The Future of Small Arms

[Metaphysician]

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.

 

Depends. Keep in mind, increased kinetic energy = increased recoil momentum. Even taking powered armor into account, I tend to think HEAT-style ammo would end up being a better solution to increased defense than KE for a while there.

 

( KE is the best solution to armor now, but thats with tanks that 1: carry more armor than any powered armor will anytime soon; 2: have a much more stable situation for shooting a high-recoil gun than a man would )

[Sundog]

Re: The Future of Small Arms

 

Maybe so. But I tend to think the real future is in micro-rockets - eliminates the recoil problem, and has a far higher terminal velocity, not to mention the possiblilities for terminal guidance. Plus, since you're using a fast-burn propellant rather than an explosive, significantly less chance of blowing up and taking out your squadmates if you get hit.

[bigdamnhero]

Re: The Future of Small Arms

 

Depends. Keep in mind' date=' increased kinetic energy = increased recoil momentum. [/quote']

Yes, but the recoil from modern assault rifles is negligible. (Contrast firing an M16 to firing a 12-gage shotgun!) So there's a lot of room to go up before recoil starts to become a major concern.

[ghost-angel]

Re: The Future of Small Arms

 

In the future all sites will be nuked from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.

[Cancer]

Re: The Future of Small Arms

 

So what you're predicting, Ghost-angel, is a drift in what qualifies as "small arms?"

[ghost-angel]

Re: The Future of Small Arms

 

Well, looking at the past, noting a "small arm" several hundred years ago would have been, say, a knife. It would thunk quite nicely into a watermelon, for example. Now a good sized gun, say a .44, sort of explodes said watermelon quite nicely.

 

Assuming a trend in sheer destructive capabilities, at least of watermelons . . . yeah. I expect a drift, to use a term, in what qualifies as a "small arm"

[Old Man]

Re: The Future of Small Arms

 

Maybe so. But I tend to think the real future is in micro-rockets - eliminates the recoil problem' date=' and has a far higher terminal velocity, not to mention the possiblilities for terminal guidance.[/quote']

 

But the Gyrojet was kind of a disaster. Inaccurate, poor projectile mass, minimum range, terrible launcher fouling issues.

 

Plus, since you're using a fast-burn propellant rather than an explosive, significantly less chance of blowing up and taking out your squadmates if you get hit.

 

I didn't think that was much of a problem with modern ammunition anyway.

 

Edit: According to wikipedia, maybe not inaccurate.

[Yansuf]

Re: The Future of Small Arms

 

But the Gyrojet was kind of a disaster. Inaccurate, poor projectile mass, minimum range, terrible launcher fouling issues.

 

 

 

I didn't think that was much of a problem with modern ammunition anyway.

 

Edit: According to wikipedia, maybe not inaccurate.

 

The main problem with the Gyrojet was cost of ammo; followed by its poor performance at point blank range since it had not yet accelerated to high speed.

 

A similar weapon might come back for use in free fall though.

[Yansuf]

Re: The Future of Small Arms

 

Depends. Keep in mind, increased kinetic energy = increased recoil momentum. Even taking powered armor into account, I tend to think HEAT-style ammo would end up being a better solution to increased defense than KE for a while there.

 

( KE is the best solution to armor now, but thats with tanks that 1: carry more armor than any powered armor will anytime soon; 2: have a much more stable situation for shooting a high-recoil gun than a man would )

 

Recoil goes up linearly with projectile mass and with "muzzle" velocity;kinetic energy goes up lineraly with projectile mass but with the square of velocity. These are first order effects, there are other factors but they are much less important.

So firering a projectile 1/3 as massive but with 3 times the velocity will have the same recoil (approximately) but 3 times the kinetic energy.

[Sundog]

Re: The Future of Small Arms

 

But the Gyrojet was kind of a disaster. Inaccurate, poor projectile mass, minimum range, terrible launcher fouling issues.

 

True, but I look on the original Gyrojets as equivalent to, perhaps, wheellocks. They worked, but they were too expensive, cranky, maintenance intensive and a general pain in the ass. Proof of concept, no more.

The next step for the projectile launcher was the flintlock. Likewise, I figure the next step for Gyrocs will be much more useful and user friendly.

 

I didn't think that was much of a problem with modern ammunition anyway.

Sorry, I wasn't especially clear there. I was actually referring to the idea of explosive warhead bullets, not modern rounds (which are quite stable).

 

 

Edit: According to wikipedia, maybe not inaccurate.

No, the original Gyrojets had quite good accuracy. Not as good as a match-tuned, bead polished sharpshooter's rig, sure, but around what you'd get from most assault rifles.

 

The main problem with the Gyrojet was cost of ammo; followed by its poor performance at point blank range since it had not yet accelerated to high speed.

 

A similar weapon might come back for use in free fall though.

I suspect homing technology is going to change a few things.

[Mentor]

Re: The Future of Small Arms

 

I still like the mini mass driver for hypersonic velocities; superheavy but tiny projectiles, allowing a magazine to hold thousands of BBs each with the hitting power of a MaDeuce (.50 cal. HMG); and all the smarts, ergonomics and targetting sensors and assists making missing unlikely.

 

Similar in almost every way to the Willys gun in the Sten series of books.

[Old Man]

Re: The Future of Small Arms

 

I wonder how far one of those BBs would get before it burned up in the atmosphere.

[arcady]

Re: The Future of Small Arms

 

One thing about new discoveries and inventions is they always seem, after they were brought about, as if it was utterly obvious that inevitably that idea would come about.

 

But if you look at gunpowder, it was only ever invented once in human history and there is nothing before it to imply it. It was not at all inevitable that we would ever have it.

 

By that same token, whatever replaces it, if anything, could very well be something we are simply not able to imagine today, but after it comes about will seem obvious and intuitive.

 

So, shrug, could be anything.

 

That said, my own Science Fiction setting takes places roughly 250 years from now... and gunpowder based arms are largely not in use, although better technology is not really there. For my setting, which exists entirely on space stations, the concern is the danger of hull puncture.

 

So electrical weapons, stun guns, and even drugged dartguns and yes, bows, knives and swords (vibro-blade, electro-blade, cyanide laced blade, and so on), are the weapons of the day.

 

Switch to space however, and warfare is largely done with nukes, mass drivers (why build fancy explosives when a yugo-sized rock moving at .9C will do), and saboteur-engineers who try to get enemy populations to lose orbit and fall into the atmospheres around Earth, Mars, Jupiter, etc...

 

And then of course, there is data and memetic warfare...

 

Which also translates back to personal combat. Hack the enemy cyber-brain and shut off his vision, or make his cyberarm strangle himself. Or simply crash their programs leaving them confused, or tag them as trash and let the city cleaning bots come along and drag them off...

 

Or, on a slower scale interpersonal conflict, undermine their memes and send them down delusional misperceptions of reality. But that isn't direct combat.

 

On a planetary scale, the beauty of 'bullets' is they are just a lump of mass shoved along. Lower energy needs that the fancy rayguns. Like my note above about throwing rocks at enemy spaceships - throwing rocks at your fellow man takes less energy than throwing small pieces of the sun at him (plasma weapons). If you can throw it fast enough, it becomes deadly enough.

 

You only start to get into energy weapons when you are seeking non-lethal weaponry, and you only need that when your goal is policing rather than killing, or you are in an environment (such as shipboard) where you have to limit the force used.

[patrick]

Re: The Future of Small Arms

 

arcady, ever consider needlers that fire ferrous-ceramic ammo? They’re Lethal to soft targets, but shatter against hard armor and bulkheads.

 

But less than lethal weapons aboard space stations does give a unique feel.

[Metaphysician]

Re: The Future of Small Arms

 

The problem with that is, it could be stopped by hard body armor. Ceramic needlers would have their uses, but they aren't the be all solution.

[arcady]

Re: The Future of Small Arms

 

I have also been thinking of smart micro-missiles. The onboard flight computer of the missile knows where the walls are, and stops itself...

 

Shot at an organic, upon penetrating it might dose the victim with something to either kill or induce a seizure, or cut off muscle control - depending on your desired goal...

 

Not sure how plausible this is, it just popped into my head. It takes a lot of energy to stop a fast moving projectile... so it might not be so practical over other devices.

 

Something that shatters on impact but the fragments are all connected by micro-wires... that might be neat... either a slice-n-dice idea, or for delivering an electric shock through a net, similar to a stun gun, but with less need to carefully aim for clothing it can penetrate...

[Mentor]

Re: The Future of Small Arms

 

I wonder how far one of those BBs would get before it burned up in the atmosphere.

In the Sten novels, they were made of Antimatter2 and surrounded by a force field called the Imperium Shield, so I presume that version was nearly indestructable. In real life, I suppose it would depend on what the density and material composition of the BBs were.

[Cancer]

Re: The Future of Small Arms

 

There was a paper in the 1990's about meteoroid passage through Earth's atmosphere. That had graphs showing what would survive entry: not much does. Now, those things all come in at close to 11 km/sec, and the pressure of the shock in front of the meteoroid suffices to overcome the mechanical strength and tear the things apart high up in the atmosphere. Only smallish iron meteoroids generally reach the surface intact.

 

I can't find the paper, unfortunately, after about half an hour of looking. It might have said something relevant about trying to push objects of size ~ 1 cm through the atmosphere at hypersonic velocities, and that's relevant to some of the speculations here.

[arcady]

Re: The Future of Small Arms

 

Why are we shooting BB's from orbit again? I see that pop up on page 5 of the thread but can't find where it started.

 

Anti-matter BBs would involve a huge energy output to make - probably not a cost effective weapon. At that point, you might as well get a super tanker and ship thousands of gallons of high rated Greenhouse gasses from Venus to take out the whole planet... it's probably a cheaper venture.

 

A modern day oil tanker sized container full of Sulfur hexafluoride has enough GWP to probably take out the Earth overnight...

 

Anti-matter is just way too over doing it, and it takes near nuclear amounts of energy to generate even a few molecules of the stuff.

[ghost-angel]

Re: The Future of Small Arms

 

Why are we shooting BB's from orbit again?

 

Because anything shot from orbit as a weapon is a 10 on the Cool Meter.

[Old Man]

Re: The Future of Small Arms

 

Snarks!

 

Sorry, just had to mention them again.

[Zeropoint]

Re: The Future of Small Arms

 

Snarks? Ooh, I remember them! Not the most effective weapon in the world, but they had a psychological impact far above their simple combat effectiveness!

[Cancer]

Re: The Future of Small Arms

 

Because anything shot from orbit as a weapon is a 10 on the Cool Meter.

 

It's even cooler if it's an "oops". See here, skimming (or searching) down to the section heading Pascal-B, about halfway down the (long) page.

[Mentor]

Re: The Future of Small Arms

 

Why are we shooting BB's from orbit again? I see that pop up on page 5 of the thread but can't find where it started.

 

Anti-matter BBs would involve a huge energy output to make - probably not a cost effective weapon. At that point, you might as well get a super tanker and ship thousands of gallons of high rated Greenhouse gasses from Venus to take out the whole planet... it's probably a cheaper venture.

 

A modern day oil tanker sized container full of Sulfur hexafluoride has enough GWP to probably take out the Earth overnight...

 

Anti-matter is just way too over doing it, and it takes near nuclear amounts of energy to generate even a few molecules of the stuff.

Just for the record, we are not discussing the "Present of Small Arms.":D

 

In the context of the story, the ruler of The Empire of A Thousand Suns stumbled on a dimensional rift with tons of cheap Antimatter2, not just regular antimatter. He was a genius who created the Imperium shield force field to control the stuff, which eventually became the fuel of star travel, the microscopic base for small arms ammo, and the fuel of a galactic civilization.

 

Antimatter2 fulfilled the most importan criteria of a science fiction energy source, far more important than being efficient. Antimatter2 is first and formost cool.

[arcady]

Re: The Future of Small Arms

 

Ah ok. I thought this thread was about possibilities in the future, and not fantasy with fishbowl helmets and saturn-rin costumes.

 

(No harshness intended, the above is tongue in cheek)