Borgholio wrote:If we talk about men in powered armor with shields instead of werewolves, the same idea applies. Unless there is some kind of incredible inertial dampening, hitting a guy in a power suit with an RPG or a tank shell is going to turn him into chunky salsa inside his armor due to the sheer inertia transfer. So you may not need a special weapon to pierce his armor or shield, if you can kill the guy inside by blasting him with a 120mm HE round.
Hell he'd surely die just from a non explosive round!
Also worth considering even if the target is tough enough to stop conventional fragmentation for whatever reason, you could always use an expanding rod warhead to slice them in half, or more elaborately multi liner EFP warheads have now reached a reasonable degree of reliability and can be constructed from reactive metals that are well, burning metal ignited by the explosion or the force of impact with another hard object (both approaches have advantages, bonus that anything left is non hazardous unless you wood chipper it). These devices have already been demonstrated in weights of less the one pound, making them suitable for use as grenades or small rocket warheads.
This is a life fire example from about a decade ago with a several EFP pound charge.
SMILEY FACE OF DEATH
Blow is a computer simulation of how a multi liner intended for radial projection as you'd want in a grenade would look.
Both the above came out of PDFs on DTIC if anyone is wondering.
Incendiary tungsten slugs at ~2,200m/s are probably going to be pretty effective against a target to which any level of 'can die' rules apply, even if they only weigh perhaps 1-2 grams apiece. These sort of warheads burn so hot they can make concrete explode from the thermal shock. For now its functionally limited only by our ability to make the charge liners with precision (required precision is relative to the entire size of the charge, not absolute, smaller is harder) but the US military is already experimenting with 3D printing explosive warheads of this sort. So that should take care of that problem within reason. Reactive metal costs and difficultly vary with application, but nothing is a deal breaker and the tech was implemented in some applications more then 15 years ago, such as JASSM warhead.
Toughness alone isn't a good basis to work from if you want melee, though I would suggest that layered protection helps in all instances. But generally humans have been keeping weapons ahead of protection for a long time now and a lot of scope is left for better explosives. That basic problem applies of the defense has to work 100% of the time, or you die, while the attack merely needs to work often enough to be effective in combat. Modern weapons are predicated on long ranges, if the enemy can't shoot back with similar effects life is just too easy and lots more weapons will 'work' as personal arms, like one of those 12 shot revolver grenade launchers. Load HEAT grenades in the sucker and let fly. And it would not be unreasonable to have ~30 more grenades on your person as reloads with various warheads.
"This cult of special forces is as sensible as to form a Royal Corps of Tree Climbers and say that no soldier who does not wear its green hat with a bunch of oak leaves stuck in it should be expected to climb a tree"
— Field Marshal William Slim 1956
