http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HyAl9qK3Rlg

Well I think it looks like an assault cannon, and it's fired from the shoulder of all things.

"Remember to keep 80% of your Weight on your front Foot"
yep, i like that bit *g*
but that's more like a rocket launcher neh? O.o

jeebus. looks like they took the design for a recoilless rifle and...took out the recoilless part.

That's what I thought originally (that it was a rocket launcher) but it really looks it fires shells of some sort. Maybe it's some sort of hybrid mortar/rocket thing, I have no idea.

I just like the fact that it evidently fires a round the size of an ork's forearm. I'd imagine it'd be easier to fire from the hip and with a smartlink system it'd still be extremely accurate.

<Update>
I'm... still not really sure what it's shooting but it's like a shoulder fired mortar/super grenade thing.
http://www.militarycity.com/blackwater/blackwater3.html

It doesn't have fantastic range (like I'd expect a true man portable assault cannon to have) but it certainly looks cool. They've mentioned that it could be fitted for less than lethal rounds and as a snot cannon (firing the real life equivalent to freeze foam) it would be pretty cool.

it fires the whole projectile it seems . . i did not see any discarded shells on the ground after the fact O.o
and from the hip, it'd probably be harder to lean 80% of your body into it and the point of weight would probably be all wrong too O.o

Speaking as a layperson, I'm curious what would be the distinction between a rocket launcher and a cannon.

Tentatively I'd put forward the suggestion that a rocket propels itself, while the propellant for this cannon shell is expended within the weapon itself.

I do like how the spent cartridge pops out the back.

is there really a cartridge coming out the back?
or is there only the blast like with many shoulder held launchers?
if there is a cartridge it's in the gun category, if there's only blast it's a launch-weapon

looks like a cartridge at 0.39, although it's only there for a fraction of a second.

Also I could be wrong, but I heard a 'ding' sound as of a large hollow metal object striking the ground.

yeah, I'm not finding a whole lot of info on this because my google-fu is weak. but I don't see a cartridge sliding out the back after they fire (or that one guy falls on his ass) so it's suggest that it's actually a rocket launcher that you can shoot in a vehicle without mulching yourself and everyone around you.

If you go to the next page on the Blackwater review page it looks like they're trying to bring back the personal mortar thing. The Japanese used them a great deal in WWII and supposedly they were pretty damn effective. The whole aiming with the hand thing is a great deal easier than it looks (so I've read at least) and it's certainly easier to correct fire.

On a historical note the little hand mortars the Japanese used had this pad because you were supposed to fire it from the thigh. Evidently this wasn't the most comfortable experience in the world.

Hmmm... I've looked at it carefully, and after the guy falls on his arse you can definitely see two spent cartridges on the ground behind the standing guy who takes the weapon.

Of course, if it's a mortar that makes it not a cannon, right? But while I've played with rifles and shotguns, I've not used or even been close to anything heavier.

Er wait... that does make it a cannon or sorts.

So how does one differentiate a cannon from a mortar from a rocket launcher? Obviously I have a few ideas/theories, but I'd appreciate a weapons expert to clarify/refute me.

launcher is whole projectile going away and going boom without any cartridges, cannons are usually butt-loaded with the casings staying behind and mortars are mostly muzzle loaded with the cartridge staying behind . . launchers and cannons can to direct fire while mortars usually only do indirect artillery like firing

That's a very interesting question because I'm having difficulty coming up with a simple explanation.

Mortars and cannon's both rely upon an explosive charge that generates a great deal of rapidly expanding gas in a confined area, propelling a typically unguided projectile towards a target.

In contrast a rocket carriers a fuel source that it burns for at least part of the way to the target and doesn't rely upon some sort of external barrel to generate enough pressure to get on it's way.

The difference between a mortar and a cannon is that a cannon relies upon a cartridge to contain the propellant whereas the mortar round is self contained. Performance wise a mortar generates lower pressure and propels larger rounds in an arc for indirect fire. A cannon typically generates much higher pressure and propels the round more rapidly for direct fire (ie. I can I see it so I shoot it).

That's my understanding at least. Does that help?

The difference between rockets and cannons/mortars was pretty much what I thought.

I'm not sure I quite understand the difference between a cannon and a mortar. Is anything left behind in a mortar cylinder after the projectile has been launched?

A cartridge, as I understand it, is the charge used to contain the propellant, which is commonly attached to the projectile and enclosed in a metal case. Am I to understand that a mortar round uses some other method?

As far as direct vs indirect fire, where do artillery such as howitzers come into the equation? I understand that they can be used for both direct and indirect fire, although I am prepared to admit that my grasp of such things is extremely limited

*nothing relevant to say, someone beat me to it*

Since I am at work and it seems my access to YouTube is nonfunctional.

It could be recoiless rifle.

The Japanese small mortar is not designed to be fire from the thigh. Myth
Japanese Knee Mortar

Some anti tank launchers have a counter weight ejected out the rear to reduce/negate recoil etc.

WMS

Not in any of the mortars I've seen but I'm not a mortarman so I couldn't tell you

Mortars have the propellant attached to the round but it doesn't shed the propellant casing inside the chamber. Presumably this lets you get a fairly high rate of fire on a huge shell from a very portable and simple device.

Modern artillery/howitzers typically only provide indirect fire and I'm not sure if they're still designed to be lowered enough that you can use them in a direct fire capacity. I have to admit that I too am far far outside my field of study so i yield the floor to more learned folks.

or wiki.

Definately not recoiless. It would be fair to say this thing has beastly recoil, but considering the size of the projectile it's surprisingly low. From the looks of it, I'd say it's about the size of a pint beer can, including cartridge - if it is a cartridge.



Could be a counter weight, assuming I am right in my assertion that something is coming out the back besides gases.

Reading about the Japanese handheld mortar has actually cleared up a lot of my queries about the structure of the mortar round, and what distinguishes it from a cannon shell. It seems the cartridge that contains the propellant that launches the mortar round goes with the round, which, while from a physics perspective is inefficient, would logically make the weapon easier to fire. Since the amount of propellant is, I guess, rather lower than is needed in a cannon, the cartridge can be correspondingly smaller.

Eh, that's just what the guy who was giving the Battle of Okinawa tour told us, that weird curved baseplate seemed to back him up so I believed him.

We are talking about a country that put a bayonet mount on a light machine gun. It wouldn't be the least practical thing they designed

But yeah, it sounds like the curved base plate was just a design thing, not something you're actually expected to use on your thigh.

...was able to freeze frame and enlarge the image just after the shot & it looks like a cartridge to me.

So it's vaguely an assault cannon then. Sweetness.

Mortars are essentialy small, man-portable artilery pieces (or howitzers are large, vehicle mounted, mortars). they're designed for indirect fire, launching thier projectile up in the air, and dropping down on the target. modern mortars are air-bursing GPS guided explosives. Cannons delvier a shell directly at thier target, utilizing both explosive and/or kinetic energy to kill thier target.

Sigh.

The 'proper' use of howitzer vs gun depends on the barrel length. A howitzer (from haubitze, also where Bilbo's people get their name 'hobbit'), has a much shorter barrel, and a much shorter range. On the plus side they are much lighter for the weight of shells they throw. As a sample, a 105mm field gun weighs about at much as a 155mm howitzer. Almost all artillery cannon these days qualify as howitzers or gun-howitzers, so the term has become generic to describe any artillery cannon.

The advantage of the mortar is a much lighter weight for the shell thrown. A 81mm mortar will weigh around 75 kg, a ~80mm howitzer will come closer to 1500 kg. The max range on the mortar will be around 5km, while the max range of the howitzer will be somewhere between 15km depending on how heavily you want to build the gun. Of couse, they will both have about the same effect on stuff you shoot at with them, so everyone picks the mortar.

Mortars come an various sizes with various ranges but the larger ones are not man portable.

Would have liked to have seen what that weapons damage downrange was. Besides having to keep 80% of you body weight in the front leg is a guarantee of soldier injuries/mistakes. US Armed forces have enough issues teaching some troops how to throw a hand grenade.

WMS

Yep, the 120mm mortar we used in the army definetly was not man-portable, well, not in the sense it's usually used - you could take the individual pieces out of the APC they were usually mounted in and carry them around... for short distances.

The rounds for those, as well as the rounds for the 81mm we also used for training have the propellant stuck on the tail end of the projectile, in the form of rings (we called them charges) for the 120 mm one, as sort of "add-on" stuck charges for the 81 mm one. Typically, with the 120 mm, you'f order the gun crew to put the right elevation/orientation, and the number of charges the round should have left when loaded, and they'd remove the charges over that count. No cartridge to speak of.

It's basically this

And on this page you can see how the grenades look with the charge rings (a bit down the page).

(I didn't know the Germans had the same weapon system we did here in Switzerland - well, almost the same, we used the M2, not the MG42 on the APC, and we don't let the crates for the shells lie around, all our ammo is in the vehicle.)

Yeah, people who are not extremely serious about safety when issued a hand grenade just don't have a clue. They are damn dangerous. I was kind of impressed in basic with how the fronts of the the concrete throwing shelters were all torn up by the fragmentation. Then I got into the shelter to throw my frag I noticed that the INSIDE was all torn up too.

I showed my friend this video, and he responded with this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7FCY3_5Bg1M

Good lord, that was hilarious!

Especially the guy who was knocked all the way back into the chair and then tipped over.

I'm surprised nobody got killed considering how many times the gun when cartwheeling out of people's hands--that one guy tried to hold on and ended up aiming it right at the camera.

Funny how much recoil comp a desk chair provides though--something to remember when running in corporate offices.

Mac: "Corpsec is comming! Hurry! Help me tip this desk over and get the troll in the chair with the Panther Cannon!"

Seriously, aren't chairs like that usually on casters? I'd expect it to just roll right out of the room, considering how the recoil was knocking people over.

I was actually wondering what makes a cannon, and according to my google fu, just about anything can be a cannon. I think the only real criterion is that it fires a projectile that's too big to be a bullet. I think even artillery and mortars can be classified as cannons. You could say that all artillery is a cannon, but not all cannons are artillery? All in all it's a pretty loose classification.

But I did wonder one thing: how can you call a big ol' laser a laser cannon? It meets none of the criteria for a cannon, namely that it has a big barrel that fires a big thing out of it. A heavy laser just generates light, focuses it through lenses, and sends it down range to burn something. If laser cannons can be properly termed cannons, then it's become a loose enough term that everything is a cannon if you want it to be

why's a harpoon called harpoon and not cannon? same question . . i think lasers are called las-cannon(that's pronounced layz) because they are military equipment, and military people call things that make holes cannon *g*

Jeez! Didn't you see the documentary "Star Wars: Episode 1"? Obviously laser cannons eject giant stepvan size shells everytime they fire.

a battery quickloader? *g*

Honestly, if it's a chemical laser I could conceive of a shell that contains all the reactive chemical goodness necessary to generate obscene amounts of coherent light.

If I recall those are all very toxic though so I'm not sure you want them to be rolling around on the floor

usually, if you're in a war, especially in a close in(and yes, with weapons of that kind close in is withing eye-sight) then you generally don't care about such things i'd say *g*

I thought that was episode III?

Chemically Charged High Energy Lasers are a reality today, but the chemicals used to produced the needed energy are not nice to most living things.

WMS

Your star wars fu is no good here! Blasters are not lasers, they fire superheated gas which is packed into a high energy bolt by a piece of future tech called a 'galv tube.' Tibanna gas, mined from the gas giant Bespin, whereon lies Cloud City, is a popular choice. No lasers! (And though they also have turbolasers, those are blasters as well). Any nerd should know that a laser would be a (generally invisible) solid lance of light, not a bolt that goes 'pew pew' and bounces off lightsabers.

EDIT: adding correct emoticon

Duh, of course, how could I be so wrong!

Actually lasers do exist in Star Wars, but are an older and inferior technology to blasters, so have not been in use for centuries (or Millennia - I forget)

Funny thing is they still call all of the naval weapons lasers instead of blasters. From reading the treknobabble explanation of how they work my impression was that they were plasma weapons.

some quick wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mortar_%28weapon%29

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howitzer

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cannon

from the looks of it, its mostly a case of word mangling over generations.

mortar for example seems to take its name from a chemists mortar, even if the modern one look nothing like it...

also, looking at the start of the howitzer entry it seems to have comething with the angle of fire...

as in, if your firing mostly horizontal, your firing a cannon, around the 45 degree mark? howitzer. closer to 90? mortar...

The origins are considerably more complicated than that. By around 1700 the various ancestors of the modern howitzer were mostly useful because they could fire hollow shells filled with gunpowder. 'Guns' could only fire solid shot due to their large propellant charge, which meant than any hollow shot would be collapsed in the barrel.

Around 1840 or so, a new class of artillery was developed called 'gun-howitzers' which could fire either the solid shot used in guns, or the hollow explosive shot used in howitzers.

By around WW1, 'guns' were used to refer to gun-howitzers that fired shot with larger propellant charges, longer barrels, etc. And 'howitzer' was used to refer to gun-howitzers that fired larger shot with less propellant and shorter barrels

so, what good does a gun do that you cannot hold still propperly when shot? O.o
or that throws you back like that?
and what the hell is that gun meant to be shooting at anyway?
if i ever need a gun with that kinda kick, i'd rather not have it be bolt action o.O
if you are in a place to need such a gun, you need an automatic gun i'd say . . .
either that or you had better use the kick of the gun to kickstart your run away o.o

In part, you are seeing reactions like that because its the first time they are firing that particular weapon. During a holiday, one of my relatives dragged out a bolt action shotgun to show off, and everyone of us who fired it for the first time was surprised by the recoil. No one dropped the weapon or fell down of anything like that, but several of us were rocked back by the first shot. The thing was that the follow on shots were all 'regular shooting'.

I'd assume the same thing the the elephant gun (or whatever it was) that they were shooting. You really don't know how much the recoil is going to be and how it will be distributed in time. It will take a shot or two to get used to, before you have any hope of shooting accurately.

Nuh-uh! It's laz-cannon, not layz, layz-cannon is dumb sounding.

No, I don't really intend to rehash an idiotic argument that has been beaten soundly to death on every WH40K board known to mankind...please do not in any way take this post seriously.

yeah, mine either, i just read too much TSOALR in the last days ^^

but who the hell would pronounce it laz-cannon?
they don't say lazer either do they?
layser < = layz-cannon
lazer < = laz-cannon o.O

People who were taught phonics when they were little? (like me )

but do you say LAYSER or do you say LAZER?

Do you beat a dead horse?