Metallic dust cloud missiles

Deon Beauchamp shared this feedback ago

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Missiles that deliver a cloud of metallic dust particles.

The dust will obscure signals in line of sight and make jump navigation fail if in contact with a grid.

The dust remain for a while or until burnt off.

Adding an oxidant and an ignition source to the dust will cause the dust to explode damaging any grids in the contact area.

The contact area will double in size when exploding.

The dust will release if intercepted by weapon fire.

The dust will mess with AI targetting.

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Replies (3)

Deon Beauchamp ●

Gun bricks meet your doom.

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Semtex ●

None of this works in reality.

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Deon Beauchamp ●

Forgive me, reality changes so fast and I am never sure which reality I am in at any moment.

In my world cosmological constants are meaningless.

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Deon Beauchamp ●

To clarify - the metallic particulate dust would be a hybrid of thermite and chaff.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermite

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaff_(countermeasure)

Visual obscuration would be a bonus too.

I am having thoughts on possible damage to atmospheric engines, may be(if they had intakes).

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Semtex ●

Yes, it works well...

But only in an atmosphere that slows down the rapid dispersion of dust particles.

The thermite particles must be in contact with one another; otherwise, the chemical reaction will not propagate, and the burning will stop. Special thermites used in thermobaric charges (fuel-air explosives) absolutely require oxygen from the air; otherwise, it doesn’t work.

Dipole reflectors (chaff, metal-coated glass fibers of a specific length corresponding to the wavelength of the radar being jammed) are fired into the turbulent flow (wake) behind the wings and engines of an aircraft or helicopter. Otherwise, they do not disperse very well. The discharge of a chaff cartridge looks like a wisp of thin smoke.

Tank smoke grenade launchers use white phosphorus, which burns with oxygen in the air to form P2O5, and this reacts with water vapor to produce phosphoric acid, which vapor is optically opaque. Another option is to use titanium tetrachloride (TiCl4), which also reacts with oxygen and, most importantly, with water vapor in the air. Without atmospheric oxygen and water vapor, it doesn’t work...

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