"Silly String" Weapon Ideas

aim9xray

aim9xray

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Orionblamblam said:
Given that soon enough drones won't come in ones and twos but in swarms of hundreds or thousands, even the zappiest zapgun in the world likely won't be enough. You'll need something akin to a WMD to deal with them: clouds of bugbots, or electromagnetic fields of incredible power, or outright EMP bursts or fuel-air explosions.
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90,000 industrially pressurized cans of silly string.
 
aim9xray said:
90,000 industrially pressurized cans of silly string.
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I wonder if there is some chemical that can be sprayed into the air like a mist, presumably in a fashion much like smoke generators, that will hang around for a bit like a cloudand then dissipate... but if it comes into contact with solid objects moving sufficiently quickly, like quadcopter blades, it thickens into glue or forms sticky filaments. I suspect that such a mist would have NO HEALTH OR ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES WHATSOEVER.
 
Orionblamblam said:
I wonder if there is some chemical that can be sprayed into the air like a mist, presumably in a fashion much like smoke generators, that will hang around for a bit like a cloudand then dissipate... but if it comes into contact with solid objects moving sufficiently quickly, like quadcopter blades, it thickens into glue or forms sticky filaments. I suspect that such a mist would have NO HEALTH OR ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES WHATSOEVER.
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Well, if you started wishing for magic solution, then the situation is truly complicated.
 
Orionblamblam said:
I wonder if there is some chemical that can be sprayed into the air like a mist, presumably in a fashion much like smoke generators, that will hang around for a bit like a cloudand then dissipate... but if it comes into contact with solid objects moving sufficiently quickly, like quadcopter blades, it thickens into glue or forms sticky filaments. I suspect that such a mist would have NO HEALTH OR ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES WHATSOEVER.
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During World War II, both sides developed rocket-launched cable systems with small braking parachutes located at both ends to slow down aircraft. With current technology, clouds of monofilament could be generated by dispersing a liquid polymer like spiders do.
 
 

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Justo Miranda said:
en.wikipedia.org

Spider silk - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org
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The trick would be making a deployable, weaponizable version. Something like a fog that suspends a bagrillion little sticky threads in the air for a few minutes or more, or a tank of liquid that's pumped through a bazzillion microscopic nozzles and deployed from drones or balloons or something. Such a wall of sticky threads would play hell not only with small props but also optics.
 
Orionblamblam said:
The trick would be making a deployable, weaponizable version. Something like a fog that suspends a bagrillion little sticky threads in the air for a few minutes or more, or a tank of liquid that's pumped through a bazzillion microscopic nozzles and deployed from drones or balloons or something. Such a wall of sticky threads would play hell not only with small props but also optics.
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For the system to be practical on the battlefield, or at sea, it would have to be deployed using standard chaff launchers.
 
Orionblamblam said:
The trick would be making a deployable, weaponizable version. Something like a fog that suspends a bagrillion little sticky threads in the air for a few minutes or more, or a tank of liquid that's pumped through a bazzillion microscopic nozzles and deployed from drones or balloons or something. Such a wall of sticky threads would play hell not only with small props but also optics.
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See the above DARPA development from 4 years ago....using their 'siily string'

Regarding Spider Silk the issue is always mass production.

There was some talk a fair few years about genetically modifying goats so that their milk would contain the silk that could then be spun in large quantities for use in body armour....
 
timmymagic said:
Aren't you essentially describing what DARPA did 4 years ago...with 'silly string'...
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Not quite. What DARPA developed was a weapon that specifically targets individual drones using a kill-system that operates on a timeframe of a second or less. What I'm hoping for is a *cloud* that hangs around for minutes and disables drones that fly into it. It's not a high order probability, but it seems like it aught to be possible.
 
"... a *cloud* that hangs around for minutes and disables drones that fly into it"
Sorta mini barrage balloon system ??

IIRC, the full-sized were fairly effective as 'Stuka Bane'. Also, an uncle who did fire-watch atop Liverpool's cathedral's broad roof claimed that the 110s etc that tried to strafe the tall tower and its essential observation post seemed some-what deterred by the row of balloons along the nearby ridge...
 
Could grenade-launcher version of 'animal capture net' be workable ?
So projectile disperses to a bunch of flechettes hauling a loose web of braided fishing line...

May have to 'dial-in' sub-munition dispersal delay...

(OT:' Flechette' accepted by site spiel-chequer, but my plural flagged. !! )
 
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