Message no. 1

From:	jzealey@***.edu.au (James Zealey)
Subject:	Mortars on drones (was Sensor-Enhanced Gunnery)
Date:	Mon, 17 Feb 2003 09:42:48 +1100

> From:
> York.GA@******.gc.ca
> Date:
> Fri, 14 Feb 2003 09:55:08 -0500
>
> This is true. You can bolt anything down on a hardpoint and as long as it
> can carry the load you can haul it on the drone. Unfortunately hardpoints
> do not come with aiming mechanisms. In the case of a mortar, you could bolt
> a tube down on a steel lynx and it could quite easily drive around but when
> it came time to fire it would launch mortar rounds into the air and drop
> them randomly around it's location.

Except that a hardpoint DOES have an aiming mechanism. I believe it has
something like 15 degrees of variance, which should probably be more
than enough if the mortar is set up correctly.

> In order for a mortar to have any hope of accuracy and dropping rounds
> within 100 yrds of a target it requires a stable firing platform. If the
> base is pushed around every time it launches you can't achieve an accurate
> firing solution.

Well you can, it just requires a lot of maths, and information on HOW
the baseplate is pushed around. Since you're firing it from a computer
controlled drone, you can probably afford to perform them.