<p>What discipline of engineering should I do if I am interested in designing weapons?</p>
<p>Weapons design is done within multi-billion dollar programs that use a whole variety of engineers/technical personnel.</p>
<p>Aerospace Eng., Computer Eng., Computer Science, Electrical Eng., Materials Eng., Mechanical Eng., Chemistry, etc.</p>
<p>Don’t forget about nuclear engineering.</p>
<p>Ditto submarine design???</p>
<p>steven’s has a new super tow tank, but virtually no NAV/NAME students.</p>
<p>MIT NAME (course 13) is nearly dead.</p>
<p>I think mechanical engineering is best of weapons design. </p>
<p>btw, which universities offer courses in weapons design? by design I mean the physics, history, chemistry, psychology, and prototyping of weapons.</p>
<p>I’m in mechanical engineering and I’m interested in weapons design too. Too bad my university doesn’t offer any courses in it though. Sad… :(</p>
<p>I have a question. Weapons design seems like a really interesting job. But, do weapons designers ever feel any moral wrongdoing for their actions. I know that not all “weapons” are used to kill, but do moral conflicts ever happen in the industry?</p>
<p>Sure they do/will. Look at Einstein and the “weapon” he “designed”. </p>
<p>Engineers at my school are required to take a class called Engineering Ethics their last semester senior year that discusses these things. I’m sure other schools have similar courses.</p>
<p>Its a good thing he died before the cold war. That way he didnt have to live with the guilt of possibley having a nuclear winter.</p>
<p>AHHHHH!!!
I can’t believe the things that you aspire to be! Don’t you think we have enough weapons?</p>
<p>(Plus, your weapons will be inferior to mine if I’m ever forced to cross that boundary 
)</p>
<p>Also, Einstein didn’t build the bomb or even really have much to do with its design. His insights in mass-energy binding equivalence and such proved useful but I wouldn’t call him the lead man on the bomb! His contribution was solid and conscious (read Einstein’s Ideas and Opinions) … a tactical move to keep nuclear power out of the hands of the Nazis.</p>
<p>The misinformation on this forum is disgusting.</p>
<p>Addition: You’d have to be an idiot to not realize that aerospace/aeronautics would be the most “helpful”. Also, a study in shaped charges (mining engineering) after one understand compressible flow (and high temperature physics) would be necessary for understanding internal ballistics.</p>
<p>All I am saying that he had a part in it thus he would feel guilty.</p>
<p>Dont get me wrong though, I think weapons are cool. I just made the comment that he would have a tough time hearing that two countries were using a bomb that he helped make.</p>
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<p>Well… Everyone I knew who worked on avionics for defense contractors was in computers - hardware or software. It’s interesting work.</p>
<p>I did once meet an ME who was redesigning the warhead on a bomb.</p>
<p>I think you can rationalize the ethics aspect as far as you want. Even the doughnut maker feeds warriors. Should he/she feel guilty?</p>
<p>Along the way see if you can take at least a semester at Missouri Univerity of Science and Technology. Due to their mining background they have a leading department on explosion physics and munitions.</p>
<p>Who designs hand-guns and rifles?</p>
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<p>Uh, Einstein died in 1955, when the Cold War was already well underway. The Korean War of 1950-1953 could have easily escalated into a nuclear exchange, especially if the US had followed General Douglas MacArthur’s proposal to directly attack China, and the War ultimately ended with an inconclusive ceasefire and with South Korea’s very existence implicitly guaranteed by the aegis of the US nuclear umbrella. </p>
<p>Einstein was himself an active figure in the political discourse of the cold war. He once remarked that:“I do not know how the third World War will be fought, but I can tell you what they will use in the Fourth—rocks!”. Einstein served as a character witness for W.E.B. Dubois when he was publicly accused by the government of being a Communist spy. Einstein was himself targeted by the FBI for surreptitious investigation for alleged Communist sympathies. He also coauthored the Russell-Einstein Manifesto, a document signed by 10 Nobel Laureates that warned of the dangers that nuclear weapons posed to the entire world and urged peaceful diplomatic measures to defuse tensions. </p>
<p>[Russell-Einstein</a> Manifesto](<a href=“http://www.pugwash.org/about/manifesto.htm]Russell-Einstein”>http://www.pugwash.org/about/manifesto.htm)</p>
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<p>One rationale that has been proposed before is that superior weapons technology actually serve to reduce conflict and therefore saves lives by discouraging adversaries from even trying to challenge you. For example, few nations would ever dare try to directly challenge the US with conventional means due to the vast technological and resource advantage that the US military enjoys. </p>
<p>Granted, other nations would instead prefer asymmetric tactics to reduce the US advantage, but these tactics inflict far fewer casualties than do conventional tactics. For example, while over 4000 US soldiers have tragically died in 6 years of fighting in Iraq, compare that to the over 12000 Americans who died in just 82 days during the Battle of Okinawa. </p>
<p>Many have also asserted that the invention of nuclear weapons has also reduced casualties by making total war unthinkable due to the principle of mutually assured destruction. It has been argued that the US and the USSR would have fought a conventional WW3 directly between each other, as opposed to the myriad proxy wars characteristic of the Cold War, had it not been for the advent of nuclear weapons. </p>
<p>But, speaking directly to your point, Clara Immerwahr, the wife of the so-called ‘Father of Chemical Warfare’ and German Nobel Laureate Fritz Haber, committed suicide upon viewing the effects of her husband’s poison gas technology in the Second Battle of Ypres in WW1. Ironically and sadly, Fritz Haber, who was a Jew, was later forced to flee Germany to escape the newly elected Nazi regime - a regime that later innovated upon Haber’s work to gas millions of his Jewish compatriots. {Although, interestingly, Nazi Germany never utilized chemical weapons in battle, probably because it feared Allied reprisals.}</p>
<p>U Mich, Ann Arbor has one of the last Naval Engineering programs for someone interested in Submarine design.</p>
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Seems like these days weapons systems have diverged significantly from these areas and the highest level of development is more in CS/EE/CPE in automating systems.</p>
<p>this is really interesting to read</p>
<p>This thread makes me think of Iron Man.</p>