A mockup weapon seen at a Ukrainian trade show appears to use a Raspberry Pi micro PC as the basis of a guidance system—probably not at all what the inventors of the hobby computer had in mind when they introduced their affordable wonder to the world.

The weapon was reportedly sighted at last month's Bezpeka Security Trade Show, which showed off the latest in Ukrainian surveillance, intelligence, and military technologies. It appears to be part of a shoulder-fired, disposable rocket launcher in a similar class as the Swedish/American AT-4 or Russian RPG-29 . The entire set of photos can be seen here .

The purpose of the projectile is unknown. It appears to have electronics and wiring in two locations—the front and the rear—exactly where you would expect the warhead and the motor, respectively. The Raspberry Pi is in the front. The launch tube doesn't have a guidance system, so the weapon appears to be a "fire and forget" munition. That is, once fired the missile homes in the target and the shooter is free to run and take cover.

Digging deeper into the threads—and trying to make sense of Google's Ukrainian to English translation—there are hints that the weapon is meant to take on helicopters or even tanks and is guided by sound. That would make it the world's first sound-homing ground weapon. That might also explain why the Raspberry Pi is in the nose of the weapon, and why it appears to have so little room for a warhead. A small shaped charge warhead might well be enough to bring down a helicopter, and would work like this:

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Still, there's a reason why sound-homing weapons haven't taken off. Battlefields are noisy, and a weapon that homes in on loud noises would have a difficult time picking out its target. This is a weapon that would be unreliable in a firefight, better used to ambush targets. On the plus side, it would be immune to traditional countermeasures such as anti-infrared flares and anti-radar chaff.

The holes in the side could be stand-ins for miniature rocket nozzles. The M-47 Dragon, America's medium-range anti-tank missile during the Cold War used rows of many small rockets in a similar pattern instead of one large one to fly downrange.

The weapon might be a work in progress by a Ukrainian defense firm that intends to use Raspberry Pi only during the prototyping process—it's not clear that the hobbyist computer, which was designed for children and people who like to make their own computer-power devices, is sturdy enough to survive rough handling on the battlefield and the G forces of rocket launch.

Source: Reddit

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