Posted: 4/6/2008 6:22:10 PM EDT
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Coilguns. Sorry guys, the phased plasma rays in the 40KW range are a little ways off yet. www.youtube.com/watch?v=HdBWWlYaTsA&NR=1 It's even got libtards scared in the comments, so you know it's gonna be big.  ETA: The creator says the kinetic energy is approximately 50 Joules, comparable to .22LR. |
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If you look at the lethality of bullets 100 years ago in common use by military forces then, and what's being used now, we haven't really progressed at all (and some would say we've regressed!). The century long flatline is bound to perk up with some new development. |
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Here is full auto capability. www.youtube.com/watch?v=eHv33mH6Nq0&feature=related Keep in mind, coil guns work better with more sets of coils, therefore longer barrels. I suspect a good setup for a combat weapon using this technology would be to have a magazine about the same size as current magazines, with an internal power source located in the magazine. |
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I always thought this was a sleek thing... sabot shot by elctro - magnetics. Though being ex Mil I remember how hard it was to just get enough batteries to run our gear. I mean gee... you can shoot fifty year old ammo; assuming all things being equal if you pick up one of these weapons after fifty years will it fire? |
The ammo, properly stored, would be good to go. The coilgun itself? Probably not. |
| Science Fiction Authors have been writing about man portable Railguns for some time. Niven envisions one about 5 feet long, with a saboted flechette capable of sniping a man sized target at over 1500 yards. The slow rate of fire with absolutely silent operation make it ideal for snipers. Running an infantry version would be difficult as you'd probably need multiple coils/powers sources for full auto with any effective power behind the bullet. |
Notice the external table top power source. And it's still barely firing the bullets. You'd need massive power to run full auto with a real weapon. It would have to be vehicle mounted. |
why not? you could weatherproof the guns making them outlast most anything else, the batteries would be the problem, what battery design has stayed around for 50 years unaltered? |
| 900 joules is 663 ft-lbs. 230gr 45 acp ball generates something like 900-1000 ft-lbs of energy, so I could easily see something like this being competitive (using better capacitors....). Just need smaller projectiles at higher velocities, and a way to spin the projectiles for stability (non-magnetic, rifled barrel?) |
Yes, rifled with Saboted Flechettes. |
900 joules wasn't the kinetic energy it was the energy in the capacitor. The bolt was hitting with like 36 ft-lbs |
Missed that part 
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This is not a railgun. It uses a different method of propelling the projectile all together. Yes, the power supply is going to be a hard problem to overcome, but there are advancements in materials and techniques that are very promising in that field. Essentially this technology is waiting for battery/power cell technology to catch up. That may be a decade or so, but you can be sure that once that happens, these weapon systems will be tested as replacements to conventional firearms. Essentially, it's not going to replace firearms as we know them, with todays technology. The US Military has been stating for some time that railguns are going to essentially replace artillery. However the nature of railguns require extreme amounts of energy and size. I expect these gauss rifles to replace small arms at about that time, because the nature of these weapons in and of themselves require less energy, and are able to be smaller, as compared to railguns, and would be about the size as any rifle one would expect to see on the battlefield today. |
230 gr .45 at 830 ft per sec, aka mil-spec, is 355 ft lbs |
Until you can crack the ability to instantly charge the coils and provide the ability to have rapid fire, you're not going to replace guns. I don't think we'll see most militaries give up the basic fire arm for at least 30 years. You might have specialized units with Gauss Rifles (snipers for instance) but the basic gun still has more bang for the buck. |
Exactly. That coincides with my prediction as well. We may see prototypes being tested in the field within 20 years, and about another decade to fully adopt them. One other thing that we may notice, is the adoption of new tactics. I think infantry will work more intimately with mechanized units, especially "mules", an unmanned robotic "backpack", and it may be that the main power would be supplied by the mule via improved forms of wireless energy transfer. However, even after full adoption of gauss rifles, I still see conventional small arms as secondary weapons. |
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Power is still going to be a big problem. We should see a rail gun in the next few years- maybe a decade?- on USN ships. Coil guns have some advantages over rail guns, like firing relatively normal shaped projectiles that can be fed into the gun in a familiar manner. The projectiles also have no contact with the bore, they are suspended like a maglev train- if you can imagine a maglev tunnel with infinite rails surrounding it, so there is no gap in the magnetic fields and force is equal all around. So there is no bore wear and no friction heat. MV of coilguns is practically limited right now by the speed at which the magnetic rings can be switched on, powered up, and powered down again. |
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University of Texas, Austin does a lot of the work on these weapons for the .gov. They use flywheel batteries and pulsed, rather than continuous power, to get the electrical supply down to a size that can fit in a vheicle and give bursts of rapid fire. Their idea is to produce a MBT that carries a coil or rail gun, a solid state or free electron laser, electromagnetic armor, and hybrid electric drive, all using the same electronic power bus. The crew would simply dial power between what system they need most. A couple big flywheel batteries- actually armored cans of stacks of flywheels, that are clutched in as needed to create a short pulse of power- would provide a huge reserve charge. Kind of like Star Trek vessels, they would really say things like "transfer weapons power to drive". For short periods they could even turn off the ICE and use the reserve charge to power the tracks and have a totally silent tank. |
"rolls eyes" its an experimental proof of concept. With more time and money everything would be smaller, more powerful, and in a tighter, more streamlined package. Neat concept. Awesome experiment for a young guy. |
 Nevermind. Read above. |