Hi,
I was wondering what ever happened to caseless ammo/rifles. I know the G11 uses caseless ammo and is/was issued in limited numbers to German special forces and the Australian(sp?) precurser to the Bushmaster Bullpup was caseless. So what ever happened to it? As far as I know there aren't any caseless guns being offered. What happened? From what I read it was supposed to be biggest advance in firearms since smokless powder. It seams that guns ammo has kinda stagnated, we've had the same basic brass case/ bullet combo for over a century, it seems about time for something new. That plus I really want a caseless rifle...sorry, rant mode off.


[rail]

Pure fantasy...Oh it is definetly doable but no civilian will ever see it.  The main advantage is to raise the rate of fire by skipping the extraction/ejection process.  Thats why the G-11 can shoot a salvo burst at 2100 rounds per minute.  You don't need caseless ammo for a BB gun, which is all that might be legal here in 10 years.

[url]http://www.hkpro.com/g11.htm[/url]

Well, it's not pure fantasy and the military will eventually go to caseless.  Right now, the problem is cook-off...the stuff that holds the caseless round together was leaving a residue in the chamber, which was heating up and causing the next round to cook off.  They would have (and someday will) solved this problem for the G11, but funding was cut due to the end of the Cold War and the reunification of Germany.

There is the HK and the O'Dwyer. The HK 4.5mm caseless worked but still had problems with heat dissipation. And the plastic sabots surrounding the steel flachette were a little dangerous to friendly soldiers in forward positions.

The O'Dwyer works like a roman candle and has an extreme rate of fire. One million rounds per minute. The only civilian type models that I've seen are a handgun with rear loading multi-barrels and a sniper rifle version. The rounds are electronically and sequencially detonated making it possible to get off 3+ rounds at your target before the gun recoils.

plus i remember reading somewhere(janes weekly i think) that there was a problem with long term wear on the rounds the rounds in a soldiers magazine in a magcase would rub together and crumble around the edges leading to feeding problems and unevan burn. plus i think ran affected the ammo.

I've seen the internals of a G-11 (over on HKPro, I believe).  Compared to an AR, it is an extraordinarily complicated machine.

Any of you guys know what the make up is of that 50 cal round that has a 30 cal depleted core and explosive material making up the remainder of the projectile. I think the Navy / Marines use for Armor/vehicle and missle TE. Any links or info?

Aside from sealing the breech, making ammo more durable, and providing a positive way of extracting dud rounds, cases also carry away a lot of heat that would otherwise be absorbed by the chamber. And heat that goes into the chamber steel takes time to dissipate throughout the metal. A round that is chambered following a 2100 rpm burst from an already hot barrel must come into contact with metal that is VERY hot on its "skin".

I doubt that this technology will ever go into popular use. Lasers or phasers or something will probably make it obsolete before it reaches a stage sufficiently superior to what the military has now.

IIRC...HK just about had all the bugs worked out of system and were only a couple of years away from production when the Soviet empire collapsed. With the end of the Cold War there was no longer any incentive to continue funding the project.

The sporting rifle (Voere?..something like that?) worked fine but was expensive and the ammo was expensive and hard to find too. Just was never accepted.

Someday these technologies will be ressurected.

Could some one give me a idiots guide to just how caseless ammo works? I dont understand the concept.

Oddly enough, there was once a U.S. made commercial caseless gun on the market. Back around the 1960's Daisy (believe it or not) made some type of gun to use caseless ammo. I'm not sure, but the propellant may have been ignited Diesel-style by an airgun type mechanism. It didn't go over too well.

101_proof, I don't know the internal workings of any caseless firearms, but the goals are to greatly reduce ammo weight and to make possible super high cyclic rates. As akrazy said, the high rates of fire are made possible by eliminating the extraction and ejection steps from the operating cycle; as they say, economy of motion is the essence of speed. I do know some designs took advantage of the high cyclic rates to deliver mechanically limited bursts with less dispersion of the rounds than usual. This was done by allowing the whole barrel and mechanism of the weapon to recoil back within an outer shell, not hitting any type of stop until after the last shot of the burst was out of the barrel. The shooter only felt a single recoil impulse.

The snags encountered have to do with cookoff problems when the bare propellant lands in the hot chamber, the difficulty in making a breech tight enough to seal without a case but still able to operate when dirty, and the need to have some means of extracting inevitable dud (or unfired) cartridges in a design that is specifically intended to eliminate extraction.