Will we live to see the advent of handgun-sized railguns?

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It's like I said earlier, the self contained projectile munition is about as good as it can get for anything smaller than heavy armor. We may someday manage to go caseless, but it won't be used, it isn't going to be something that you can equip an army with.

Projectile weapons can be made to destroy literally everything, other than ghosts. They have to have propulsion, and any form of propulsion needs acceleration, whether it's a barrel full of hot gas or a tensed bowstring. The only, yes, only practical way of pushing a projectile to high energy in a portable weapon is to self contain that munition, so that the weapon doesn't need unnecessary seals, breech improvements, guidance systems, etc.

Ammunition works in the most primitive weapons possible because that self contained cartridge and barrel, under even really nasty condition, can push the projectile out without sustaining damage.

We can use rpg rockets or mortars, or even multiple component artillery, but small arms, especially mass production items intended for hard use and neglect will probably be powder fired caused ammo.

I'm surprised that electric primers failed commercially. They work in other applications.
 
briandg:

I'm surprised that electric primers failed commercially. They work in other applications.
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Electric primers? Power source?

Percussion primers have proven their reliability under all conditions. Batteries fail. And add weight. And bulk.

Bob Wright
 
You never saw the Remington electric rifles? They ran on alkaline batteries. Unless you neglected them, they worked well.and if you're banging at paper or varmints, the likelihood of a shot being screwed up badly was slim.

It was one way of doing the job, it had advantages, but it flopped..they had a great trigger.
 
Those Remingtons used a battery to ignite the primer of an otherwise conventional round of ammo (the same principle used in some aircraft cannon). There were a few advantages, but nothing worth the extra cost.

As to some kind of "rail gun" system in a handgun - it might work and the gun might actually be of reasonable size for carry. But the generator would weigh a couple of tons and be a bit of a problem carrying around.

Jim
 
The post earlier also made a good point. To fire up a projectile to sufficient power to blast a steel slug through a human would require probably as much juice as an induction furnace. That blast of em would probably be kind of hard on the shooter. Would the shooters fly tear out?

I wear a tungsten wedding band. During The last mri I had, every time they lit up the magnets, I felt the ring jiggling. The Mir machines can throw heavy steel objects, they have power, but would it be capable of launching an ounce of metal to mach four?

Been interesting thinking about this.
 
If anything can really be said about the electric primer, it wasn't needed. There probably wasn't enough value in it to impress the guy at the bench, but you wanna talk about lock time? It approached light speed.
 
"Never say never".
There are enough man-portable rail guns on YouTube that given refinements could be at least single shot lethal weapons in the next 20 years.
 
Where as it is true that very little has actually changed in the fundamentals if firearm operations over the hundreds of years we've had them, it is just as true that the very idea of the Internet was just as inconceivable a 200 years ago as handheld railguns might be today.

We aren't talking about lobbing projectiles half the size of a car or even the size of 5 gallon water bottles over the distance of miles for the purpose of busting through a ships hull. It isn't necessary to reach a speed of 10,000mph.

We are talking about hurling projectiles that 'might' be 1.5 inches long (and more likely to be less than .5 inches) to a speed of about 700mph to 800mph.

It can be argued that size doesn't matter but then it's all relative.

The biggest problems are between the buildup of the magnetic field, the ability and speed to which it can move the projectile, and then the dissipation of that field....all without harm to the operator. How strong would the field really need to be? How much shielding would be needed? Even if recoil could be brought down to zero, there are likely to be side effects such as RF interference with any surrounding technology.

Railguns are fun to believe in but I see lasers and other types of energy weapons more likely.
 
We might live to see hand held incapacitation lasers that temporarily blind an opponent but not a hand held rail gun.
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That is old news and has already been done. However, after their development, international treaties banned them. The reason was interesting. It turns out that folks can survive small arms wounds fairly well and if not brain damaged or paralyzed, get along decently. That is the case for most - not to poo-poo being shot.

However, blinding is a permanent and terrible disability. Most folks would rather lose a limb than going blind.

IIRC, prototype blinding weapons were deployed by our forces but never authorized to be used.

There were also blinding weapons designed to quickly scan across a battlefield such that they would be focused into the retinas of those using optic sights and blinding them. The scan could be very quick and cover a large area.

Now for rail guns - here is the problem - Tatoos.

I've read that the strong MRI fields can aggravate and heat iron based dyes in tatoos. Now you cannot be an operator without a full panoply of tatoos. So, if you use a rail gun - your tatoos will be on fire and even ripped from your body!

Also, strong fields can fire conventional handguns as there is a well known incident where a 1911 in a MRI went off!
 
Tattoos are a thought, but I think that the more important issue would be in trying to deploy a soldier with no magnetic pack items in his entire squad, and making sure that he hasn't got any magnetic debris nearby.

Let's imagine that he Drops to prone, fires a round, and that proverbial horseshoe nail that lost the war is an inch deep in the turf by his head. The irony of taking a hit by the notorious nail that lost the war would be exquisite.

To the doubters, the one and only thing that you have to consider is conservation of energy energy. We could say that 15% of the energy produced by a chemical based weapon is converted directly to kinetic energy of the projectile.

Half is lost in recoil, some lost in various forms of heat and friction and crushing the steel barrel, and more lost in muzzle blast. That's a lot of wasted energy.

When that rail gun fires, it creates a magnetic field that's scattered throughout the universe, speaking figuratively. We will never be able to create a system that could take a magnetic field and use it so efficiently in a compact weapon. it would violate physical laws to create such a thing.
 
As a thought, the electromagnetic catapults on the new Ford carrier have been a real pain the butt. I imagine the debugging and screw ups of developing (if it could be done at all) would be monstrous. How do you tap, rack and bang some electrical system?
 
We also have to consider efficiency of scale. A full power gun is the size of a semi trailer, iirc, not including generator. The gun uses 25 megawatts, more than some towns. Generating that energy could be done with ten or fifteen large wind turbine running at normal capacity or maybe 150 acres of solar farm.

What sort of energy production would it take just to launch a bb to 1,000 fps?

It takes a primer and a pinch of powder to fire a .22lr to over 1,000 fps

Some of the biggest naval ships produce about 70 megawatts, but have less than ten mw surplus generation power, about 1/3 of the demands of the gun.

No, none of this is insurmountable, but it's unlikely that this technology will be entirely successful. It is possible that an entirely new class of ship may be created around this technology.
 
Glenn, it's also mentioned in every thing I read that the guns are prone to failure, because the energy used literally destroys the launch systems. A carrier launch system would have been made to survive ANYTHING, right? But they aren't reliable?

Oy vey.
 
I might misremember but I think I saw a figure that the electromagnetic catapults now have a failure rate of 1 in 300 launches as compared to the steam ones of 1 in 3000. They supposedly have a faster cycle time and allow each catapult to be independent of the other but if they don't work.

Certainly, they delayed the deployment of the Ford.
 
On star trek they can get phasers or photon torpedoes online in the time that it takes to eat a cheese doodle. Raising shields is almost as quick. We just need to create antimatter reactors.
 
Maybe we need superconductors, so the gun only works when you are on Pluto.

I guess the answer of the thread is NO, given current technology. Of course, the Glock 75 with Mr. Fusion in the grip is in the works. Keep a banana in your mag pouch.
 
The accuracy claim for the 16" guns on the Missouri;
were to hit with in plus/minus 40 or so yards at max range of 26 miles.
OR right at 1 MOA.

I really don't know the specs for the USN's railgun projects;
I've read speculation that the max range could be up to 400 miles!?
But even if it could achieve 0.5 MOA,
How could it ever hit something at LONG range
even the size of a another ship without a lot of luck?

PS: Also read where the projectiles for a rail gun are relatively
much less expensive than a missile or even the USN current 8" shells .
 
Super conductors are how we can hook a traveling mri scanner in a semi trailer and carry it from place to place, and run it on site using only as much power as a few modest sized houses. 440 volts, 150 amps, was it?

Bazi
 
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