

Military use of consumer technology - jagjit
http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=15063872

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gaius
All technology is military technology. That's the first thing they teach you.

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TriinT
_"All technology is military technology."_

In what sense? Would you care to elaborate on that?

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HeyLaughingBoy
It means use whatever technology you need in order to get the job done.

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potatolicious
I took it to mean that most technologies seem to be applied to military use
first, before they find civilian use.

Radar? First a weapon, then civilian.

Nuclear power? First a weapon, then adapted for peaceful purposes.

The list goes on: radio, flying, submarines, even the internet was developed
with military funding.

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wlievens
Let's add cryptography to that list.

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gaius
All technologies, regardless of their origin, have a potential military
application.

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cake
Not much info in this article.

Would have love to have more details of other consumer grade products they
buy.

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TriinT
_"An iPhone app called Bullet Flight enables snipers to calculate range and
trajectory for their shots, and built-in satellite-positioning allows local
weather conditions to be taken into account. The basic version costs $3.99 and
the full military one--which even calculates how the Coriolis effect from the
rotation of the Earth will influence a bullet’s flight--costs $29.99."_

Am I the only one who find this strange? Even with local weather information,
there's a lot of uncertainty on wind speed and direction, humidity, etc etc.
Does the Coriolis effect actually matter or is it negligible?

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ramchip
Have a look: <http://www.gunatics.com/forums/showthread.php?t=5003>

Yes, there's some uncertainty, but I'd assume snipers are used to estimating
or measuring these values pretty well.

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TriinT
Define "pretty well". I am no sniper, but I suspect these guys are used to
hitting targets at distances of 1,000 meters. Wind speed, air temperature and
humidity vary over time and space. A good sniper can probably estimate these
with some accuracy, but there's still a lot of uncertainty left on what the
bullet will hit. If the Coriolis effect contributes with very little
uncertainty by comparison, then accounting for it is not going to help much.

Let's face it: without the numbers, we're talking plain nonsense.

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ajross
The numbers are tractable, though. The circumference of the earth is very
close to 40Mm (useful fact to know -- it was one of the original design points
for the meter). At the equator (where the rotational acceleration is highest,
even though coriolis itself is zero) we have a velocity of 40e6 / (24 x 60 x
60) == 463m/s. So the acceleration (v^2/r) of the ground the target is
standing on relative to the free-flying bullet is 0.034 m/s^2. Taking the
3-second shot example from above, the target will move 0.5 x 0.034 x 3^2 ==
15.3cm during the bullet's flight.

And yeah, a six-inch error is just about what I'd consider the maximum
tolerance if you're trying to hit someone's torso. So it seems that yes, the
numbers back it up.

Yay, physics is fun!

