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Re:New US Army Tech Instantly Destroys Enemy Fire by rtkwe on Thursday May 12, 2016 @11:05AM (#11683889)
These systems don't try to deal with grenades which aren't really a threat to anything with armor so the code can ignore anything that people could throw/kick really. What the APSs are designed to catch are RPGs and other anti-tank rockets which all travel >100 m/s which is well above what a playful kid can make.
Re:New US Army Tech Instantly Destroys Enemy Fire by chongli on Thursday May 12, 2016 @11:18AM (#11684004)
rockets which all travel >100 m/s which is well above what a playful kid can make

Speak for yourself. I loved rockets[0] as a playful kid!

[0] https://www.estesrockets.com/

Re:New US Army Tech Instantly Destroys Enemy Fire by astine on Thursday May 12, 2016 @11:45AM (#11684239)
Even without this new system, a person setting a toy rocket off near a deployed military force is really asking for trouble.
Re:New US Army Tech Instantly Destroys Enemy Fire by chongli on Thursday May 12, 2016 @11:57AM (#11684331)
I disagree. It is the deployed military force that is asking for and finding trouble. It is the innocent who bear the brunt of the danger for this. This is the moral hazard[0] of war.

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_hazard

Re:New US Army Tech Instantly Destroys Enemy Fire by rtkwe on Thursday May 12, 2016 @01:57PM (#11685398)
Possibly, though I bet the return from the cardboard/cardstock that most of those are made from are very different from the radar return from a metal missile.

I played with Estes rockets too. How many people are likely to in war zones like these APS devices will be deployed in are likely to though? The rocket motors aren't super cheap and aren't really reusable or easy to make your own.

Re:New US Army Tech Instantly Destroys Enemy Fire by elif on Thursday May 12, 2016 @11:26AM (#11684069)
The G in RPG is Grenade.
Re:New US Army Tech Instantly Destroys Enemy Fire by rtkwe on Thursday May 12, 2016 @11:44AM (#11684231)
The RP in RPG is Rocket Propelled. /pedantry

There's a huge difference between RPGs and hand thrown anti personnel grenades. The first uses a shaped charge to create a very directional blast of fast hot metal that can punch through armor and the latter is an unfocused omnidirectional blast that can't get through light armor.

Re:New US Army Tech Instantly Destroys Enemy Fire by unprepare on Thursday May 12, 2016 @11:38AM (#11684181)
I think RPG actually stands for ruchnoy protivotankovy granatomyot

'rocket propelled grenade' is a backronym.

Re:New US Army Tech Instantly Destroys Enemy Fire by greedo on Thursday May 12, 2016 @12:26PM (#11684618)
Uh, what do you think "granatomyot" means?
Re:New US Army Tech Instantly Destroys Enemy Fire by eridius on Thursday May 12, 2016 @02:59PM (#11685859)
What do you think the rest of it means? According to Wikipedia[1], the phrase "ruchnoy protivotankovy granatomyot" means "hand-held anti-tank grenade launcher".

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rocket-propelled_grenade

Re:New US Army Tech Instantly Destroys Enemy Fire by greedo on Thursday May 12, 2016 @03:36PM (#11686109)
There are hand-held grenade launchers, crew served grenade launchers, etc. None of which means it's a "backronym."
Re:New US Army Tech Instantly Destroys Enemy Fire by eridius on Thursday May 12, 2016 @04:47PM (#11686657)
Sure it does. The acronym RPG literally comes from the phrase "ruchnoy protivotankovy granatomyot", which was the name given to a series of Russian weapons in the category of portable anti-tank rocket launchers. And this name definitely pre-dates "rocket-propelled grenade", and in fact predates the weapons being rocket-propelled at all. For example, the RPG-40 is simply an anti-tank hand grenade (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RPG-40), or the RPG-43 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RPG-43) and RPG-6 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RPG-6).

Actually, looking at these sources, the non-propelled versions were actually called "ruchnaya protivotankovaya granata" ("hand-held anti-tank grenade"). Still the same acronym of course, it just doesn't include the launcher. So when the launcher part was added, the phrase changed slightly but the acronym remained the same. And it was only at this point that the phrase "rocket-propelled grenade" could be used to refer to this weapon, and the phrase was presumably created to match the acronym RPG.