What will be the next breakthrough in small arms technology?

J

Jeff White

New member
In the thread on the M16A7 I suggested that we may have reached the limit of what we can do with our current technology. What will the next breakthrough be? Reliable, economically produced caseless ammo? New lighter materials? Miniaturized recoil systems (like on a howitzer) that would allow larger more powerful cartidges to be used?

Jeff
 
For a military weapon, things are not very easily improved.

The OICW is nifty and all, but the 25mm ammo is heavy and bulky enough that it can't really replace a rifle. It violates in part the premises that led to the assault rifle: engagment ranges are short, sustained suppressive fire is important tactically, and that to achieve that you need lots of ammo.

The objective is to increase hit probability, and to be integrated with the fire-and-movement tactics used by the military. Low volume but high accuracy weapons run into problems with suppression.

The most likely changes are caseless ammo, and improved sight systems, such as red dot scopes. Say, something like the G-36 in German army trim only with caseless ammo.
 
I think rifles with no moving parts will become more common where instead of pulling a trigger you would press a button and a different method of detonating ammunition will probably come soon enough.
 
caseless may gain some increased usage. Personally I think it won't make a huge difference for a while though. It won't be until we start working with energy and charged particle weapons that things will get interesting, especially regarding the RKBA
 
I'd say portable EMP (ElectroMagneticPuolse) stuff. You're talking military stuff, right?

On the commercial side, more development of the electrically ignited cartridge like the new Remington. I don't like the idea, but I think that someone will develop it more.
 
In the future of guns, I see something more like a G-11. Caseless, with a high capacity. Of course developments in other areas might alter the course of the gun. For example, personal body armour could focus the rounds to be more armour peircing.
 
1)Smooth bores and fin-stabilized slugs.

2)Liquid propellant fired into the reaction chamber like a
Porsche fuel injection system.

3)Higher rates of fire.

4)Motor-driven feed systems. Like very small chain guns.

5)Less and less metal being used.

6)Disposable barrels and breach groups.
 
I personally think that OICW is a joke, bulky weapon, every soldier w/ a computer linked to the command, batteries, parts that break? I can see TMI losing perfectly winnable battles thru info paralysis. If anyone wants this technology they will not spend millions to develop it like we have, they will obtain it with an AK-47 bearing horde. My take on the new tech? Well, don't want to rain on your parade, but everyone knows about Onstar and similar car systems out there right? You know, unlock your car for you by satellite, diagnose the malfunction from afar and send the repairman to your GPS coordinates to unstrand unlucky you sitting on the side of the road. Now, miniaturize and cheapen like every electro device eventually does and what do you have?

Call when you get to the range to activate your weapon for a 30 min period? GPS coords and gun ID info when shots fired? Possible gunsite video uplinked directly to your minders so they can see shots fired. Holsters that won't release gun until a central authority grants permission? How many other sick ways can tech be applied to render firearms usless? I feel that had George Orwell known the technology we have today he wouldn't have bothered to write us a warning, he would have just got a gun while it was still legal and ended it all for himself.
 
The next "Discovery" Will be the re-discovery of the 12 Gauge pump shotgun!

Simple

Reliable

Powerful

And no one ever gets up if you shoot them with it!
 
I saw something a little while back about an experimental gun technology that stacked several layers of bullets and explosives into a single barrel so that upon firing, you could get extremely high burst rates (like a million rounds per minute!). I think the navy was interested in this technology for shooting down missiles. If I recall correctly, a guy in Australia first thought of the technology.

I think slugs and chemical propellants will be used in personal weapons for some time to come. We won’t get “ray” guns until we can achieve a method of safely storing and releasing large amounts of energy in small and lightweight packages. So far gun powder is hard to beat.
 
If caseless and large volume is a plus they should use the advances we have now to bring the CO2 BB gun into the larger caliber/multiple barrel arena. As far as space you could load 5 to 1. You could go back to loading tubes of bullets. Instead of electricity run off of super compressed gas. What do they carry today - 360 rounds? They could up that to almost 2000. MWT
 
Whatever the next breakthrough is, it seems less and less likely that it will be available to the general public. Enjoy what you have, because the next major advance isn't likely to end up in your safe.
 
Shin-Tao,
By breakthrough, I mean a new concept or material that sigificantly changes small arms technology and gives us greater capabilities.

Duck Hunt,
Liquid propellent was tried in the concept for the Crusader Howitzer. We're still not there yet even on that scale.

According to an article in this weeks Army Times, the Marines are about to test a non-lethal directed energy weapon. It's still fairly large, mounts on the back of a truck.

Jeff
 
By breakthrough I think we are talking about any technology addition that would greatly enhance firearms or replace them entirely.

I think some upcoming technologies that look promising are:
1) Electromagnetic rail guns - rifles/cannons that use a very large amount of electrical energy to create an electric and/or a magnetic field that can propel a slug at very high velocities. (Ever see the movie Eraser?)
http://iml.umkc.edu/physics/sps/railgun/railgun.html

2) Caseless ammunition and/or high cyclic rates: http://www.hkpro.com/g11.htm

3) Light/Atomic-Particle energy weapons - lasers, radiation guns, etc.
http://www.startrek.com/ ;)
 
Ah. In that case I say it will be EMP-coil guns that replace current small arms.

4mm jacketed ceramic slug moving at 5,600fps. Cyclic rate of 1200rpm. That sounds about right.
 
Jeff, I think you already hinted at the next big advnace in small-arms technology. It will be some type of non-lethal, man-portable weapon.

In addition to the VMAADs device being used by the Marines that you mention, another company is seeking patent on a laser-based technology that paralyzes up to 2 miles away. I believe it is about the size of a large suitcase.
 
Great question!

First, the most obvious, the slug would be replaced with a hard epoxy. The case would be made of polymer. The powder would be replaced by a liquid. With a polymer case, liquid powder, epoxy combination, the bullets now can go through the airport scanners without detection.

Nitro glycerin as the liquid, tensile boron based fibers as casing, and epoxy as slug, would be undetectable, deadly, pretty economical in large quantities, allow for high tolerance in the production line, and would give you the firepower in a small weapon equal to that of a larger weapon. Also, the energy from nitro glycerin should be significally more than black powder, and so you are talking a larger bullet with a small casing with higher energy, and torque. Because it's liquid, you can bore a hollow cone in the center (like a wine bottle) of the case, and have the detonation occur on the edges. You would do this for the same reason they do it for the wine bottles, especially the bubbly stuff... It reduces pressure and more importantly controls the expansion and rate of expansion of pressure. You would get a "clap" of the cone would reduce the recoil drastically. This also means that you can get rifle velocity out of a pistol, with .22 like recoil.

As for the gun, metal is very difficult to remove completely. It reduces heat effectively, can be smoothed in ways polymer can't be, and does not shatter like ceramic.

Of course, when it's all said and done, none of use will be doing that because we will all have moved to rail guns.

I love rail guns, have done heavy research on it. You can have a gun, 3 buttons, a bank of capacitors, 2 rails, and no moving parts. 1 button charges the caps. 1 button discharges the caps. 1 button fires the gun. You can have it small, feeding it cheap 1" washers if you want to shoot disks. Or you can be hardcore, and shoot anything from 1 square cm squares, to full 1 inch squares, or larger depending on the gun.

With enough juice, that's 0 to Mach 9 in .45 seconds! You will liquify the person in front of you and everything behind him for a few miles. On hot loads, the metal comes out melted before it leaves the gun. Also, because of the gun design, you can have a "3rd rail" as ground that you touch while you are holding the gun, which grounds you so you don't die from getting shocked. If someone tried to grab the gun out of your hands via the rails, well, they'd get a HUGE surprise....

Railguns are the wave of the future. Very easy and cheap to build, can use pretty much any scrap metal as ammo, no moving parts, and lasts pretty much forever if you don't overheat it. Firing rate is only limited by the dump speed of capacitors and the mechanics of lowering the ammo into the rails.

That's my $0.0023462 (My 2 cents after federal, state, local taxes)

Albert
 
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