Ah, that make sense
PLA Small arms
- Thread starter Vanguard1688
- Start date
I actually agree with both of you, but I think it is only a matter of time before that changes.
I think the major consideration is the system breakdown issue, but that can be mitigated in the long run, tho I think it would not be eliminated either way, thus being the major obstacle to a viable weapon system.
As for the power supply, I don’t think that’s as big a problem as you might think, battery tech is starting get to a viable, smaller and portable pack with large enough ‘power’ storage to make something like a portable coil guns viable.
As for real practical value, I think you are slightly underestimating the potential, cheapest of ammo aside, a coil gun like this provide quite a few major advantages, humour my fanboy-ness for a minute:
Amount of ammo that can be carried into operations, there has been a lot of discussions about 556 vs 762 over the year from weight of ammo, amount of ammo that can be fielded on one soldier to deadliness of the projectile... etc, this would eliminate the casing and powder weight from and in it’s place become ‘power’ packs, this could increase the overall ammo available to the soldier in the field without increasing the overall weight of the load out.
Low to no noise: primarily this would be a consideration for special forces only but in modern wars it pays to have your soldiers as unnoticed/unnoticeable as possible, imagine this applied to your general infantry units in an urban setting.
Variable power of the weapon: the deadliness of a projectile has quite a few factors, weight, speed and penetration/fragmentation to name a few, these types of weapons could allow for the variation of the speed of the projectile and the penetrativeness of the projectile by shear kinetic energy, without having to have different sized ammo, simplifying logistics.
Just a few thought on this tho I admit I could be wrong on some factors but I think the practical value is still quite high.
TerraN_EmpirE
Tyrant King
Okay let’s go through this.
You point to the argument of weight. Here is the thing the battery will add any weight loss back on. So even if the magazine is very light weight.
The mechanics of the system will add more weight vs a conventional small arm. The weight of the powder and casings can be mitigated off by new propellants and casing materials. So compare the M249 of the US to the LSAT LMG one is completely conventional at 18 pounds the other is 10. Load the. With ammo and it’s 21 pounds to 12. Okay so you build a could gun. Well you need a battery on that. Which will likely weigh as much as the gun. New materials in casings and more sophisticated use of construction are how you trim the weight. That could be as simple as steel, as sophisticated as composite of multiple materials or as advanced as next generation polymers.
This said a battery pack is very likely to be part of the next generation of infantry arms but for use by enabling devices like Smart scopes that combine fire control technologies and fused sensors to the Infantry.
Sound? The rail guns that have been built are just as loud as conventional cannons. The Coil gun is just as loud as a 22LR.
The sound factor can be mitigated by use of a suppressor (Silencer) for both. There are already conventional weapons as loud as a mouse fart. They use subsonic ammo meant to take unarmored targets.
Yet there will always be a crack of the firing as the ammunition vs armored goes super sonic as such there is no actual signature advantage.
As to variable power that comes to a point. The material of the projectiles has a limitation. If you were to fire a 5.56x45mm conventional round at a hardened plate at super high velocity it would be pulverized. Push it faster and the friction will destroy it before it hits its target. Rod penetrators work by a combination of velocity and density. If fired to fast the impact will destroy it. Fired to slow it drops like a stone.
Speed only matters if the round can take it. Weight is a factor of mass and density. Penetration is density and velocity of the projectile vs the target. Fragmentation can be effective but only if it can have that effect vs it’s target. Spall on contact with a human target happens no matter. As that is how the energy is distributed into a gelatinous mass.
As such different ammo would still be there in the hypothetical. Larger bullets still a factor. A rifle round is to light to even dent a tank. Or do enough damage to a vehicle to stop it on its own unless the round and rifle are significantly larger. A small bullet will only go so far. A larger one will do more.
The age where a Rifle could Kill a tank ended long ago. Even then the rule was bigger bullets better effect.
Serious Coil and Rail guns sit in a heavier weapon class as there they have advantages. In a Ship or tank the battery pack is just as heavy as the propellant charges of tank or artillery bags. But power can be recharged by the vehicle and the battery can be more easily isolated from the crew. Then all they need do is push the projectile Into the chamber.
These are more novelty models. They have more energy than a BB gun (Did you notice how close the shooters were in the videos to their targets?) but a military pistol is still superior In all performance aspects. And will remain such baring an earth shattering breakthrough.
To get real velocities you would need far more energy density and a significantly larger weapon. Something the size of a medium caliber cannon with a battery on par with a Tesla.
Small arms? The most efficient practical way is the self contained cartridge. It just has the right mix of energy density, performance, weight and usability for now until the Phaser beam.
You point to the argument of weight. Here is the thing the battery will add any weight loss back on. So even if the magazine is very light weight.
The mechanics of the system will add more weight vs a conventional small arm. The weight of the powder and casings can be mitigated off by new propellants and casing materials. So compare the M249 of the US to the LSAT LMG one is completely conventional at 18 pounds the other is 10. Load the. With ammo and it’s 21 pounds to 12. Okay so you build a could gun. Well you need a battery on that. Which will likely weigh as much as the gun. New materials in casings and more sophisticated use of construction are how you trim the weight. That could be as simple as steel, as sophisticated as composite of multiple materials or as advanced as next generation polymers.
This said a battery pack is very likely to be part of the next generation of infantry arms but for use by enabling devices like Smart scopes that combine fire control technologies and fused sensors to the Infantry.
Sound? The rail guns that have been built are just as loud as conventional cannons. The Coil gun is just as loud as a 22LR.
The sound factor can be mitigated by use of a suppressor (Silencer) for both. There are already conventional weapons as loud as a mouse fart. They use subsonic ammo meant to take unarmored targets.
Yet there will always be a crack of the firing as the ammunition vs armored goes super sonic as such there is no actual signature advantage.
As to variable power that comes to a point. The material of the projectiles has a limitation. If you were to fire a 5.56x45mm conventional round at a hardened plate at super high velocity it would be pulverized. Push it faster and the friction will destroy it before it hits its target. Rod penetrators work by a combination of velocity and density. If fired to fast the impact will destroy it. Fired to slow it drops like a stone.
Speed only matters if the round can take it. Weight is a factor of mass and density. Penetration is density and velocity of the projectile vs the target. Fragmentation can be effective but only if it can have that effect vs it’s target. Spall on contact with a human target happens no matter. As that is how the energy is distributed into a gelatinous mass.
As such different ammo would still be there in the hypothetical. Larger bullets still a factor. A rifle round is to light to even dent a tank. Or do enough damage to a vehicle to stop it on its own unless the round and rifle are significantly larger. A small bullet will only go so far. A larger one will do more.
The age where a Rifle could Kill a tank ended long ago. Even then the rule was bigger bullets better effect.
Serious Coil and Rail guns sit in a heavier weapon class as there they have advantages. In a Ship or tank the battery pack is just as heavy as the propellant charges of tank or artillery bags. But power can be recharged by the vehicle and the battery can be more easily isolated from the crew. Then all they need do is push the projectile Into the chamber.
These are more novelty models. They have more energy than a BB gun (Did you notice how close the shooters were in the videos to their targets?) but a military pistol is still superior In all performance aspects. And will remain such baring an earth shattering breakthrough.
To get real velocities you would need far more energy density and a significantly larger weapon. Something the size of a medium caliber cannon with a battery on par with a Tesla.
Small arms? The most efficient practical way is the self contained cartridge. It just has the right mix of energy density, performance, weight and usability for now until the Phaser beam.
The only application I can think of is to lob grenade to extremely long range since it would have a more gentle recoil. But there is already constant recoil design for conventional firearm and I don't know if that could be scale up to grenade launcher level.
Fair enough, like I said I could be wrong on some of the assumptions/points, and I would admit to being wrong on some but I think there is still arguments for other points.
In terms of weight, fair enough, much of the savings from ammo would shift to the gun itself, especially the coil or rail and battery, tho for the battery part I would argue whether battery development could mitigate the issue of weight vs the ‘power’ provided vs endurance of the battery to power the main coil/rail as well as other toys the operator would put on the weapon.
For the sound issue, yes I agree with the sound generated via the projectile compressing the air thus there would be a sound regardless. But on the other front for some cases you would need ammo with lower powder charges to produce the subsonic effect, as well as the need of adding the suppressor/silencer to lower the sound of the weapon. For this I think there is an argument for development of coil guns (not rail guns, as rail guns will have an almost unavoidable friction issue generating sound) as the main driver behind the energy of the projectile is not the expansion of gases which is also partly responsible for the sound, the construction/design of the barrel itself could mitigate much of the issue. Thus having one weapon system that can cater for general use and spec ops without adding or changing certain aspects of the weapon system.
For the variability of ammo, this is where I think the underestimation is the greatest, for the bullet itself yes there would be the problem of whether the bullet can take the forces applied, thus we have different types of bullet, but also different type of powder loads and also different calibers of bullets. If the driving force (conversationally would be the chemical reaction of the powder) of the bullet can varied with a flick of a switch the only viable becomes the bullet/actual projectile, this would allow the soldier to carry a greater number of bullets in general along with bullets for specialised use if necessary without having to think about all the other factors. This also have longer term effects when thinking about production. You only really need to think about making different types of projectiles, without thinking about the casing, powder and everything else involved. Also consider costs, in a coil gun system the saving from ammo shifts to the weapon, well you might say that penny per bullet but when talking about the amount of projectiles expended this adds up, call me a bean counter If you want. But this is a math problem with the main consideration of whether the gun can have the reliability needed.
Further on with ammo argument, in order to use different ammo (in this case caliber) you will need different weapons systems, tho there is already standardisation done on this front a coil gun could further that standardisation efforts. I.e. choosing a single caliber with different density projectile for different purposes, with modularisation on the gun (power systems, barrel length/design etc) as the main variable.
There is also the consideration on accuracy, which I forgot in the original post, for lower power this can be mitigated by mechanically complex systems like kriss vector and laugo alien, but this still doesn’t not eliminate the issue of the reciprocating mass affecting the shots, and for larger small arms it’s a larger problem. Before you say well there is still recoil, yes but the amount of recoil will be far lower then have a mass (bolt + bolt carrier) slamming into the shoulder.
Ultimately, I think as a weapon system there is not enough research to prove its not as effective, if not more effective, than a conventional system and the electronic/electric tech simply wasn’t there, but the tech is getting there and I think examining and researching it alongside the heavy weapons (ship and tank cannon) as side is worthwhile enough to pursue.
plawolf
Lieutenant General
I think if the battery weight issue could be addressed, coil/rail guns could provide significant advantages over conventional firearms.
The main advantages I can think of would be higher muzzle velocity/accuracy; less to no recoil, which again aids accuracy; lighter weight (battery packs could be backpack mounted, thereby redistributing the bulk of the weight of the weapon away from the arms, these could be connected to the weapon via cables, or maybe even just use wireless charging if the technology advanced enough); low to no sound
The biggest potential advantage would be almost unlimited munitions supply if solar and/or wireless power transmission undertake a revolutionary leap.
Imagine having a weapon that could self charge the battery via solar panels or be remotely charged by rear echelon support units. The soldiers would just need to carry the bullets, which would be only a fraction of the weight of conventional ammunition.
Rail and coil guns would also dovetail nicely with powered exo suits that most top tier militaries are busy developing.
It’s for sure a medium to long term developmental weapon, but you only get them into a competitive state compared to current standard firearms by continuing to develop and invest in them.
The main advantages I can think of would be higher muzzle velocity/accuracy; less to no recoil, which again aids accuracy; lighter weight (battery packs could be backpack mounted, thereby redistributing the bulk of the weight of the weapon away from the arms, these could be connected to the weapon via cables, or maybe even just use wireless charging if the technology advanced enough); low to no sound
The biggest potential advantage would be almost unlimited munitions supply if solar and/or wireless power transmission undertake a revolutionary leap.
Imagine having a weapon that could self charge the battery via solar panels or be remotely charged by rear echelon support units. The soldiers would just need to carry the bullets, which would be only a fraction of the weight of conventional ammunition.
Rail and coil guns would also dovetail nicely with powered exo suits that most top tier militaries are busy developing.
It’s for sure a medium to long term developmental weapon, but you only get them into a competitive state compared to current standard firearms by continuing to develop and invest in them.
Skywatcher
Captain
Another battery problem is that current lithium batteries have the nasty tendency to combust if they get overheated.
Cheap, simple, reliable, accurate, versatile ... hard to beat that!Single-shot grenade launcher...
