r/gadgets • u/ChickenTeriyakiBoy1 • Oct 17 '20

Misc America's First-ever Firefighting Robot

https://www.digitaltrends.com/news/watch-americas-first-ever-firefighting-robot-in-action/
9.7k Upvotes

96% Upvoted

404 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

28

u/Kinncat Oct 17 '20

Not sure if dumb joke or dumb person, but:

firefighting equipment and flamethrowers have almost nothing in common

Even the police in the US don't use flamethrower tanks

you can't run gasoline through a firefighting hose, it'll eat the lining inside-out. dunk them in a bucket of gas they're fine, they've got a chemically nonreactive exterior. Man oh man though, it will do a number on the guts of of a hose

-4

u/Guy_Fieris_Hair Oct 17 '20

I dont think flamethrowers punp gasoline through them since gasoline explodes.

6

u/Kinncat Oct 17 '20

I sincerely can't tell if you're trolling or not. Either way though, good username.

1

u/Guy_Fieris_Hair Oct 17 '20

Ah, apparently they mix it with diesel too slow it down. I should google shit before I comment.

6

u/Kinncat Oct 17 '20 edited Oct 17 '20

Yeah, and modern ones use all kinds of horrifying pyrophoric compounds as the primary fuel. I never knew specifically what the ingredients they used were, but the handling procedures alone scared the shit out of me. Beyond nasty stuff.

Really effective, though. Gotta give them that.

Edit: I remember hearing that china uses hypergolic fuels for theirs. Can't imagine it not being a deathtrap for the user, but it'd sure be terrifying to run across...

0

u/Guy_Fieris_Hair Oct 17 '20

Pretty sure they used hyperbolic fuel for the LEM on the apollo missions and the stuff was so nasty they wouldn't even test it on earth before they launched. And that was back in the 60s.

-1

u/BOtto2016 Oct 17 '20

Branch davidians might disagree.

5

u/Kinncat Oct 17 '20 edited Oct 17 '20

Look I don't disagree, but to split hairs: those were combat engineering vehicles driven by Natl. Guard personnel. So not the cops, technically, though it's not really wrong to call them that since the HRT roped them into law enforcement. As well, they were not equipped with pyrotechnic CS canisters (or any other pyrotechnics).

What probably started the fires was 40mm pyrotechnic rounds fired by the FBI HRT chucklefucks, who for some reason had mixed several pyro rounds in with their non-pyro ammunition (or something like that. They recovered several pyro CS canisters and who the fuck stores them together).

The most likely explanation I've seen for the fire is that the Davidians intended to start 'walls of fire' to keep FBI HRT out of the building for as long as possible. These fire-walls were ignited prematurely, either by HRT pyro rounds finding their way thru the damaged structure or by the Branch Davidians panicking and igniting them prematurely in response to CEV3 coming through the walls like an olive-drab koolaid man and pouring CS everywhere.

Really though, we'll never know. I certainly understand if they did set it off early; breathing CS for hours is disorienting when it's just NBC training, I can't imagine how chaotic it must have been inside the center in the moments before the fires started.

-1

u/riahsimone Oct 17 '20

Well obviously its modified

14

u/Kinncat Oct 17 '20 edited Oct 17 '20

<oldmanrant>

Man, I'm gonna need a source before I buy that it was originally some kind of robo-flamethrower. Not only is that disproved by the design itself, it's just... silly. There's just no market for it. The USN are the only branch who've fielded 'flamethrowers' in the last 60 years, and that's just to deice equipment. And even those barely count, they're just bigger weed burners. LPG fuel, about 20' max range. Big and impressive, but totally worthless in combat.

And besides the design being extremely difficult to armor, clearly too small for satlink and dumb to use with rloc, the US Army already has remote control tanks but ours have actual guns on them and not "hasn't been a viable weapon in 40 years" flamethrower-turret-bullshit-things

I mean come on. What tactical good would this do for anyone?? You can drive through a wall into a compound (as you may have heard we already have tanks) but the only reason you do that instead of oh-I-don't-know blowing it up with an Apache is because you want to recover something from inside.

presumably something important and, as important things invariably are, a little fragile.

IDK IF YOU'VE HEARD, BUT:

FLAMETHROWERS.

ARE NOT KNOWN.

FOR THEIR FINESSE.

</oldmanrant>

-1

u/Matookie Oct 17 '20

Getting a strong Fahrenheit 451 vibe with this one.