Half a croissant, on a plate, with a sign in front of it saying '50c'
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Water Jet Tank

Remove Reinforced Defence Structures
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Often, a military will find itself in a situation where the enemy don't stand around in the open dressed in bright, easily identifiable uniforms waiting to be shot*. Irritatingly, the enemy takes to hiding behind things and in buildings, and not nicely decorated castles** either.

Water jet cutting is pretty interesting. Often water alone fired at 10,000 PSI at concrete will neatly cut through it, it works like soil erosion, only massively speeded up. The upping the pressure toward 40,000 PSI and adding a cheap abrasive substance, silicon carbide, quartz etc, takes water jet cutting to the next level, much faster and it will slice right through steel.

Typically water jet cutting is done at close range, 3-5cm or so. With more power, we can make this longer range. Typically, high-velocity water jets get disrupted & diffused by interactions with air. However, we can for example, have the high velicity stream shielded inside a fast moving air stream, or perhaps another ring shaped water jet.

So, now we have a tank that can drive up to a building and cut neat slots/door ways out of walls. We don't have to use indiscriminate explosives and potentially collapse buildings while leaving rebar intact.

* Very unsportsmanlike behaviour, civilization definitely took a downturn when Britain/France had to change into drab uniforms. I blame the Germans for not getting the whole arrangement and adopting hard-to-see Feldgrau.

** Castle sieging, sporting behavior.

bs0u0155, Dec 27 2023

Breaking concrete without a blast https://www.concret...lition-techniques_o
[pashute, Dec 28 2023]

an example https://www.youtube...watch?v=domJccXnAp8
[pashute, Dec 28 2023]

waterjet concrete cutting https://www.youtube...watch?v=0gxBjM-YRv4
[pashute, Dec 28 2023]

[link]






       You had me at *
Voice, Dec 27 2023
  

       In Avigdor Hameiri's book The Great Craze about his service in the Austro-Hungarian-German army in WWI he begins with working in a French newspaper receiving the headlines: "No more war ever again with the advent of electric fences"
pashute, Dec 28 2023
  

       Also, I read somewhere about a silent concrete bursting technique. Searching now on the web for concrete hammer alternatives I found <<see link>> that there are several widely used materials which you can choose from, to break up concrete. They are poured into a small hole and then after up to an hour, but with some of these materials within minutes, they slowly expand exerting a large amount of energy and causing the structure to break.
pashute, Dec 28 2023
  

       {peacefully contemplating the ferro-concrete piers of a very large bridge}   

       {wondering whether there's a good Russian-language translation of Shelley's Ozymandias}
pertinax, Dec 29 2023
  
      
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