Speaking as one who - once upon a time - used to do ballistics calculations for a living (Dept. of Defense).
His work, while very commendable, will not be useful for general ballistics. He is working with particle dynamics. He does not account for bullet shape (drag coefficient), temperature, mass of the particle (the bullet), etc.
You say that as if any of the current methods DO account for all of the above. Or at least, as if they do it well. They don't.
They break it all down and treat all those entities as constants over brief periods of time..... Which you could also do for the kid's approach.
The difference is that to get reasonably accurate answers using the old approach, you have to use pretty small time steps.
If the kid's equation holds up to scrutiny, what you'd be able to do is combine his approach to the old school approach and use larger time steps to get more accurate results. That means reduced computational requirements.
That means more robust/cheaper electronics.
That means more accuate bombs (don't forget folks, that the bad guys use GPS jammers).
That means smaller/cheaper scopes that auto-correct the aim point.
It means all sorts of applications for the defense industry.
It's a great detriment to our countries future !
