The Future of Small Arms

[Frenchman]

Re: The Future of Small Arms

 

 

I'm not going to derail this thread by getting into a huge debate on 2nd Amendment Rights, but I would like it noted for the record that I object to the implications of this statement.

 

Dale A. Ward

(law abiding citizen and gun-owner)

I meant that in most places in the world (not just the US) which have any gun laws at all, automatic weapons are illegal for civilians to own.

[Nyrath]

Re: The Future of Small Arms

 

That's my cue to drop a link to my futuristic sidearm webpage

http://www.projectrho.com/rocket/rocket3l.html

[gewing]

Re: The Future of Small Arms

 

I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say that I don't believe directed energy weapons will EVER be as popular as slugthrowers - in atmosphere.

 

Atmospheric scattering will be a great bugaboo for lasers, particle beams, and plasma casters for the forseeable future. If you have the energy density technology to overcome that in a hand weapon, you have the capacity to project a nuclear detonation equivalent at your targets from a vehicle - hand weapons cease to be a valid concept.

 

I figure railgun and coilgun technology is maybe 15 years away from weaponization, at least as vehicular weapons. Electrothermal is maybe ten years after that - it would require some breakthroughs in materials technology to make a safe ECT firing chamber.

 

Incidentally, I also don't believe in caseless ammo for a chemgun. ECT requires a case; conventional rounds are cheaper and easier to build with cases (note that the "next generation" AR by H&K, the G11, which used caseless rounds, died due to lack of interest); and you can make a lot of fancy rounds with a case that you can't without one. Caseless ammo is a solution looking for a problem.

 

 

 

It was iirc only partially a lack of interest that killed the G11. Combining the end of the cold war and the cost of absorbing East Germany, with the million or so AKs they thus inherited iirc...

 

 

The US is currently looking at several technologies for lighter ammo for small arms. Caseless, polymer cased, Telescoped cases, and aluminum cases have all been demonstrated.

http://www.dtic.mil/ndia/2005smallarms/wednesday/sadowski.pdf

Page 8 blows my mind.

Now apply it to a more powerful cartridge...

and let me have the technology!!!

[Maelstrom]

Re: The Future of Small Arms

 

One thing that might change about firearms is the action used could shift to an electric charge instead of the current firing pin model. Firing rates could increase as a result' date=' since it would just be pulses of electricity igniting the primers.[/quote']

 

Metalstorm is already doing this.

 

Metalstorm PDF presentation

 

Tremendous increase in volume of fire.

[patrick]

Re: The Future of Small Arms

 

Concerns about charging batteries to me is the equivalent of an 18th century man worrying about how an armored tank could possibly carry enough black powder for its cannon. We're talking about 300 years in the future. "Technology will out." I can easily envision gauss ammunition that' date=' like today's bullets, carries its own power source. Imagine a soldier with several clips, each with a different type of ammunition (piercing, exploding, nonlethal, etc.). Each clip contains its own firing chamber. When he pops the clip into his rifle (or whatever it's called), the clip mechanically forces the weapon into the right geometry for that ammo. (This needn't be a complicated mechanism. Two axes and a narrow range of movement, all made of whatever light, rugged, probably nanoengineered material is common for the time. Everything locked down by a simple mechanical system no more complicated than today's automatic handguns.)[/quote']

 

austenandrews, you make some very good points here. Also the less moving parts the weapon has the better. Plus I have to admit you're right about the technology will out, look at the advancements in cellfone batteries in just the 15 years, It's any one's guess what energy storage will be like in 300.

[Spence]

Re: The Future of Small Arms

 

It was iirc only partially a lack of interest that killed the G11. Combining the end of the cold war and the cost of absorbing East Germany, with the million or so AKs they thus inherited iirc...

 

 

But in the end "lack of interest" is what controls weapons development. Many of our existing "break-through's" in weaponry occurred years after the first discovery or invention.

 

No only does it have to work. But the chain of command must be convinced it is readily available, easy to maintain or rugged enough to not need extensive maintenance and ammunition also must be readily available. Currently most militaries have "standardized" their ammunition. The weapon could be incredible, but unless I replace every weapon in my military I uncork a logistics nightmare.

 

"Sorry sir, the 134th needs to be pulled out of the line".

 

"What, they just kicked some major butt."

 

"Yes sir, but they were in the process of shifting North, not West. Their logistic tail is 300 miles north of here and the SuperWeap Type 1's go through a lot of ammo. I checked just in case, and they are the only unit in theater with the new weapon."

 

"Cr*p"

 

No matter how well planned, the more possible problems that can occur, the more will occur. I don't forsee a major move away from the bullet, they will be refined yes, but they will remain for many years until the cost becomes less important than effectivness. Or the cost is reduced enough to acheive the same effect.

[patrick]

Re: The Future of Small Arms

 

Future development also depends on the types and numbers of conflicts armies engage in. Will they be fewer or more frequent, shorter or longer, asymmetrical or conventional, here on earth or on some distant world at the end of a supply chain light-years long. This combined with what the troops and command will be happy with in the field (tradition), and the amount of bang for the buck (economics).

 

I'm starting to realize that what started off, as just an idle thought is a very complex question dependent on more than just a few what ifs.

[Sundog]

Re: The Future of Small Arms

 

Quite so. If we get a major nanotech breakthrough, that would change everything. So would usable room-temperature superconductors, major breakthroughs in bioengineering (living rifles that manufacture their own ammo, anyone?) or active gravitic control. The only reason I'm standing by mey two statements is that they are firmly based in modern physics.

[Dauntless]

Re: The Future of Small Arms

 

I think the question might be rephrased as, what are the pros and cons of firearms? Or maybe another way of asking it might be, "what would the pinnacle of kinetic slugthrower technology be?"

 

Let me list the disdadvantages first:

 

1) Maximum practical kinetic energy

You can only put so much energy into accelerating a slug. If you have binary propellant gases which cause an explosion or gunpowder that sublimates to cause gas expansion to propel the bullet...the chamber has to be strong enough to withstand that force. Even railgun type weapons will have the limit of the EMF it can generate along the rails or coils (unless superconductors are around...I'm no EE, but I know there is a limit to the current that a specific material per volume can contain....and if superconductors DO exist, energy weapons will have a huge advantage to be explained later).

 

If you posit super strong material to contain the blast in the chamber, that means there will be super strong materials for body armor too.

 

2) Not very accurate

Compared to energy weapons. For one, kinetic weapons, even railguns, will throw projectiles at velocities orders of magnitude slower than lasers or particle accelerators or other EMF type weapons. This means that the firer will have to account for wind, bullet drop, etc. This can be alleviated by "smart" bullets, but smart bullets would have their own drawbacks. And recoil will also be an issue compared to energy weapons unless you want to add on bulky gyrostabilization equipment.

 

3) Limited ammunition

What happens if you run out of bullets? For energy weapons that require only energy, all you have to do is roll out a nano-solar cell array or hopefully by that time we'll have fusion power. Energy weapons will probably have lower ammunition weight. If superconductors or near superconductors exist then the efficiency in power to weight/ratio will go to energy weapons. Why? Because in a gas expansion slug thrower, think of all the energy wasted by the gasses as the bullet exits the barrel and how the direction of the gasses will not all directly "push" on the bullet. And don't forget friction (this might be offset by new nanomanufactured materials that could be almost frictionless, although if you want to impart spin to the bullet, you'd either need some friction, make it fin stabilized, or have a weird bullet back end shaped like a propellor to make it spin against the pushing gas). Even railguns which have near zero friction will have the attenuation of kinetic energy due to air drag (though admittedly, gauss guns will be far far more efficient than regular firearms). One may argue that lasers will shed energy from dispersal by the atmosphere...but this can be mitigated by using different wavelengths of light to punch through air particles and even to some degree reflective chaff.

 

Nanofactories to produce bullets? First off, what are the nanites going to eat? Even molecular dissasemblers can't change rock to lead as it would have to have enough energy to overcome the strong nuclear forces to rip out protons (people have funny notions about what nanotechnology can do). So the nanites would have to eat lead, or some other material. But that would change the characteristics of the weapon (the bullet might shatter under the force...though this could be accounted for by metering binary gasses or EM acceleration.

 

4) Not very stealthy

Guns go boom. Not only do they go boom, they create flashes (if it's a gas expansion slug thrower, or a huge EMP signature if it's a gauss gun). Silencers decrease the efficiency if a gun, though flash hiders can actually improve them (if they can vent the gasses through a good muzzle brake along the length of the hider). Energy weapons may or may not be stealthy. X-ray lasers would be invisible (they might ionize the air though, especially depending on the makeup of the air at the time). Ditto for particle accelerators.

 

Here are some advantages

 

1) Easy to produce

All kinetic slug throwing weapons except gauss type weapons will be relatively easy to manufacture. It will be well understood technology and lower tech societies will have them around for a long time.

 

2) "Smart" bullets

Pretty much useful only as sniper weapons, you could have gyro assisted projectiles with limited course correction capabilities. They won't be able to shoot around corners as bad sci-fi will tell you, but they could help negate "leading" a target and correct for windage and bullet drop. The disadvantage to this is that the gryo-assist will take up more bullet mass, meaning less rounds to carry per weight. It will also make the bullets more "fragile".

 

3) Different payloads

Not really applicable to firearms, but kinetic slug throwers can vary the kind of projectile it throws. It could be HE, AP, APFSDU, HESH, Sabots, etc. In firearms, you could have flechette rounds, discarding sabots, dum-dums, frangibles, etc.

 

As for the argument about whether kinetic firearms would be more rugged, I think each would have advantages and disadvantages, so neither would win. People think energy weapons would be more fragile...but I disagree. The reason many electronic components are fragile is because they must be precise to work...not to mention that usually the only parts on electronic equipment that fails are the mechanical ones (and usually capacitors which can overload). DVD players are fragile because if you drop it, you knock the laser out of alignment and it can no longer read the spiral in the DVD. Ditto with hard drives. Does that mean a laser weapon would be fragile? No. It's aim might be off, but you could recalibrate it. It would have a focusing element that could be fragile (I'm thinking it could be made of metallic crystalline structure however). And in some ways, energy weapons could be more rugged. Other than the trigger, there would be no moving parts subject to wear and tear. If there are superconductors, there will be no molecular fatigue in the circuits.

 

All in all though, there will come a point where the advantages of energy weapons will outweigh the usefulness of kinetic weapons. Will it be in 300 years? I dunno. Will we have safe man portable nuclear (fusion) powerpacks ala the Ghostbusters in 300 years? If we can make hand held particle accelerators in 300 years then I'd definitely say a big and unequivocal yes.

[tkdguy]

Re: The Future of Small Arms

 

Another Metal Storm article:

 

http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/military_law/1281426.html

[bigdamnhero]

Re: The Future of Small Arms

 

(In the interest of brevity, I’ll refrain from quoting half the thread and just summarize.)

 

A lot of the arguments for “cheap, easy to produce and soldier-proof” sound great…except they argue against the existence of half the weapons in the US military’s arsenal. After all, black powder is significantly easier to produce, and would be cheaper if anyone was making it in bulk. Yet no one uses it anymore. Similarly, I suspect low-tech powers will always find it cheaper & easier to buy hand-me-downs from the Big Powers than to manufacture their own, as is the case today. Even with ammo: hand-loading is fine for individuals, but it’s not really feasible for an army.

 

On the other extreme, a lot of “smart” technology is likely to be of minimal utility to the frontline infantryman, so I agree that they’ll remain “specialty” items for the forseable future. (‘Tho Matt’s list of lidea really makes me want to run a cyberpunk or post-apoc game!)

 

As for small arms developing a “Dealership” syndrome (great term, Publius!), we’re already there. Even with an M-16, the number of problems the company armorer can actually “repair” is fairly limited; they mostly swap out parts, which are then either sent back to the manufacturer or tossed. I can see futuristic weapons being designed much the same way: “I have no idea what’s wrong with this flux capacitor; here’s a new one…”

 

Frenchman: good point about the gap between civilian and military hardware. Tho if you look at it another way, today’s civilian weapons were state-of-the-art military weapons just a generation ago. The rapid pace of tech change may be the real culprit.

 

Spence: I agree about the benefits of standardization of ammo. But OTOH, the situation you’re describing actually happened in the early days of Vietnam, where some units had M16s while others still had M14s. Made for some logistical headaches, but nothing that couldn’t be overcome.

 

So for at least the next 100 years or so, I expect we’ll see evolutionary changes on the current themes.

• Reduced weight: the current Holy Grail of small arms design, and is likely to remain so until power armor becomes standard issue. OTOH, if miniturization can reduce the weight of the other 100 pounds of gear we’ve got guys carrying (GPS, NVG, LAW, Claymore, computer, sensors…), that might become less of an issue.

• Reduced logistical overhead: hence the interest in caseless ammo. Here’s your 100-round brick; see you next month. Lower maintenance is a consideration here, but pales in comparison to ammo supply.

• Improved accuracy: yes, but not if it comes at the expense of the first two. The M-16 has a far shorter effective range than the M-14 it replaced. And don’t even get me started on the AK-47.

• Improved lethality: less than you’d think. Again, see M-16 vs M-14. The goal is to wound the man, not kill him. (A wounded man takes 2 people out of the fight, as his buddy has to help him to safety.)

• Improved penetration: not so much of a factor today, but as effective body armor starts becoming more and more common, I can see this becoming more important. The day teflon bullets become cheap enough to be standard issue…

 

So based on the above, I expect the trend toward smaller-caliber, higher velocity ammo to continue. Gaus weapons, in theory, have the potential to improve nearly all those factors. The day they become workeable in practise, and cheap enough to outfit en masse, is the day they’ll start to replace chemical slug-throwers in first-rate armies; tho it’ll probably be another 100 years or so before that trickles down to the military have-nots.

[Nyrath]

Re: The Future of Small Arms

 

Improved accuracy: yes' date=' but not if it comes at the expense of the first two. The M-16 has a far shorter effective range than the M-14 it replaced. And don’t even get me started on the AK-47.[/quote']

Game designer Frank Chadwick says that developments in tactical combat can largely be viewed as attempts at better solutions to the targeting problem.

http://www.projectrho.com/rocket/rocket3t.html#targeting

[ajackson]

Re: The Future of Small Arms

 

Though the rise of effective rifle-resistant body armor may change things around.

[patrick]

Re: The Future of Small Arms

 

Found a very nice article on this stuff by some guy named Adam Getchell

http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Chamber/2838/arms.html

I really like the points he makes about projectile shapes evolving:bmk:

[Marcus Impudite]

Re: The Future of Small Arms

 

How about impact detonated micro-explosive bullets?

[Sundog]

Re: The Future of Small Arms

 

How about impact detonated micro-explosive bullets?

 

Three problems: Illegal in war (explosive bullets, as well as hollowpoints, were specifically banned under the Geneva Conventions post WWI), far too easy to stop, and reliability issues. Unless you're talking a major bang (much greater than that produced by the amount of Compound-4 you can pack into a bullet) a rigid or semi-rigid plate, such as are common in most modern body-armours, would stop the bullet without significant damage to the target - less than that inflicted by a solid bullet, almost certainly. And if you're using impact to detonate the bullet, you'd better find some VERY reliable way to make it understand the difference between hitting something and being fired.

[Dale A. Ward]

Re: The Future of Small Arms

 

Three problems: Illegal in war (explosive bullets' date=' as well as hollowpoints, were specifically banned under the Geneva Conventions post WWI),[/quote']

We are postulating a war 300 years in the future, after all. Who says the Geneva Conventions will still be observed.

 

Also, bear in mind that the rules are written by the winners.

 

far too easy to stop,... Unless you're talking a major bang (much greater than that produced by the amount of Compound-4 you can pack into a bullet) a rigid or semi-rigid plate, such as are common in most modern body-armours, would stop the bullet without significant damage to the target - less than that inflicted by a solid bullet, almost certainly.

See my first note above. We might have much more powerful propellants and explosives 300 years from now.

 

and reliability issues... And if you're using impact to detonate the bullet, you'd better find some VERY reliable way to make it understand the difference between hitting something and being fired.

A simple arming device... perhaps incorporated into the primer of the round?

[Sundog]

Re: The Future of Small Arms

 

Okay, I can see those answers (but note that while explosives will have improved in 300 years, so will materials tech for rigid defence plates). But even with those as a given, you're still gilding the lily. Pure kinetic impact is the name of the game - it's so simple that it's very hard to defeat. Modern Body armour, after all, beats pistol rounds - but NOT long arms.

 

You'd be better off using all that explosive to throw the bullet further, faster and harder. More damage, more penetration, and far harder to stop.

[LordGhee]

Re: The Future of Small Arms

 

Sorry sundog the plate (8lb) that go into the vest will stop rifle rounds.

 

during desert storm a marine I talk to was bunker clearing and took two shots to the chest at point blank (he turned around and the enemy came out of a closet). point blank as in inches

 

he made the point that the Iraqi did not have body armour.

 

Lord Ghee

[Markdoc]

Re: The Future of Small Arms

 

Two possibilities I can see if body armour continues to improve as fast as it has been doing and becoming available to lower-tech armies (as is currently the case).

 

1. small bore, AP rounds designed to go through armour (think APDS). Presumably you'd want to pop out a burst of them to insure sufficient tissue damage, so you're looking at a high ROF or (potentially) one round with several small payloads. In that case, the weight gains would start making caseless ammo look much more attractive, especially if the bullet was partially embedded in the propellant, and the propellant served as a sabot - burning off as the round was fired (basically a gyrojet with no rocket). Or alternatively, gauss weapons, which would do the same thing .

 

2. Largebore with specialist rounds - (HESH, shrapnel, shaped charge, shotgun etc). This would basically be the logical extension of two current trends - the Hezbollah approach where "riflemen" are being replaced by guys with RPGs, while the conventional slug thrower serves as support and the now-cancelled US OICW, where the goal was to give every trooper largebore capacity. The low amount of ammo you could carry would kind of rule out "spray and pray" (although having half your squad pop range-fused shrapnel onto threat areas would be just as good) and put a priority on targetting, but I see improved targetting being important to both of these things.

 

cheers, Mark

[Vestnik]

Re: The Future of Small Arms

 

I predict that, given the importance of being able to reach a keyboard or steering wheel in everyday life in the industrialized world, arms that are too small to reach them effectively will be selected against Darwinian-style. Small arms are going to go the way of the dodo.

[Mister Trent]

Re: The Future of Small Arms

 

While it's doubtful anyone will actually make such a thing, I would love to have one of those ZF-1s from The Fifth Element.

[Dale A. Ward]

Re: The Future of Small Arms

 

I predict that' date=' given the importance of being able to reach a keyboard or steering wheel in everyday life in the industrialized world, arms that are too small to reach them effectively will be selected against Darwinian-style. Small arms are going to go the way of the dodo. [/quote']

"Ummm... excuse me... could you hold this? Thanks... now try to aim it away from my shoes, please."

 

[patrick]

Re: The Future of Small Arms

 

"Ummm... excuse me... could you hold this? Thanks... now try to aim it away from my shoes, please."

 

That sir, is one of the funiest F'n things I have ever read, I've been laughing for the last five minutes. I've only just now composed myself enough to type.

 

Stop I'm crying!

[Dale A. Ward]

Re: The Future of Small Arms

 

~bows~

 

I'm here all week, folks... try the veal.