The Physics of Flying Projectiles

Human body structure allows us to be the only animal in the planet to be able throw a projectile that could reach the speed of 180 km/h. Among all animals, only human were be able to turn other objects around us into tools and weapons instead of using our own body parts as weapon like in the case of dogs, cats, tigers or sharks.

Probably after for the first time a human were able to fench off a pack of wolfs by throwing couple rocks that he started to become obsessive at making better tools to enable him to win in the harsh genetic competition of nature and gradually become the apex predators of the planet. By accelerating a heavy projectile using his momentum and the body torques, an average human can produce a much stronger force than the simple push and pull actions using his own arms, fists or legs.

By throwing rocks and later on the javelins, early human were able to hunt big animals many time larger than his size while keeping a distance to stay out of range from the sharp teeths, claws and horns of the animals.

Since that time that an ancient human tribe were able to hunt a big elephant, the human society keep inventing new methods in order to accelerate projectiles increasing faster and further to produce forces at the point of impact multiple times stronger than the maximum output of his muscles. Instead of using just our shoulders as the spring, we start to turn trees and ropes into the springs with the invention of the bow.

With the bow spring, an arrow can travel up to 240 km/h and can penetrate through animal tissues and bones. Bow is much lighter and more acccurate than rocks and javelins and can fire off large number of arrows. By increasing the weight of the arrow and the force of the spring via incremental loading rather than single load like throwing or shooting arrow, the Roman ballista can even penerate through wooden structures like boats or shield.

Taking incremental loading and heavy projectile to another level by leveraging gravity, the man-made war tool of trebuchet were able to penetrate through stone castle walls and doors using both forward forces of the springs and the downward force of the projectile weight. With the trebuchet, the Mongol were able to take down heavily fortified castles of the Song dynasty and foreverly change the genetics make up of China.

And then in the distant past in China, an emperor assigned a top secret task to his imperial medics of making a longevity pill that could extend life. After years of labor, the imperial medics figured out that the task was impossible but if they said no to the powerful emperor they would be executed. By passing down power to the next princes, accepting death as the inevitable part of life, and direct national resources behind infrastructures and military projects, the emperor's DNA would live on for many hundred years with his sons and grandkids. However, if the imperial medics said no to the emperor's grandiose plan of living forever, they would be executed.

So the disgruntled medics decided to make a fake longevity pill by mixing fire match powder with charcoal and fertilizers to poison the emperor slowly. That way the powerful emperor would die before he could execute his imperial medics. The faked longevity pills did not help the powerful emperor to live forever but accidentally caused a massive explosion while in storage.

The Chinese imperial medics who were tasked with extending lifes just discovered a powerful new weapon that would cause much more death than any previous centuries but still massively increase human population at the same time, the firework powder. Firework powder or gunpowder turn humans into such a powerful and efficient predator that if a dinosaur were to be resurrected, it would still have to accept the same fate as a wet market chicken.

With enough gun powder and a massive cannon ball, a direct hit from a gun cannon can take down thick city walls much more rapidly and accurately than the trebuchet without the need to rely on the free gravity acceleration of 32.4 km/h. A gunpowder explosion can accelerate a projectile quickly to more than 6000 km/h and the cannon could be aimed directly at the castle door or walls.

With a largest gunpowder cannon every built, the Ottoman Empire were able to capture Constantinople, modern day Instabul, Turkey and end the last of the surviving Roman Empire. With the fall of Constantinople, the genetics makeup of Europe also changed forever with Central and Eastern European being much more Turk genetically.

The founder of Constantinople and the first Christian emperor of Rome, Constantine realized that his superior navy and the Roman shield walls would not do well in the flat open field terrain of Germany and Ukraine against the cavalry and horse archers from the East. So Constantine moved the capital of the Roman Empire to a naval stroke point at the mouth of the Black Sea to maximize Roman Empire naval advantages and their shield wall tactics just like modern day Singapore.

However with gunpowder and the cannon, the Eastern Roman naval boats and their shield wall are no longer effective. The Roman wooden boats and their wooden shields could easily be penetrated by the projectiles accelerated via gunpowder that the Ottoman Turk bought from China via the ancient Silk Road. Even the thick castle wall made of rock could also be breached with a large cannonball, enough gunpowder and a long gun barrel to accelerate the cannonball.

A massive explosion that took down the hundred years wall of Constantinople finally woke up the Christian kingdoms of Western Europe from their long Dark age and kick started the Gunpowder arm race in Europe and the naval trades with the Far East of India and China. The Christian planners determined to never fall behind in war innovation again and also started to look for a better geographical location for their new capital in the West and accidentally found the American continent.

Artilery Roles in Past Warfare

The Archor Formation

Making an effective bow is an art that requires a high level of attention to details. To become an effective archer requires years of training and is not as straightforward as throwing a rock, swinging a sword or thrusting a long sharp pipe forward. The first full time standing division of the ancient armies is probably the archer formation. While the foot infantry could be recruited from the farmer population and be armed and trained quickly for a few months before a major campaign, the archers need to be trained from early teenagers and probably come from military or noble families.

Being able to aim and shoot an arrow while standing in one position at a stationary target accurately would require at least one year of training. Being able to aim and shoot an arrow at a moving target accurately under the extreme stress of the battlefield would require many years of training. And being able to aim and shoot while riding a horse at many moving targets in a few minutes would require decades of training since childhood.

East Asian cultures since ancient times have always had a higher level of attention to details and are more diligent at practicing their skills than other Western cultures. As a result Eastern Asian cultures produced many more effective archers than in the West. To the modern day, East Asians still excel and outperform Western counterparts at other human domains that require a high level of attention to detail and diligent practice like semiconductor manufacturing, software engineering, musical instruments or plastic surgeries.

To be able to produce a large number of effective archers though was very difficult and the archers are reserved to produce the initial shock during open battle or protecting the core leadership component from the city walls. Wars in the East were still decided mainly by the foot infantry until the appearance of the Mongols. The Mongols' culture and way of life were able to turn the art of archery into a standardized skill, turn every common man and even woman into effective archers, and as a result produced a shocking amount of horse archers and dominated both East Asia and Eastern Europe.

The Rapid Innovation in Fire Powder, Gun Barrel and the Reload Mechanism in the West

The Musket were first invented in 1400s to turn the large cannon into a hand-held device that could be used in the battle field as range weapon by a common soldier. Why archery would requires years of traing, shooting a musket would require much less training. The long gun barrel serves as an aiming and stabalization device. The act of shooting a loaded musket would be just pointing the gun barrel at the target and pulling the trigger. Why early musket was not as accurate as shooting an arrow, it is much easier to use and can penetrate through wooden shields.

The Musket were first used in the battle fields by the Ottoman Turk and Europeans to take down calvary and wooden shield formation from a distance. The inaccuracy of the early musket would be mitigated via the line formation that allow 10 or more Musketeers to fire their gun at the same time. Without a reload system, the early musket design still only worked as a single shot bucky missile with limited accuracy. Reloading these early musket designs would require packing the gunpowder first from the muzzle and then placing the metal ball in from the muzzle. Bow and arrows working as a quick grab, pull and release sequences are still much more efficient and faster than gunpowder weapons.

Guns and cannons from the 1600s has 2 major innovations that greatly improve range and accuracy of the weapon. The musket barrel is being rifled or threaded inside to spin the bullet which results in much more stable fight and hit the target much more accurately. The bullet also has a much more pointed nose shape to reduce drag during flight as well as deeper peneration into the target.

Early 1800s, the Prussian Army comes up with a revolutionary new gun design combining earlier experiment results in a full package in the Dreyse Needle Gun. The Drese Needle Gun had rifled gun barrels and pointed nose bullet like previous generation of rifle but the bullet now could be loaded quickly from the back of the gun, gun powerders is packed with the bullet as a single package in metal casing and it has an enclosed ignition using Needle Spark. With this new innovative weapon, the Prussian Army was able to unite Germanic tribes and founded Modern Germany.

The Northern US Continental Armies reinvented the Prussian Needle Gun by adding a auto-reload mechanism into the riffle to allow multiple round shooting before reloading, add metallic cathrage with gun powder inside each bullet for easy storage and durability. The Repeating Spencer of the US Northern Continental army was be able to defeat the outdated Riffle of the Confederate Southern Army, unite the US Northern and Southern States and founded modern United States in late 1800s.

After 500 years continous weapon research and innovation, the European colonial powers conquered Beijing, colonized Indochina and India, blocking the Ottoman Empire out of their 1400s suppliers using highly advanced firearms.

The American and Swiss turned handgun shooting into a standardized skill. So no countries ever conquered the US or Switzerland. A G-Lock made in Austria is less than 1 kilogram and could easily be handled by even a young girl. Gun violence is still a big problem in the US though but the actual casualty statistics from gun violence is still much lower than eating fast food or car accidents.

The Defense Industries and World Wars

Before WW2, every major advanced economies like Britain, France, Germany, Japan, Russia and China have a war industry. After WW2, only two countries left with a defense manufactering industries: United States and Russia. UK, France, Germany and China industrial bases were all destroyed and Japan were disarmed. The world switched from a Multi-polar world into a Bi-Polar world with Russia commanding Euro Asia and US commanding the Sea and the American continents.

So after WW2, the map has been redrawn and the world have submitted to the two main alphas: Moscow and Washington. Why do we still have wars in the Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan and the Middle East? Maybe the operation like Dien Bien Phu was to reshuffle the genetics map of the world and teach the bright dogs to use American and Russian made weapons? Also a real war is a much better way to measure the effectiveness of weapon design than a military exercise.

Originally, the planned Việt Minh attack was based on the Chinese “Fast Strike, Fast Victory” model, which aimed to use all available power to thrust into the command center of the base to secure victory, but this was changed to the “Steady Fight, Steady Advance” model of siege tactics. Vo Nguyen Giap, whose name means The Armor of Nguyen, "Steady Fight, Steady Advances", won the battle of Dien Bien Phu.

Nguyen Chi Thanh, whose name means Nguyen Paying by Qing Blood, "Fast Strike Fast Victory" sacrifised the delta population and left Hanoi and the Red River delta with many desperate widows. Another plan made by Nguyen Chi Thanh, the Tet Offensive, also sacrifired even more Northern troops. Maybe Nguyen Chi Thanh never died in battle but just faked his death and disappeared like a spy movie.

The mountainous campaign of Dien Bien Phu and Truong Son with walking infantries dragging heavy artilery cannons and shells up the high mountains of Lao Cai and Truong Son probably costed more lifes in transit than the actual casualty during the Battle of Dien Bien Phu and battle of Khe Sanh. These "Đội Bộ" of Vietnam will have to wait for the invention and mass-produced of Soviet RPGs in the 1970s to reduce their casualty in transit.

These Soviet RPG come with the Shaped Charge innovation to turn the random hot gas explosion into a sharp pointy 2000 degree celcius jet stream that melts through metal armor in few miliseconds. This light weight RPG now could be carried around and used by a single soldier to take out fortified bunkers and armor tank unit.

The Evolution of Autonomous Flying Projectile

All men-made projectile from the rocks to the javelin, arrows, cannon balls, bullets and RPGs though still have to follow the conventional ballistic trajectory and can not manuever midflight like the aircrafts. So as long as the target is highly mobile, the target could maneuver out of danger. Only with the invention of semiconductor and the onboard computer that men-made flying projectile can start to think on its own and alter its fly tranjectory.

Combining Infrared Camera and the light-weight Onboard Computer Chip, the American defense researchers were able to invent and mass produce the Stinger Anti-Air handheld missiles with Infrared-Seeker for the Afghanistan milita to take out highly mobile helicopters and transport aircrafts of the Soviet armies.

The infrared-seeker only allows the missile to travel autonomous for a short distance near a high heat signature target though and still require the shooter to get very close to their targets. Tomahawk was the first GPS and Terrain Matching Autonomous Flying projectile that can fight 100s to 1000s of kilimeter without pilot and hit their targets within meters of accuracy.

This cross-platform innovation for all Air, Sea and Land attack platform of United States Armed Force can carry nuclear warheads and hit target insides Moscow and Chengdu if US submarines can have freedom of access to the Black Sea and the South China Sea.

Tomahawk missiles flying at 50 meter altitude with the length of only 6 meters are extremely difficult targets to be detected by radars and even with detection, it is very difficult for air defense missiles and non-automomous anti aircraft guns to hit these subsonic low flying small targets.

Tomahawk being used with conventional warhead is not as effective as rocket artileries though since it costs a lot of jet fuels per missile and all high tech sensors and computer processing system inside a Tomahawk could only be used once. A nuclear attack on Moscow and Chengdu could result in a global nuclear ICBM relatiation.

So far besides the Tomahawk, only the Javelin missiles was actually used extensively in real war. The Javelin platform is the adaption of the Tomahawk into a handheld portable anti-tank missile that can fly in an unconventional ballistic trajectory and hit the tank at weakess spot, the lightly armor top. The mass demolition of Russian tanks in Ukraine with the Javalin so far only resulted in Russian ramping up its tank manufaturing.