Guns of the 21st Century, Whats Next???

leeblackman

I sit hear watching a documentary on TLC about some war or another, puffing on the back side of a dominican cigar, and I ponder. What type of infantry rifles will come in the future. Everone has seen the US's new "Land Warrior" system with the M16 using a camera mounted on the end. And a small monitor attached to the helmet. And then there's HK's caseless ammo they experimented with in the late 80's early nineties. Now there's HK's new system with the 20mm smart projectile. And all of us paintball players know of the computer controlled markers such as the Angel and Shocker which can be set in variable firing modes from semi, full, bursts of 2 to infinity, "turbo trigger" which recognizes when your going rapid and automatically kick into full auto. Oh yea, and the double-trouble trigger (pull it fires one, let go it fires one.) Don't forget about Russia's new recoiless assault rifle their working on.I think the future holds a caseless weapon, hi capacity, rapid firing small perjectiles, at computer controlled firing rates and velocities. Not the caseless like HK's but with a seperate gas injected system. Will fire clean. Self cooling, the bullets made of latest alloys coated with latest lubricants. A scope with a laser range finder, just put the dot on the target and the on board computer automatically adjusts gas for proper velocity to meet that range and the preset muzzle energy. No judging wind or adjusting for trajectory. It will also be recoiless, no kick. Optics will be thermal, and infra-red. Will be able to be viewed remotely from users helmet. Will have a "grenade" type mounted smart mini-rocket launcher mounted on the bottom.I give it another 30years.From what I've read, I know that one of the military's criteria is for a weapon capable of hitting a man with a 3shot burst at 300meters.What do you see comming?

leeblackman

Of coarse then I could see infantryman using "laser detectors" to know if someones putting a bead on them too.

Free N TX

It has been a few years back since I saw a report on a weapon that shoots an epoxy "bullet" about the size of a 22. The design was similar to the M16. It used a mag that loaded from the bottom, it is basically a box with liquid epoxy in it. One "mag" would fire aprox. 1000 "rounds". But it was about the size of a 20 round mag for am M16. When fired the liquid was propelled by a remote gas cylinder worn on the back of the shooter (much like the ones used for paintball). The epoxy would harden in a fraction of a second (when exposed to air) and travel in excess of 3000 fps (I think it was closer to 4000 fps). The gun could be fired both single shot or 3 round burst. The problems that kept coming up were, barrel stopping up (especially when the tank got low), a leak to the mag and it would be useless, residue in the barrel would harden and make the barrel useless also, tank added weight when the idea was to make a lighter weapon with high capacity so that a soldier would not have to worry about running out of ammo if too far from base. They also claimed it was very flat shooting since the epoxy was so light weight and also very accurate.Last I heard it was being tested for sniper use, they were claiming it was accurate at extremely long range (I don't remember the distance that was quoted but I remember thinking "damn, that is far"). I told my wife if and when they came out that I was going to get one (depending on price of course) she just looked at me and asked, "Why?". She just doesn't understand.

Shootist3006

Well N Tex, sounds like you got caught by the BS bug. A lighter weight bullet would have SHORTER range, not longer. Just figure the result of drag on a bullet with such a low sectional density (or imagine the different flight path between a ping-pong ball and a golf ball launched at the same velocity). Did see some work with a gas propellant. The mag held only bullets, seat the bullet, fill the chamber with gas, ignite the gas and launch the projectile.Interesting concept, lots of engineering yet to do, 10 to 20 years away from use.

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Quod principi placuit legis habet vigorem.Semper Fidelis

opentop

Right now the Army is working on the "Objective Individual Combat Weapon", which is a combination assault rifle and grenade launcher that would also incorporate a special electronic site and the camera from the Land Warrior System. It's under development for the Army by Alliant Systems www.atk.com/defense click on "Products" in their left side menu and then scroll down to "Infantry Weapon" and click on "OICW".The rifle part is an HK carbine and is mounted under the Alliant Systems 20MM grenade launder and is detachable. The grenade launcher fires 20MM HE variable fuze setting grenades (think half sized M203 40MM as far as how they look). It's like a semi-auto shot gun with the grenades carried in a 6 round bullpup type magazine (behind the pistol grip). The rifle part is a specially modified 5.56 NATO - HK G36 has electronic selection buttons above the trigger where the soldier can select the range and detonation settings for the chambered grenade. The special electronic sight on top of the whole shebang can measure distance and windage, etc., giving the solder appropriate settings for the target he's aimed at. Then he selects grenade launcher, inputs the range/windage settings and fires the grenade. The grenade exits the weapon, goes down range and expodes over the target with a special "shaped charge" who's blast force is thus directed downward onto the target. Sounds pretty cool except for the complication, size and weight (some 17 pounds)and recoil is almost twice that of the M16A2 (although only a third of that of the M14). I wonder if all that electronic crap will stand up to mud, sand and moisture and would it be "private proof"? Army plans are for 1 fire team member to carry the OICW as a "Grenadier". If the weapon works well, it may eventually be issued to all soldiers. 2009 is supposedly the target date for the first operational guns. Hey why didn't they incorporate a flame thrower while they were at it....As far as caseless ammo goes for future guns, caseless has been a dream of gun designers since Horace Smith and Daniel Wesson designed the Volcanic pistol in the 1840s. While it's become possible with modern materials to made stable "plastic" explosive type charges to which bullets are attached, thus creating a caseless round, they still suffer from deterioration. When the ammo is carried around in a box or a pouch or what have you, it tends to get "roughed up" with flakes and chunks of the charge falling off. They've tried "laminating" the charge to minimize this flaking and chunking, but it's still no match for the good old brass cartridge case with cordite powder inside. Heckler & Koch have abandoned their caseless program.I think most likely the future of the infantry rifle will still fire a relatively conventional cased cartridge round. We may see systems like Alliant's OICW or one that HK is working on that automatically and very quickly fires 2 rounds per trigger pull to almost double "probability of kill". We might see more use of high velocity ammo systems like "accelerator" and "flechette" type rounds and maybe even shortended "bench rest" type .223s that can fit in an assault rifle or a pistol. In any case, I think the good old metallic cartridge will be with us for some time yet.

Free N TX

Shootist, The projectile produced by the epoxy is much longer (equaling heavier?) than a regular 22 bullet. I believe they said that it would end up being about 1-1/2" to 1-3/4" long. I think it was so long because there needed to be enough liquid in the barrel, so that when the pressurized gases hit the epoxy it would push it out and not just blow right through (the center of) the epoxy leaving it all over the (inside of) barrel. I don't remember it saying what the weight of an individual projectile was. But it did state that the trajectory was very flat compared to conventional ammo. I will look around to see if I can find the article, I don't remember which magazine it was in though. If I do find it, I will be glad to send you a copy, it really is a very interesting concept.

Iconoclast

FREE -Would be *most* interested in a citation to the mag / article if you can locate it. Put an end to my collecting military ammo, though.I left the battery out of my crystal ball, but my best guess is that both weaponry and projectiles may be augmented by electronic elements as technology continues to shrink the size of the electronic package. But will such designs work in real life? Not only are field conditions somewhat less ideal than laboratories, there's the very real possibility of EMP (or something similar) countermeasures. The key advances, IMHO, will be incremental. Mechanical improvements to the weapons, improved components for the ammo. At some point we'll be doing Buck Rogers' stuff, but I'm not leaving a spot in my rack for a phaser / laser / raygun just yet.

opentop

I saw something on that liquid epoxy scheme as well. It seems like a clever idea if they could get it to work, but they did talk about the difficulties of keeping the barrel clean, maintaining a hardening consistency, etc., as problems reducing its practicality. The epoxy was supposed to be lighter overall than a comparable amount of cartridge ammo, but the "bullets" themselves actually had to be much longer, denser and heavier than an FMJ cartridged bullet in order to attain similar range and accuracy because the epoxy is still too easily deformed after firing and thus less aerodynamic. A bullet that is actually lighter will have shorter range and be less accurate because it's lower mass will not maintain inertia for as long as a heavier, denser bullet and begins to tumble. That's why the 5.56 NATO at higher rates of fire, is great under 500 yards and the 7.62 NATO (.308WIN) with it's bigger, heavier bullet and more powerful charge is arguably a better long range round. In the same way, the .30-06 is still the best sniper round, although the .50 cal is up and coming what with the advent of the .50 cal sniper rifles. Seems munitions developers are always trying to come up with denser materials from which to make bullets, so they can make small caliber bullets perform more like larger caliber ones.I like the "injected gas ignition discharge" system best because ballistically the bullets are more like conventional bullets but have the advantage of being caseless. An obvious advantage on the battlefield, less weight where there's no brass to carry around, less wasteful because the brass cases don't get thrown all over the place, etc. The problem with the gas ignition systems is carrying the fuel around, having enough of it (it takes quite a lot) and for some reason, they've never been able to get consistant ignitions. Each charge seems to end up being just enough different to cause inconsistancy in accuracy and range. Not a good thing when you're practicing to be good with your weapon. Imagine if every .223WIN in your AR-15 had a completely different powder charge. You'd never be able to accurately judge their firing characteristics and you'd never get good with it. One other problem is the same as experienced by flame thrower carriers in WWII, etc. If their fuel tank gets hit and explodes, it ruins their whole day.Nope, I've said it before and I'll say it again. The metallic case cartridge round with FMJ or some such other lead bullet, have been perfected to the point where they do the job better than anything else we can think of in the foreseeable future. They're compact, powerful, accurate and effective, as any combat medic can attest. Even the idea of laser beam weapons powerful enough to burn holes through people won't be practicle anytime soon (I don't think even anytime this century) because laser beams that powerful take very great amounts of power, can only be generated using some quite hazardous chemicals and require some pretty delicate electronics to work. Not only that, even if the beam can burn a hole all the way through a mans body, it still will never have "knock down power". It's not like Star Wars where the blaster bolts hit the storm troopers and knock them on their *. Probably better would be some sort of extremely high intensity microwave beam that just like a microwave oven, heats the target up from the inside. If such heating happens quickly enough, the heat boils the water in the target (the human or whatever), it flashes into steam and the surrounding tissue explodes from the rapid expansion of the steam inside, the same way a potato will explode in a microwave if you don't poke vent holes in it with a fork before you heat it up. But here again, it's takes a lot of power and complicated electronics that will probably never be practicle in the form of a man portable weapon on the battlefield.