Customer Reviews

Conventional Warhead Systems Physics and Engineering Design (Progress in Astronautics and Aeronautics)

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I wasn't quite sure what to expect when I got this, but I like it a lot. Richard Lloyd does a good job of describing the concepts behind all sorts of methods of increasing warhead lethality, both in the physics of the warheads and the statistics of how to use the warhead capabilities to their best advantage. The concepts are very thought provoking and lead the reader into imagining all sorts of other ways that the concepts could be used and combined to increased effect. It sort of feels like a useful and big toolbox of tricks that provides the reader with plenty of practical wherewithal to cook up solutions to whatever real problems might come up. I could sort of see the book in a fabrication shop where things were getting designed and built quickly. So, in that sense, I think the book succeeds very well. And, I doubt there is anything else out there like it. I think I'd recommend it with something like Zukas "High Velocity Impact Dynamics" or maybe "Explosives Engineering" by Cooper. For the stout at heart and if you're interested in the computational aspects of this, match it with Wen Ho Lee's "Computer Simulation of Shaped Charge Problems."

Taking the opposite point of view, the book seems to be full of equation and text description errors. And, it interminably repeats things like formulas to calculate the mass of a cylinder or basic trigonometry and so forth. If you need to know that, you shouldn't be reading this book. Once, twice, ten times, sure, but the hundreds of these derivations in weird messy situations just grinds the reader down while he's trying to understand the deeper concepts. Meanwhile, there are very complex concepts which just pop out of the blue, often without deeper insight about where they come from and frequently with the variables left undefined or sometimes even incorrectly. In that sense, it is kind of like he took a sheaf of notes out of his file cabinet and poured them into his word processor, and it's very distracting and wastes a lot of time.

I wish I got a coupon for $50 off the 2nd edition when it comes out, because that book will really be nice. As it is, I feel I have to struggle a little with this edition.