Hand grenades beyond TL 10

[Zparkz]

I am currently writing a campaign for the siege of Jewell during the FFW.
I notice one thing and that is the absence of hand grenades beyond TL 10 as the conventional explosives stop at that TL.
I am experimenting with using the same stuff the Plasma and Fusion ammunition are made of. However I am not really sure how to calculate the concussion and burst. If I use the damage rating from the high energy weapon design you soon end up with a burst radius ecxeeding the throw range of the character.
I wonder if any of you have tried something like this?

Just for comparison here is some numbers.

The warhead diameter is 45mm. For volume I use the volume calculation on page 141 of FF&S. Which gives 0.36 liters.

A TL 14 PFC can then hold 1.6Mj of energy.
To calculate concussion I multiply Mj with 20 which gives 32 and a burst of 64(65) by multiplying 32 with 2 to get the burst radius.

I decided to use 20 instead of square root of MJ times 30 as this gives a much higher value on the concussion value.

 

[Spud]

"If I use the damage rating from the high energy weapon design you soon end up with a burst radius ecxeeding the throw range of the character.
I wonder if any of you have tried something like this?"

Yes. In Oct'66 my sergeant-instructor told us that we should only throw the (M-26a) Fragmentation grenade from cover (i.e. protection) because it was not possible to throw it far enough to be out of its wound radius. This was the first chink in the image I had held of the Army as an honorable pastime. It got a lot worse later.

 

[vegascat]

The concussion of a modern hand grenade is not the killer unless you have one within inches of flesh. The real killer/wound mechanism is the frag potential. The casings have changed regularly.
The origional grenades were petards placed or rolled into place made of an iron casing filled with black powder and a slow match fuze.
The Grenadiers were named so because they actually threw grenades as their main weapon in combat. The grenades they used were 5 Lbs of iron casing, black powder, and a slow match.
The Victorian era saw experiments with impact firing devices. Some were thrown as a discus, others had streamers to keep the nose impact fuze forward pointed.
WWI saw Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) with whatever was at hand. Paddle boards with blocks of explosive tied on. Food tins packed with TNT. These IEDs were almost as dangerous to the user as the target. Manufactured grenades never did really end the use of the IEDs.
In WWI, the pineapple and potatoe masher were used. The pineapple had a casing with the trademark blocks designed to fragment into a set number of pieces.
Work was done on fuzes, to make predictable delay. Too long of a delay will allow the intended target to throw it back, too short and you lose an arm. Remember the tag line "When the pin is pulled, Mr Grenade is no longer your friend".
Studies done to increase effectiveness have lead to the current baseball grenade. It is a sheet metal shell over a body of prescored wire wraped around a core of explosive. It will throw fragments of shell and wire up to several hundred yards. The frag will slow faster than a bullet because it is ballistically very poor. Anything within about 25 meters will be hit with enough frag moving fast enough to give at least a 50% chance of killing a standing person. High velocity frag will reach out much farther than that, so getting behind solid cover is vital.

 

[vegascat]

The concussion of a modern hand grenade is not the killer unless you have one within inches of flesh. The real killer/wound mechanism is the frag potential. The casings have changed regularly.
The origional grenades were petards placed or rolled into place made of an iron casing filled with black powder and a slow match fuze.
The Grenadiers were named so because they actually threw grenades as their main weapon in combat. The grenades they used were 5 Lbs of iron casing, black powder, and a slow match.
The Victorian era saw experiments with impact firing devices. Some were thrown as a discus, others had streamers to keep the nose impact fuze forward pointed.
WWI saw Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) with whatever was at hand. Paddle boards with blocks of explosive tied on. Food tins packed with TNT. These IEDs were almost as dangerous to the user as the target. Manufactured grenades never did really end the use of the IEDs.
In WWI, the pineapple and potatoe masher were used. The pineapple had a casing with the trademark blocks designed to fragment into a set number of pieces.
Work was done on fuzes, to make predictable delay. Too long of a delay will allow the intended target to throw it back, too short and you lose an arm. Remember the tag line "When the pin is pulled, Mr Grenade is no longer your friend".
Studies done to increase effectiveness have lead to the current baseball grenade. It is a sheet metal shell over a body of prescored wire wraped around a core of explosive. It will throw fragments of shell and wire up to several hundred yards. The frag will slow faster than a bullet because it is ballistically very poor. Anything within about 25 meters will be hit with enough frag moving fast enough to give at least a 50% chance of killing a standing person. High velocity frag will reach out much farther than that, so getting behind solid cover is vital.

 

[Anthony]

Originally posted by Zparkz:
Just for comparison here is some numbers.

The warhead diameter is 45mm. For volume I use the volume calculation on page 141 of FF&S. Which gives 0.36 liters.

A TL 14 PFC can then hold 1.6Mj of energy.

As a rule of thumb, one kilogram of generic high explosive (TL 7) detonates with a force of 4 MJ. I'm not sure how that translates in terms of damage, but I suspect that filling your shell with TL 10 explosives will do more damage than filling it with a TL 14 PFC.

 

[Zparkz]

</font><blockquote>code:</font><hr /><pre style="font-size:x-small; font-family: monospace;">
TL Type Vol Con Burst
10 HE 0,36 6 15
10 HEAP 0,36 4 15
10 Conc 0,36 10
10 WP 0,36 2 5
10 Termite 0,36 2 5
10 CPC 0,36 13 25
12 PPC 0,36 27 55
14 PFC 0,36 40 85
16 GCFC 0,36 80 165</pre>[/QUOTE]Here is the actutal values for the handgrenades using the rules in FF&S. For the plasma and fusion variants I have used the procedure explained in the initial post. As you see the damage for the TL 10+ types increase sharply.

 

[whartung]

Originally posted by Zparkz:
If I use the damage rating from the high energy weapon design you soon end up with a burst radius ecxeeding the throw range of the character.

The real issue is the applicability of grenades in high tech combat.

What are grenades used for?

Casual, short range, indirect fire, basically, preferrably against soft targets. And I think that's a key point. As armor gets better and better, notably battle dress, your targets become essentially hardened targets, rather than soft, particularly there isn't anything that you can safely hide behind anymore.

When you get into the PG/FGMP rifles, silly things like block walls, trees, or earthen berms aren't going to do much to slow down a plasma bolt. If you see a guy shooting from a window, you shoot AROUND the window and just punch holes in the wall. And anything with enough force to more than singe a person in battle dress, isn't something you're going to be tossing into an dark room to "clear it". I don't even know if a modern grenade is useable for room clearing, or if it's simply too powerful.

So, much like modern nuclear missiles, rather than upping the ante on concussion and radius, it's better to focus on precision and penetration. Over the years, our nuclear warheads have shrunk in terms of yield as their guidance systems prove more accurate.

I think if you want to take out guys in battle dress hiding in a trench, you'd want a smart, disposable, fire and forget indirect missile with a high velocity penetrator rather than tossing a small ball of barely stable plasma and hoping you're not caught in the blast radius. It shoots up into the sky, arcs over, starts scanning for targets and then, basically, get a single shot off, hoping to pop a bad guy in the head. Otherwise, you're talking mortars anyway.

So, it's not that the tech isn't there to make a nice grenade, I just think that the applicability is past as other technologies turn infantrymen into walking armored units.

The new motto is I think "That which doesn't kill us, simply draws fire."

 

[Zparkz]

I am not so sure that plasma and fusion guns will be so common on the battlefield. Especially if you follow the TNE rules. Plasma and fusion gunds got little ammo capacity and weight a lot loaded. A battledressed trooper will be severely strained if carrying more than a few reload magazines along with other necessary equipment. Even the battery life is limited and would need recharge in the wors cases every 10 hours.

Combat armor will be much more common as battery life is not an issue, and you are neither frozen up in a mechanical suit if power fails for some reason. And most combat armors by FF&S rules will not have much more armor than a well designed gauss rifle will be able to penetrate. The price tag may also be a factor. Combat armor <10000 creds. Battledress 200000+

So IMTU at least battledress equiped marines are either shock troops that spearhead an assault or used in support as a minitank along side other troops with more conventional equipment.

 

[whartung]

Well, my point is simply that the only reason for an improved grenade is if the previous versions lacked in lethality because of the new environment (notably, battle dress equipped troops).

If you're using TL 10 Combat Armor, it has and Armor Value of 2/1. At TL 12, it goes up to 3/2.

According to TNE, a grenade only does 2D/Pen 1 damage for Burst damage. TL 12 Combat Armor will shrug off that damage, TL 10 will mostly shrug it off.

What is not clear from the rules is whether armor does anything at all to mitigate Concussion damage. It doesn't mention anything, so we have to assume it doesn't. Which means that whether your in full BD or Chainmail, you're going to get your bell rung.

I don't see any grenades in the TNE book, save for RAM grenades. And the generic HE models both have a Concussion value of 2. Your "grenade" has a C:32. According to the demolitions table, that's enough to blow through almost a yard of concrete.

At 50 meters, your grenade has the same C value of a stock RAM grenade. 1/2 a foot ball field away!

So, we get back into the practicality and utility of tossing and lobbing high explosives hither and yon, and surviving the experience.

 

[dancha]

Here's something to consider: grenade as population suppression.

The real key is: making grenades smaller. (Please consider that the real thrust of this post.)

Imagine grenades with the lethality of WWII type or so, that are the size of paperclips, or maybe a box of matches.

There's a big SF series by Gregory Benford. In one of them, an invasion force literally blankets population areas with *millions* of paperclip sized grenades. Depending on the terrain they're very difficult to see.

Sure, military personnel in armor and armored vehicles can laugh these off.

But not the average person.

But again, that's just a usage or deployment scenario.

Please focus on the notion of making grenades with 5-10 meter kill zones that are very small. (Heavy or not is another matter...)

 

[Zparkz]

To continue on my original post and the follow up where i presented a few designs, I am not entirely satisfied with the designs. Neither with the explanation that hand grenades will be removed from the battlefield.

My main gripe on the designs they are too powerful. Maybe I should limit the C:B to half of what I have calculated.

I also consider it more likely that the grenades becomes much smaller, and they maybe get multi-propose roles. The same grenade can be used as a generale hand grenade, thermite, impact fuse, timed fuse, chained with other grenades to improve effect. And with special equipment become a shaped charge.

 

[whartung]

You can reduce the size of the grenade if you can get an explosive that gives similar performance with less volume, but then you're also reducing the number and/or size of the fragments from a fragmentations grenade. Also, you need to think about the ability to throw the grenade, so you'll want to keep the mass up as well.

If you just want to scatter a gazillion, light weight submunitions, that's a different problem than that of hand grenade since the delivery system is different. But you still need to retain some sense of mass to generate shrapnel.

I only question their role in the battlefield against a hardened target, and battledress is purty darn hard. As defined in TNE, grenades have a fixed shrapnel effect at any tech level, simply because of the physics of shrapnel.

But they do have the concussion effect. And if the concussion effect is the same regardless of armor, then you may as well eliminate the shrapnel (since it can't penetrate the higher end armors anyway), and go solely for improved concussion. The more concussion you dream up, the higher the risk to the user of the grenades because you can't have high concussion and low radius of effect (unless you're doing something wacky like TDX or something).

According the the Army, the average soldier can throw a grenade 40 meters, so that's a pretty fair base to go from.

As far as a multipurpose grenade, I don't know if that would be practical. No doubt you could cram in a smoke charge next to a HE charge, I guess, into a dual purpose package. But I think that armies like to keep things that are done in combat pretty darn basic, and perhaps the potential for mistake by misconfiguring a multi-purpose grenade is too high.

Modern grenades weigh about a pound, so I read. I don't know how much a pool ball weighs, but that's probably an ideal weight and size in terms of how it's thrown etc. I think once they hit TL 10, there simply isn't a lot more that can be done to a grenade (nothing that would require a higher tech level). I mean, look at the grenades in 'Aliens'. Odd shape to throw, strange ballistics, a push button fuse protected by a plastic cap (little unsafe for me, thanx).

Anyway, I just think that there are a lot of external factors that affect the ergonomics and performance of a hand grenade. Better fuses, more accurate timing, sure, assuming that couldn't be done at TL 10 (dunno why not though).

 

[Piper]

Here's a thought; Anti-armor grenade: picture a baseball-sized charge in a 4-sided pyramidal cage (like a d4) When it hits, it usually lands right side up. Inside is either a thermal or electronic sensor (or both). Toss the thing into a room, after the delay time (a second maybe?) the sensor locks on a heat or electronic signature, rotates and fires either a shaped-charge or a self-forging penetrator (SFAP). If it can't lock on, then it detonates as a normal grenade. They could also be left on active mode as a improvised booby-trap.
The sensors could be programmed by the platoon's armorer and tailored for each mission.

Another idea for softer targets would be a cloud of flechettes that vaporize a few meters from the device. High penetration and controlled burst radius (Thank Joe Haldeman for that idea).

Stun/flash grenades temporarily blind and disorient a target. There should be some way to effect electronic sensors in a similar fashion.
EMP or ECM grenades, maybe?

 

[Zparkz]

There is clearly a host of grenade types that needs to be adrtessed in the far future.
Bertil Jonell came up with some rules for concussion damage towards armored targets. It is more than 10 years ago I read his rules. Basically (from memory) flack jackets reduced concussiondamage with about 25% towards the protected area. Combat Armor reduced the damage with half. Battledress which is a sealed can would probably protect against most concussion. Maybe only 20% goes through armor.

For small devices as I made with FF&S there is the problem with having enough shell surface area for fragmentation. This may be solved with several layers with special fragmentation shells. Fragmentations would not penetrate most armors, but would damage and destroy most unprotected equipment. The nifty and expensive fusion rifle is worth nothing when the liquid nitrogen hose is ruptured by shrapnel.

Piper, thise are some very good ideas. I'll see where I can take those with FF&S. I specially like the D4 concept =0) A very cruel idea.

 

[BetterThanLife]

Hand Grenades, like the Bayonet will probably never leave the battlefield. However there are severe limits in terms of possible improvements in grenades.

Improving the burst radius is counterproductive in Grenades. Decreasing the size, below a certain level, means less fragments, less effective. Now for things like Flashbangs, or Chemical Grenades then they can probably get a bit smaller. Though there is still a bottom size for chemical grenades, because you have to have a certain amount of chemicals in the grenade in order to disperse it. Other improvements will be type of explosive, but in game terms, does that really matter? Obscuration grenades, ie Smoke, might get smaller but more importantly they will have to block new observation devices. (For example hot smoke to obascure from Thermal Imagers.) That is alot of work for a one use, disposable, semi-effective weapon. About the only interesting change in the basic Fragmentation grenade might be a Frisbee shape so it can be thrown farther or around corners. (Though if you throw it wrong it can come back.

)


The Bayonet is effectively about a TL2-3 weapon. (It turns a rifle into a pike.) That doesn't stop it from being used. The M1911 is a TL5 handgun but it is every bit as effective and accurate (If not more accurate) as a TL8 USP. The M2HB is a late TL5, early TL6 weapon and so far nobody has produced a better heavy machinegun. Both the M1911 and the M2HB are still in use. So even if the Hand Grenade never advances beyond TLA that doesn't mean it won't still be used.

 

[spank]

You could upgrade grenades by adding Tech to them instead of explosive potential. For example, internal inertial movment tracking and a range detonator, or a remote detonator.
One intesting possibility is the modular grenade, with a base {explosive} module, and a head {detonator} module.
Instead of changing the mass/weight of the grenade to simulate changing power of explosives change the blast radius and damage.

 

[Chuck Anumia]

Perhaps a boomarang shape with a remote detonator?

You get more distance from throwing, more surface area for fragmentation and more accuracy by flight design?

Perhaps American Football shape?

Perhaps anti-matter at higher levels?

 

[Klaus]

How about thermobaric grenades for room/bunker clearance, upgrading to some kind of plasma explosive at higher TL (replace flamethrowers).

I've always thought the RAM grenade would develop along the lines of a personal anti-armour weapon, a mini-rpg; in cbt armour / BD you'd possibly need something like this anyway. The smarter they get the more they turn into mini-missiles; like the idea above just shoot them into the sky above the battlefield and then they lock on to a likely target, activate the rocket and attack. Another function would be as a remote sensor - shoot it up like a flare, it opens it's parachute and floats over the battlefield, using dangerous active sensors, and sending its overhead telemetry back via tight beam, til it's shot down.

Perhaps the area clearance use of grenades becomes increasingly obsolete after TL10 and it's EW potential comes to the fore : chaff, emp, decoys, jammers, target markers, smoke, AL aerosol etc. It's likely that this side of combat becomes increasingly more important than the lethal end. If you can get the enemy to shoot at the wrong position, you've got them to give away their location and waste their ammo. Has anyone come up with a model for use of active and passive sensors on a battlefield?

As tech levels get higher wouldn't grenades get smarter; maybe the distinction between grenades and mines becomes moot eventually.

Mini grenades would be nice for espionage purposes - anti-personnel, knocking out security, gas, bugs even.

Related topic: what about GRAV-grenades, instead of RAM grenades. Spose a bit like Iain M Banks knife missiles.

 

[Chuck Anumia]

Sounds more like mini Artillary or Morters to me.

Perhaps Rifle Grenades will be the hight of Grenade advancement.

 

[mike wightman]

Where are the under barrel grenade launcher add ons - the M203 and the like - in Traveller anyway?