What handgun innovations are left?

Handgun or rifle rounds that:

1. Will home in on a laser illuminator.

The illuminator might be on the gun or a heads up - like on a pair of glasses, similar to modern missile sights on helmets (came from the Russians).

2. Following by rounds with AI such that if locked on a target, will seek that target even if not illuminated.


Might need a fat round - like a 50 Cal. in a Glock 21 ish frame.
 
To ClayInTx, longer barrel lengths are a good idea, though hardly a new development. In fact, it would be going against the general trend for handguns, not just automatics, to have shorter and shorter barrels.

Sometimes handguns have been designed to meet a set of specifications that appear to be arbritary as much as anything else. I'm thinking here of the German police pistol specifications issued around 30 years ago. Among other things, they had to fit in a certain size box. That is, the pistol had to be no larger than a certain size. I suppose that's all well and good but that isn't the way to advance handgun design. Yet, in a way, it did. One of the results was the H&K P7, which was a novel design that has never been copied that I know of. Even H&K don't make anything like it today. One generation's innovative design is the next generation's overly complicated and expensive product.
 
There have been revolvers with a shield to prevent splattering outside the gun but no true shroud to retain the pressure.
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Well the Nagant revolver had the cartridges that completely enclosed the bullet and the cylinder would move forward before firing to totally seal the cylinder gap. They are one of the very few revolvers out there that can be effectively suppressed. If not the only one.
 
I suspect we will see more of the modular designs. A gun that can be converted from a full size to a sub-compact and easily handle multiple calibers. I realize this already exists to some extent, but I think we will see more refined designs in the near future.
 
i think case-less ammo will make a resurrection. less recoil, faster cycling, less expensive to manufacture, quieter, generally more efficent.

i think that an electric charge will ignite the ammo, not the striker/firing pin-primer combination, we know today. you will have a button instead of a trigger.


projectiles will change. with the caseless form, the bullet can be longer, lighter, and faster. the powder would even partially surround the bullet. this may allow plastic bullets, ceramic, aluminum alloy bullets, or even combinations thereof. the longer bullet will allow inflight stabilization, even though the bullet will be considerably lighter. frangible/sintered bullets could be the norm.
 
<snip> - I removed a correct comment here about an earlier political comment that was inappropriate.

GEM

I think some future developments will include trying to cram a longer barrel into a shorter frame. Like with bullpups. Perhaps utilize something similar to the Korobov assault rifle design. But shrunk down to pistol size. When you look at it, most pistols barrels only comprise about half the gun's actual length. That's a pretty inefficient use of space. The Korobov rifle on the other hand has a better barrel-length to overall-length ratio than even bullpup rifles.

Also cheaper ammunition. Maybe utilizing plastic instead of brass for casings. That has been done before however the plastic cases could only handle low pressure .38 Specials. But with current and future advancements in plastics, who knows.
 
Guns that fire bullets with an electronic charge rather than powder. I know it is being used/tested by the Navy, but having that technology in a handgun could be revolutionary.
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While it would be awesome, at the present time I think it's unpractical. It takes an insane amount of energy to shoot those (watch the navy video of the navy rail gun, it shows the wires used to give it power, there's hundreds of huge gauged wires)

I do think though that combining electricity with handguns could lead to some great innovations, but as someone else said, if i do have any innovated ideas I'm going to patent them not put them on a forumn.
 
Someone get a pen so you can mark my words...

The next revolution we will see in handgun design will revolve around an invention or adaptation of ammunition technology. A deadlier, more efficient, cheaper, faster cycling ammunition innovation will spur firearms designers to create a platform that compliments the new ammunition technology (i.e. Metalstorm). Or ammunition dimensions will decrease as a result of new designs augmenting ballistic effectiveness in a specifically intended aim, like performance in living tissue/anti-armor/fragmentation/hi-explosive (i.e. FN 5.7x28mm, or AA Frag-12 rounds) and platforms will adapt to follow suit yielding higher capacities of more effective rounds.

MARK.

~LT
 
There is a whole market segment out there composed of people who purchase firearms components mainly because they enjoy "designing" and putting together weapons. The ARs / M4s are the best example, but the Glocks are heading that way - you can buy alternate slides, frames, barrels, trigger kits, etc...

When given the choice of buying a fine firearm or being able to create one, a lot of buyers opt to purchase components - mainly the fun for them is the construction project.

Also - the more customizable a weapon is in the future - probably the more appeal it will have.

I don't really consider those handgun innovations - interchangeable components and picatinny rails, but I do think we'll see more of it.

I agree that we will see multi-caliber "platforms"

It does take technolgical innovation to make some kind of lower that can be fitted with uppers that fire everything from .22LR, 5.56, 7.63, to 9mm, 10mm, .45, and even 12ga shot shells. But we are probably heading that way.

Instead of deciding if you are going to take a pistol or a rifle with you on any particular outing - you are just deciding what barrel & upper parts you are going to put on your lower, and if you are going to put a stock on or not.
 
So much of the ‘innovations” in the firearms industry over the last 25 years IMO are nothing more than accessories, I.e. fiber optic sights, laser grips, rails on handguns. Not that these are not nice but in all honesty are any of them really necessary? If there to be any radical changes in the firearms industry in the next 50 years, I believe it will be in the ammunition available. What this will be I have no idea, but it will be fun to see what happens.
 
Necessary? Of course not. No more necessary than bluing. But some accessories do increase the efficiency of the handgun (here limiting comments to handguns), particularly the sights.

There is frequent mention of a revolution in cartridges. While caseless ammunition has some appeal, it does not really offer much when you still have to allow for breech sealing, which a metal case does. Likewise, the savings in weight isn't all it could be, given that the projectile is the largest part of the weight.

The projectile weight, also frequently mentioned, is something of a controversy already, with the high speed light bullet on the one hand and the heavier slower one on the other. The heavy bullet crowd is naturally represented best by .45 auto but the high speed element is more like the .30 Tokarev/.30 Mauser, not the 9mm Luger. But all cartridges have such a variety of loadings anymore that's it's difficult to be dogmatic about such things.

Now a modular firearm might be interesting, whether or not it is of any practical value. In a way, it has also been around a long time in the form of detachable shoulder stocks. Unfortunately, legal aspects sometimes get in the way of a perfectly sensible thing to do.
 
If we knew what innovations were "left," then by definition they wouldn't be "left"--they would already have been invented. We can't know the answer to some things except in hindsight. ;)
 
Somewhere I read that Remington has electrically fired ammo for a rifle. I see that catching on with either a battery or piezo electric trigger.

Sort of caseless ammo would be a good step, but a build up of ash in the bore would be a problem in a auto loader.

Some sort of auto "reloader" where the bullets are stored in a stack and the propellent is in liquid form.

A reactive recoil reducer either by bleeding gas into a cylinder / piston or a seperate charge for the anti recoil.

Pop up sights sound good.

How about a revolver with a inner and outer ring of holes in the cylinder for more capacity? ( This may have been done, I remember some talk of a gun that had at least two callibers. )
 
I envision a revolver where the cylinder is controlled by a servo. Gets rid of all those small mechanical parts that wear out so fast. Imagine a S&W revolver with a double action pull of 3 lbs.
 
All of that junk would still require batteries which would fail ala Murphy. What we need is a personal weapon that that shoots an electrical or magnetic pulse, but recharges itself on the fly from the Earths ambient Magnetic field. No more Batteries.
 
The next huge innovation won't be in guns, it'll be a replacement for the traditional cartridge firing gun. What that will come, I neither know nor care.
 
I'm looking forward to the true house gun. Some day some one will create a personal house launcher. It will require some sort of anti-gravity device, an inertial compensator, and dimensional phasing to allow you to carry the device which when fired; will launch a 100 metric ton house at 1000 meters per second. Oh yea, with an unlimited supply of houses in that extra dimensional space.
 
How can guns be made cheaper? I think that's where we will see engineering efforts applied. Look at polymer frames, hammer forged barrels, cast/MIM parts, etc.

There's still room for metallurgical improvements. One possibility is nitrogen steels. They have truly extraordinary corrosion resistance.

I don't know if I see a real future for caseless cartridges. Most of the advantages of caseless ammo don't mean as much to a civilian. The only that would really matter is cheaper ammo, but that would be offset by the massively expensive clockwork nightmare of a firearm required to fire it. For caseless firearms to catch on, there needs to be a cheap and easy way to seal the breech. And unfortunately, a brass casing is extremely cheap and extremely easy.

One of the results was the H&K P7, which was a novel design that has never been copied that I know of. Even H&K don't make anything like it today.
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The downfall of that particular design is that it requires extraordinary tolerances. The Germans initially experimented with the design in a last ditch gun at the end of WWII.

The Micro Desert Eagle uses a similar concept. It has holes drilled in the barrel to direct jets of gas against the outside of the slide to retard its movement.

Somewhere I read that Remington has electrically fired ammo for a rifle.
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The Remington Etronix. It had electronically ignited primers.

I have doubts about the future of electronic action or trigger parts. Unless you are talking about a manually cycled firearm, I would imagine that it would be too easy to solder in a full auto circuit.
 
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