[Gifted]

I had an idea, thinking a bit about a near future scenario, and how to equip a power armored warrior. With the power armor, recoil and other issues are much less of an issue, and power needs to go up anyway for penetration.

One thought was to put an 8 or 10 inch barrel on a desert eagle. It can be pulled and fired one handed(powered armor remember), or a stock can be attached to make a quick carbine.

Velocity is a bit more important than bullet weight, so I figured the .50 AE wouldn't be reasonable, but you could neck it down to .44 or so, providing a slightly lighter bullet with more powder. .432 would provide a decent selection of bullets, right? Aside from the tungsten AP round that would be the whole point of giving it to a trooper.

Would necking down the .50 provide a significant advantage over the .44 mag?

[GunTech]

Any moderate rifle cartridge will better the 50 AE. And an elongated and necked down 50 AE gives you the 458 SOCOM

[max popenker]

there's .440 Cor-Bon for you: http://www.ammo-one.com/Cor-bon440-400.html

[Molasses]

.432 would provide a decent selection of bullets, right?

I thought .429" was standard for modern-day .44s?

Anyhow, like Max pointed out, .440 CorBon (.50 AE necked down to .44) already exists and was a factory offering on the DE. For more on that aspect: http://p088.ezboard.com/fthedeserteaglefrm1.showMessage?topicID=6497.topic

[Gifted]

Well, looking at Lyman's, it looked like .44 mag was .432. Whatever.

Figures it'd already be thought of.

[RyanM]

It really depends on the kind of armor you're thinking of. Actually, I'm working on a sci-fi project right now, which involves hardsuits to some degree. Mine are basically about the same size as Warhammer space marine armor, but more along the lines of Battletech warsuits in versatility.

The design I've got has enough power-assist to use a caseless round equivalent in power to 20mm Vulcan for sidearms and "light" assault rifles.

[Nolo]

If you're talking powered armor, you're not talking pistols. Any pistol that is wieldable by a man will not have enough power to penetrate any realistic powered armor. And powered armor enables the wearer to carry so much more that they wouldn't even worry about pistols. Their sidearm would be an AK-47.

[novaDAK]

power armored warrior

If it's not human why not just build a .50BMG machinegun into the arm?

:D:D:D:D

[MachIVshooter]

Figures it'd already be thought of.

There's not much new under the sun. Every cartridge in existance has been necked up and down as far as possible, shoulders blown out, case shortened, shoulder angle changed from barely any to almost square, etc, etc. The wildcatting hayday ended long ago. Anything that really worked has been comercialized. Many of the new ones have or likely will flop (case in point, the short mags).

Cartridges are kinda like small block V-8's that way. People will try anything to get more performance and/or better efficiency (people have even custom ground cams to put exhaust in the valley). Sometimes the end doesn't justify the means.

[CWL]

You don't need to get into silly velocities in a handgun sized package, all you need are penetrator cores in the bullets, such as tungsten or even depleted uranium.

If there ever was going to be powered infantry, they'd probably carry shoulder-fired arms firing smart ammunition.