Jump to content

Recommended Posts

Let me first start out by saying yes, I know these weapons couldn't do any real damage (except maybe for the Gauss gun AKA coil gun). However, the fact that they exist means they could get smaller and more powerful and actually be effective small arms sooner than I thought. Today we are already blowing stuff up/destroying shit and their bigger versions (Navy rail gun and the Boeing YAL-1 laser).

 

 

Gauss Rifle (coil gun):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nVgbtqsmx54

 

 

Folding laser gun:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=KIuYY6YckVg

 

 

I dunno if these are reposts, but the coil gun is what impressed me the most. I suspect a small arm powered by electromagnets will be at least an effective prototype in the next 20 years... at least something mounted to a vehicle like the size of an M2 .50.

Link to post
Share on other sites

We'll see these types of technology adapted for vehicle weapons before we see them for infantry. For example Phase 3 of the Navy's railgun program was to build one comparable to a 120mm and attempt to get the Army interested enough to invest in developing something comparable to the Abrams cannon.

 

I think the "near-future" concepts for pushing conventional small arms are just as interesting. Here are some examples of that:

-Reduced weight ammunition: polymer cased and caseless, see LSAT. This programs initial efforts proved a reliable polymer (delrin) cartridge could reduce weight by 40% as well as reducing the cost to manufacture. While done under the auspice of reducing the burden on soldiers, its more likely to result in a Sergeant telling his men to carry 40% more ammunition, thus allowing them to stay in the fight that much longer.

 

-Reliable "hyperburst" fire capabilities; burst fire where two rounds are automatically fired so quickly one after the other they will hit the same point. The Russians have this in an unreliable form, and the US Army has been dangling money out there for someone to try to develope it domestically. The technology if more reliably developed would allow a soldier to defeat body armor without the need for specialized ammo, since most body armor isn't rated for repeated strikes on that tight a grouping.

 

-Smarter ammunitions: self correcting bullets for long (and extremely long) range shooting (see Sandia Labs) and programable warheads (like XM-25 but smaller). The notion is a simple one, take the technologies that have developed to improve tank and artillery accuracy and lethality and fit them to the smaller physical envelope.

  • Like 1
Link to post
Share on other sites

If energy weapon every make it out of the lab you won't see any man portable versions any time soon, just don't see the power supply being small enough. Firearms will continue to evolve and will remain the go to weapon for some time unless a huge advancement is made in power storage is made.

Link to post
Share on other sites

We'll see these types of technology adapted for vehicle weapons before we see them for infantry. For example Phase 3 of the Navy's railgun program was to build one comparable to a 120mm and attempt to get the Army interested enough to invest in developing something comparable to the Abrams cannon.

 

I think the "near-future" concepts for pushing conventional small arms are just as interesting. Here are some examples of that:

-Reduced weight ammunition: polymer cased and caseless, see LSAT. This programs initial efforts proved a reliable polymer (delrin) cartridge could reduce weight by 40% as well as reducing the cost to manufacture. While done under the auspice of reducing the burden on soldiers, its more likely to result in a Sergeant telling his men to carry 40% more ammunition, thus allowing them to stay in the fight that much longer.

 

-Reliable "hyperburst" fire capabilities; burst fire where two rounds are automatically fired so quickly one after the other they will hit the same point. The Russians have this in an unreliable form, and the US Army has been dangling money out there for someone to try to develope it domestically. The technology if more reliably developed would allow a soldier to defeat body armor without the need for specialized ammo, since most body armor isn't rated for repeated strikes on that tight a grouping.

 

-Smarter ammunitions: self correcting bullets for long (and extremely long) range shooting (see Sandia Labs) and programable warheads (like XM-25 but smaller). The notion is a simple one, take the technologies that have developed to improve tank and artillery accuracy and lethality and fit them to the smaller physical envelope.

 

Like the H&K G11? As I was web surfing future small arms that gun came up. It kinda combines two of your points: since the gun has no case to eject, it can shoot rounds at a faster rate of fire and that was the premise of the G11, quick burst fire to place many small 4.73x33 rounds on target. I can definitely see caseless ammo being before mini railguns that we could carry.

Link to post
Share on other sites

Yes caseless ammo can be put to good use, let me know when you get this miniaturized.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d8hlj4EbdsE

 

The 30,000 and 60,000 rounds per minute sounds like me after a dozen buffalo wings and a few beers.haha.gif

 

Edit to add my wife would probably appreciate the warning siren as well.

Edited by DaveM
  • Like 3
Link to post
Share on other sites

Like the H&K G11? As I was web surfing future small arms that gun came up. It kinda combines two of your points: since the gun has no case to eject, it can shoot rounds at a faster rate of fire and that was the premise of the G11, quick burst fire to place many small 4.73x33 rounds on target. I can definitely see caseless ammo being before mini railguns that we could carry.

Well the LSAT technology request was based on the same "request from industry" (RFI) that resulted in the German interest in G11. The LSAT was basically a much slower and less well funded initiative that was on again off again for the last 20 years and only more recently, in the last 5 years saw a resurgence in funding with the merging of the Marine and Army efforts. The second and third phase of this program was to push for caseless ammunition and weapon systems to fire them, but the Army thought 40% system weight reduction was good enough and that the funding requirements necessary to achieve the 50% weight reduction the Marines wanted with the caseless system didn't justify the cost.

 

I do agree though that there is quite a bit of overlap between the ammunition requirement and the "hyperburst fire" capability and one will only reliably come after the other. Russians design however functions without special ammunition, so I think its still reasonably possible to develope the capability separate of caseless ammunition. I imagine a system that removes extraction from the sequence required to fire two bullets in a row, like what WWII aircraft mounted autocannons did, by utilizing a revolver like chamber; such a system would allow a casing to be gradually extracted and another gradually loaded giving you 5 times (assuming 6 chamber) that of the momemt of firing to extract and speeding up the rate of fire comparably to that of a caseless system.

Link to post
Share on other sites

Caseless ammo has a fatal flaw. Unlike cased ammo, it is easily combustable, making it totally useless for combat. Electro-mechanical weapons are coming on our new Carriers-they have the capacity to produce the gigawats necessary to make them work,there will be no more steam catapults or mechanical arresting gear, we are switching to all electric controll. BUT the new carriers are going to have available a rediculous amount of electric power above and beyond anything needed to launch or recover aircraft.

Link to post
Share on other sites

One development is electronic primers. They are common in aircraft cannons. Remmingron sold a bolt rifle that used electroninc primers to the benchrest crowd for a little while. You can have microscopic lock time, and the smoothest trigger possible. I believe the reason they didn't put it in a semi auto rifle was the whole "readily convertible thing" - something like the predator morelock board would make customizable burst modes very easy.

 

The hyperbust thing is interesting to me because of muzzle flip. If the burst could be fast enough you might be able to stay on target at intermediate ranges.

The other thing about this issue is tuning the gun and shooter to control the walk up together. With an electronically controlled action, you could tune millisecond delays in between each shot and use of an overcompensating brake like the one developed for the M14 so that each user could keep hi. gun on target while firing full auto.

Link to post
Share on other sites

Caseless ammo has a fatal flaw. Unlike cased ammo, it is easily combustable, making it totally useless for combat.

Even with 1980's technology the G11 solved the issue of rounds being combustable at low temperature. In the case of the G11, they propellent was a mixture they settled on at the end of developement was RDX and nitrocellulose. RDX will burn like a candle when introduced to an open flame of 260C or more it requires an actual detonator to cause initiation, unlike smokeless powder which auto-ignite at 160-170C. While it's "exposed" its no more so than any other high explosive soldiers maybe required to carry. RDX has a number of inherent plastic stabilizers that protects and stabalizes it and has made it ideal for military applications since WWII. To put this into perspective the newest effort by the Army and Marines has tossed the nitrocellulose completely and now have a design almost exclusively of hexogen (aka RDX), because it made it safer to leave out the gunpowder. The Germans actually utilize a 30mm autocannon that fires a caseless round, so I can't believe it'd be "useless". I can't help but feel you've taken the issues of H&K's very first attempt and used it to characterize all caseless technology.

 

 

One development is electronic primers. They are common in aircraft cannons. Remmington sold a bolt rifle that used electronic primers to the benchrest crowd for a little while. You can have microscopic lock time, and the smoothest trigger possible. I believe the reason they didn't put it in a semi auto rifle was the whole "readily convertible thing" - something like the predator morelock board would make customizable burst modes very easy.

One of the biggest concerns of electronically primed ammunition is that you can have an ambient electrical build up in the firing mechanism that much, like high heat, can cook-off a round. Systems that utilize electronic primers in a sustained rate of fire thus tend to have robust grounding to dissipate that excess energy.

Link to post
Share on other sites

As a physicist who works with lasers and knows people who are designing newer battery materials, in the short term I'd put my money (or lack thereof since I'm a grad student) on polymer cased ammunition or caseless/telescoped ammunition. Weight reduction is the new game.

 

The ideal battery materials are not thermodynamically stable when they're put together, one guy is having huge issues getting adjacent layers of the lattice to deposit without them conducting through each other. Based on that I can't see soldiers carrying battery packs anytime soon. However, deck guns turrets seem much more feasible in the next 20 years.

 

I would love to know how many rounds the guy gets per charge and charge time. He does state the batteries store 500 J (~375 ft-lbs) and his projectile (using the dimensions he gave and the density of steel ~3.08 grams = ~47.5 grains) travels at 100 m/s (328 ft/s) and only has a muzzle energy of 11 ft-lbs (15 J). He also says that it takes 10 sec between shots. I applaud the man on his design and ingenuity, he is a far better inventor than most people, myself included. I hope he succeeds, I'd invest money in it.

 

I wouldn't bet on the laser gun just yet for the above reasons. Contrary to popular belief, laser guns will recoil, albeit not very much (negligible, p = h/lambda).

Edited by delNbones
Link to post
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

Loading...
  • Chatbox

    Load More
    You don't have permission to chat.
×
×
  • Create New...