Damn Nerf wars gonna be crazy.
this post was submitted on 18 Mar 2026
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If I'm understanding this correctly, this is more valuable to underfunded military forces but not for the 3d printed ghost gun types. This doesn't include propellent or explosives, which are the controlled parts. That's awesome though.
Damn and the Dept of Fucked Up Wars pays $1 to 1.3 million for a Tomahawk cruise missile. I am fully aware MANPADS are much smaller.
The article below the DIY MANPADs was interesting too. MIT researchers used a 3D printer to build an electric motor!
They beat me to it! Fuck...
What a time to be alive... For now
This wont scare the think of the children crowd at all.
I don't know, rockets are pretty phallic.
They are not afraid of the phallus . They fear the vginy.
Can't wait for the next Luigi to use one of these on an Epstein CEO. Polymarket, please let me make that bet.
Notably absent... the explosives.
But sure, if you are wondering how folks out in Yemen or Gaza managed to retaliate against their oppressors for so long, this is a textbook example of how and why. What's being proposed is collection of technology we've had since at least the 1960s that's slowly made its way into civilian circulation.
Also...
Khojayev's just-launched prototype has no effectiveness track record
I mean, we're seeing what "just-launched prototypes with no effective track record" have accomplished on the Ukraine-Russia front-lines and it's a decidedly mixed bag.
I think a harder question to answer is "Who would be interested in putting one of these into practical use?" And that gets to the real value-add of a Stinger MANPAD. Namely, the humans willing and practiced enough to use it.
Also - and again, this cannot be overstated - the model above has no explosives installed. Idk how confident I'd be around one of these things if it was actually armed.
Notably absent… the explosives.
Not my area of expertise, so please tell me if the idea is complete garbage. With that being said: Theoretically, could the LiPo Battery that's already in there anyway be turned into an explosive payload by intentionally overheating and puncturing it on impact?
I synthesize energetics. I can make a primary explosive that is stable enough for cap usage with a solo cup. I can synthesize secondaries like RDX above (one of the more complicated common ones) in short order with a basic chemistry set and the internet to order basic reagents. None are controlled substances.
It is trivially easy to make effective shapes charges and energetics at home.
Synthesis is federally legal in the US so long as you do not assemble into a device or transport. You can do both with an SOT as an FFL.
If I wanted to, I could make a shaped charge that was point imitated and base detonated for the above projectile and it would punch through about 1.5 feet of homogeneously rolled steel.
The limit to threat is not the access to explosives, as the chemistry and processes are published freely online as easy to replicate. The drone parts and control surface actuation is by far harder and I say this as someone who has a professional background in computer science and software engineering.
It is trivially easy to make effective shapes charges and energetics at home.
Safely?
If I wanted to, I could
You've got enough information to try to execute the above formula. Okay. And you've still got all your fingers after attempting this... more than zero times?
The drone parts and control surface actuation is by far harder and I say this as someone who has a professional background in computer science and software engineering.
Absolutely. We invented gunpowder centuries before we invented airplanes.
That said... as an anecdote, I had a friend who had a janitorial position. Cleaning a particularly stubborn toilet and dumped a bunch of bleach into the bowl. His coworker came in behind him and proceeded to piss in said boil, creating a toxic miasma that forced them to exit the restroom quickly and heavily ventilate it before returning.
"I could cook up some blasting caps with the trash from a frat party" is a theoretically believable claim.
"Every time I clean up a frat party, I add a dozen shaped charges to my inventory" is not.
Safely? Yes.
Keep the reaction stirring under ice and if you see the temp rise above 15 C you dump the whole thing in a water bucket or you get a runaway exothermic reaction that is never good with a high explosive forming crystals in the solution.
If you are stupid, don’t ventilate, or are stupid stupid it will light your shed on fire and potentially kill you.
That’s why you work at lab scale, and why you always keep your reactions under the temp limits with acids added slowly.
Basic chemistry safety covers all the bases here.
My preferred blasting caps are nickel guanidine based. I can play with the crystal morphology to produce small more friction inert powder and it is an extremely simple synthesis.
You can use reloading press combined with highly suggested lexan sheet as a blast shield and wooden block to gently press the powder into caps. China sells packs of 1000 electrical ignition assemblies for $40 that you can then set off with a COTS or a clacker.
I cannot emphasize enough that working at small scale and knowing what you are doing are important, but in faster time than it takes to print the parts for that drone you can absolutely complete the reaction, do some recrystalizstion, dry your product,and be ready to mix with plasticizer.
I had a friend who had a janitorial position. Cleaning a particularly stubborn toilet and dumped a bunch of bleach into the bowl. His coworker came in behind him and proceeded to piss in said boil, creating a toxic miasma that forced them to exit the restroom quickly and heavily ventilate it before returning.
Lol, I've done that before in my apartment. Guessing it's the same thing as an ammonia-bleach reaction.
urea-bleach but close enough.
The drone parts and control surface actuation is by far harder and I say this as someone who has a professional background in computer science and software engineering.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RrzxSOtj33s
The model rocket community has this one sorted.
Oh the ones from BPS space are even more impressive with adjust on the fly tracking to 3D points and launched from a VLS he made himself.
I have this idea: Scientists some time ago, discovered they could knot light into loops.
Would it be possible to make a curved laser for laser artillery?
Certainly possible. But you're still stuck on the r^2^ problem of diminishing returns at a distance. Light doesn't like staying in a tight beam. The vortex loop is typically not much bigger than the wavelength. I don't see much of a solution for transmitting energy long distances through air.
You can deploy a lot of $96 semi-effective hardware and improve it vs something that might be thousands or even tens or hundreds of thousands to deploy.
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I’d build and use one of these if I could get the explosives to go with it and the address of a CEO.
The United States has a variant of the AGM-114 Hellfire missile that replaces the explosive warhead with six scimitar blades. Because fuck That Guy, the whole That Guy and nothing but the That Guy.
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You don't need explosives. It has a spot in the front for a camera. One of the new microcontrollers with AI accelerators can do face recognition extremely quickly. It would be possible to use it as an assassination tool.
Even if you changed nothing about the design, the speed and mass of the thing hitting a person in the face could kill.
As the bps space YouTube channel has shown, reliability is paramount in any launch, especially a guided launch.
That and people duck when shit flies at them, unless it's supersonic, which again, as bps space has shown, control of a supersonic flight is extremely difficult to get right.
This is a guy who landed a hobby rocket like a tesla booster.
But at $100 a pop, you could have backups. (or payloads)
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Great... can't wait for politicians to use this as a way to pass "common sense" legislation banning 3D printers.
They already are over 3d guns, this will send them ballistic. They want every printer to keep a record of everything they've printed. Model legislation, I think CA tried and so far failed to pass it.
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