason why he and his top aides are still alive?

Because our President and generals are too squeamish to do the right thing.

In order to beat people who play by the rules of total war, such as terrorists, you have to THINK LIKE THEM: False alliances, backstabbing, pretending to be your informant, etc. The guy who shot them down was probably a double agent on U.S. payroll as an "allied" informant.

Naive...

You cannot present soft targets, or situations where one shot kills multiple people. you cannot present in a transport 30 people to be shot down by one guy. That's insanity.

That should be obvious, but apparantly it's not obvious enough for our leaders.

And nobody knows all the details publicly yet, because the government is concealing the details of what the mission was, all they've done so far, that I know of, is claim it was not a rescue mission, so it must have been a kill mission...

And another thing:

Why no UAV spy plane leading them in to watch out for enemy units, eh? These things even have weapons now, and can shoot up enemy units with a small rocket that some of them are armed with.

Why is an transport with 30 people onboard flying in hostile arena without a modern, expendible robot spy plane on point?

Again, what the heck is the point in all of this technology when the commanders are too incompetent to use it?

A starcraft player would not have made that mistake. I play protoss, and my observers go first, and I'm very, very good...

Real life is not a game, but the tactic is sound either way, especially when preventing your HUMAN casualties, and preventing the loss of the much more expensive helicopter. The UAV would easily save 30 lives, and maybe take out a terrorist or two in the process.

Though I just saw on the news that they have since killed the squad of terrorists in a counter-strike, the point remains. Incompetence..

And another thing:

Anybody remember that imbecile flooder Quantum Conundrum who used to dump dozens of worthless comments a day in these threads? Wonder what happened to that guy -? Banhammer? Took away his password to the PC in the dayroom??

You cannot present soft targets, or situations where one shot kills multiple people. you cannot present in a transport 30 people to be shot down by one guy.

You can't? Hmm, how did they get Osama, again (yeah, -two- helis but again you have no idea what was going on)? So it's better to march a troupe through enemy territory where they require more resources, more time, more risk getting captured where they could be tortured, leak information, or become political bartering tools? Where they could become a weakness? That's better?! No. You are wrong. You think it's a video-game.

Dude, there's nothing wrong with questioning, but posturing like your doing is just gross.

the unique design for fragmenting warheads allows release of chemical energy after impact, increasing the probability of a catastrophic kill.

Sounds like a cluster bomb-type effect? Are they saying fragments can explode?

The HDRM fragments can penetrate a target's skin, followed by a rapid and sustained combustion/explosion."

OOp guess I shouldve read the whole thing-

Question is, will fragments explode some time after the main bomb explodes, say when some kid hits one with a hammer or a cow walks on it?

"HDRM has the strength of common aluminum alloys yet the density of mild steel..."

-Yeah thermite. This is too much like those white phosphorous bombs the israelis took crap for in Gaza.

the war in afghanistan is old news , the currency war is the big war now. it might seem like the u.s. is winning this race, but our old compadre the high density nonreactive metal called GOLD market is giving us a run for our money.

Question is, will fragments explode some time after the main bomb explodes, say when some kid hits one with a hammer or a cow walks on it?

High explosives require another high explosive to set it off, a detonator. You can't even explode C4 with black powder, let alone it exploding by itself. The article implies the shrapnel would be just plain high explosive, no detonator. The stuff that explodes when people find it has an intact detonator, the detonator is the problem.

Look the US has been fighting a war in afghanistan for 10 years and is nowhere close to winning it. yes you can kill a lot of poor people, farmers, people in wedding parties, civilians, children. You can even vaporize them with all the power you have but you will still lose the war, simply because the people you are fighting have the motivation to fight for their own country and your soldiers don't.

where is the Osprey when you need one?

This wasn't the work of a lone Afghan armed with an RPG!

The SEAL team was on a covert mission, and the Government of Pakistan wanted to make a point. The point being: if you breach our sovereign territory, we have the capability to hurt you.

Latest report was that it wasn't a lone gunman. They were taking heavy small arms fire from multiple directions, but someone got in an RPG hit.

"Happiness is a warm gun, bang bang shoot shoot". - The Beatles.

Techno1, successful troll is successful

Didn't they use that stuff as the plot device in "Stargate"?

Question is, will fragments explode some time after the main bomb explodes, say when some kid hits one with a hammer or a cow walks on it?

High explosives require another high explosive to set it off, a detonator. You can't even explode C4 with black powder, let alone it exploding by itself. The article implies the shrapnel would be just plain high explosive, no detonator. The stuff that explodes when people find it has an intact detonator, the detonator is the problem.

See the link above by emsquared. As this sounds like a thermite-type compound I wouldnt want to think about natives trying to anneal it or grind it to make trinkets-

you can kill a lot of poor people, farmers, people in wedding parties, civilians, children. You can even vaporize them with all the power you have but you will still lose the war, simply because the people you are fighting have the motivation

The taliban are being supplied with an inexhaustible supply of hapless young combatants, the product of the fundy cultures throughout the region. It is not the ideology which fights; it is these youngsters born above the line of stability who, if left within their cultures, would be rioting in pakistan, afghanistan, kashmir and elsewhere.

The taliban gives them their cause and their weapons, and dutifully sends them into coalition guns. The region remains calm.

It was the same when the russians were there. They killed some 2M afghans while losing only 14K. THIS is VICTORY. The 'motivation' is irrelevant. Pops are systematically depleted while obsolete cultures grow weaker with each gen.

This is how the vietnam war was won. And korea etc

Sounds like the Marine Corps' gung ho attitude struck again. One writer wrote of the Osprey, a Marine bird. I suffered crashes because of 'gung ho'. 'Gung Ho'! in that case was that aggressive aerobatics with that craft led directly to airframe instability......yeah! it crashed! ..and burned! The plane stayed on the ground until its 'Marines' finally got it through their collective verry thick skulls (hey...Marines...duh!) that they could not cowboy this plane and live. Now the same with the heli. Why did they try to land in a zone too hot to land in? Hot as in just too much enemy fire incoming. Bet that the RPG that made the plane and crew 'f*&k the monkey' was not the only one fired at it. Was it just tooooo much 'gung ho'? or too much thick headedness, hotheadedness, or a culture of school-yard daring on a deadly scale? We will not know as the truth will probably be covered up. Give our grunts their due..they do look after their own and they DID get the perps.

the chinook is a pretty big slow basket to put all you valuable eggs in, i like to sea seals in multiple fast helicopters, harder to shoot down and if you lose one chopper, thats bad, but you probably could continu the mission

The only thought man had in mind was to conquer the world, and the rest of mankind - Melle Mel

And another thing:

Anybody remember that imbecile flooder Quantum Conundrum who used to dump dozens of worthless comments a day in these threads? Wonder what happened to that guy -? Banhammer? Took away his password to the PC in the dayroom??

Yup. My thoughts exactly when I saw the raft of posts here. This lines up with a few posts on other threads as well. Pretty much as out to lunch as QC/Spectator, too, what with equating video games with actual warfare and thinking being a hot RTS player makes him more competent than those who are actually in the field. 95% sure he's baaaaack!

To quote emsquared:

"there's nothing wrong with questioning, but posturing like your doing is just gross."

Case in point...for those like Techno1 who happen to think moving your troops on the ground is less risky,

You're better off sending them in on foot, instead of on a helicopter where one shot (or crash) kills an entire platoon of people. My God...

in Afghanistan, Canada has been moving its troops around in armoured vehicles for the last decade, mostly Bison and LAVs. The result is that the vast, vast majority of our casualties have been from IEDs (roadside bombs). Our troops have been pleading for more chopper transports, but we're admittedly underequipped for that. Now, I have no idea why they put that whole team on a single chopper, but one thing we learned from being in theatre for the last decade is that going into rugged terrain on the ground is far far worse than flying in low.

Hey, Techno1, are there any LAND MINES in your RTSes? Apparently not!

Sounds like the Marine Corps' gung ho attitude struck again.
...
the chinook is a pretty big slow basket to put all you valuable eggs in...

Cheese and rice, I guarantee there was a reason they put "all their eggs in one basket". You people think they just "felt like it"?! Or didn't think about that aspect of it?! WTF?

The initial obvious observation would be that the Chinook is a pay-load aircraft. They were either taking something quite large in or anticipating taking something quite large out (my guess is the 2nd). Maybe their landing zone was very small and wouldn't permit multiple choppers or they knew the enemy had counter-intelligence or surveillance that presented a unique problem for multiple insertion points.

It just boggles my mind you people don't think that they KNEW the risks and ACCEPTED those risks as the OTHER RISKS were greater. Go back to your armchair quarterbacking, it will be less embarrassing for you.