Telescoping ammunition

The idea has been around for some time. It offers weight and size advantages over conventional cartridges but I think the next big thing is going to be fully caseless ammunition.

With caseless ammo, you eliminate the extraction-ejection cycle. Shoot it and it is entirely gone, the chamber is empty and the operating cycle proceeds from there. That is the big win in going caseless; you can make new, lighter and simpler weapons that may even be more reliable--since a third of the operating cycle has been simplified out of existence.

All in all... brass cases are a known quantity, they work really well. By now most of the bugs are worked out and we know from long experience that they are durable afield and last well in storage.

So...my guess is nope. The telescoped case idea reappears now and then, like cicadas, and is as soon forgotten until next time.

More weight will be the death knell of the project. Troops are already carrying a lot of weight and bulk. When somebody can give them less weight and the same of more capacity, then I'm interested. But more weight and less capacity is a non-starter. No, the M4 isn't perfect. The DMR program sought to address some of those shortcomings.

For the capacity and weight they're talking about, we could just re-issue the M14. It's not really progress, it's just a Rube Goldberg. Interesting? Yes. Useful? No.

Realistically, we're at the apex of cartridge form ammunition firearms.

Due to rapidly advancing technology; either energy beam weapons (lasers) and/or electromagnetic pulse projection kinetic weapons will overtake chemical/pyrotechnic weaponry.

There will be far into the future a place and need for small arms as they presently exist But so far, caseless ammo hasn't proven to be "battle field" ready. Either too fragile, or not impervious to environmental challenges (i.e.: heat, humidity, shock, vibration, long term storage.).

Already, the U.S. Navy has operational 35mw Laser weapons in use, and already demonstrated in hostile encounters. It's also being used to augment the CIWS close missle defense system. A much more powerful 135mw weapon is in development and is 3-5yrs off.
The first EMP "launcher" , firing a 650lb "sabot" dart, is to be fielded in 2018. it will have a range of 80-100mi. and a guided projectile is in final development. Miniaturization is quickly following. A back pack power supply shoulder fired megawatt weapon is being tested. NOT CLASSIFIED TECHNOLOGY.
Available info off the net.

The next gen infantry weapon will be a drone controller handset. It will only be used for IFF purposes or override, as the Swarm will be running in autonomous mode most of the time.
Until, of course, the Swarm decides that there is no friend or foe. At which point we, the human race, are SOL.....

So is it a telescoped cartridge...or a cartridge with a case that extends beyond the bullet?

Why do you need that case that extends around the bullet? It seems that what is really going on is the they are making a shorter cartridge with all the volume beneath the bullet holding powder. In essence, it is one of these (slightly larger diameter) with a case that extends around the bullet:

GooseGestapo said:

Realistically, we're at the apex of cartridge form ammunition firearms.

Due to rapidly advancing technology; either energy beam weapons (lasers) and/or electromagnetic pulse projection kinetic weapons will overtake chemical/pyrotechnic weaponry.

There will be far into the future a place and need for small arms as they presently exist But so far, caseless ammo hasn't proven to be "battle field" ready. Either too fragile, or not impervious to environmental challenges (i.e.: heat, humidity, shock, vibration, long term storage.).

Already, the U.S. Navy has operational 35mw Laser weapons in use, and already demonstrated in hostile encounters. It's also being used to augment the CIWS close missle defense system. A much more powerful 135mw weapon is in development and is 3-5yrs off.
The first EMP "launcher" , firing a 650lb "sabot" dart, is to be fielded in 2018. it will have a range of 80-100mi. and a guided projectile is in final development. Miniaturization is quickly following. A back pack power supply shoulder fired megawatt weapon is being tested. NOT CLASSIFIED TECHNOLOGY.
Available info off the net.

Click to expand...

Hmm. I am not sure that I'd want to carry a 135mw power source on my back.

Kendall Black wrote:
With caseless ammo, you eliminate the extraction-ejection cycle.

Click to expand...

But you don't eliminate the need to open the bolt and feed the next round; operations that occur nearly simultaneously with the extraction/ejection cycle.

GooseGestapo wrote:
Due to rapidly advancing technology; either energy beam weapons (lasers) and/or electromagnetic pulse projection kinetic weapons will overtake chemical/pyrotechnic weaponry.

and

Already, the U.S. Navy has operational 35mw Laser weapons in use, and already demonstrated in hostile encounters.

Click to expand...

Energy beam weapons and electromagnetic weapons (we'll dispense with EMP weapons for now) are dependent upon a power source. The Navy uses the output of the same gas turbine GE sells to electrical utilities to light entire cities to power that 35 Megawatt laser. You're not going to power that kind of weapon off of a 2.4 watt Lithium cell phone battery. Until we can develop either portable nuclear generators or batteries with a power density nine orders of magnitude higher than what we currently have chemical propellants launching dense or hard projectiles along a ballistic trajectory are going to remain the order of the day.

Blkhrt13 wrote:
Do you think it will get any purchase?

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No.

But, I will point out that if you look at my prior postings in which i describe work done as a graduate student on a replacement for the 5.56 round, the team's conclusion was that it needed to be a 6.5mm projectile. I'm gratified that nearly four decades later, another team reached the same conclusion.

Telescoping does address some interesting issues involving case feeding and the like.
Will remain to be seen whether that will be enough improvement to justify the change.

The problem with caseless ammo is chamber obturation. HK's "answer" for that was a teen-tiny head-lette, which was never really tested. It's easy to forget just how much weapons physics rely on cases obturating to the chamber to get us the performance we expect. But, short of reliable electronic ignition, we still need a firing pin

hdwhit, not a 35mw, but 1mw is entirely different.
I KNOW some of the people involved in the research.
What we see now is "tip of the iceberg"
What we're doing now was considered impossible 20yrs ago...

Breakthroughs are happening.
Also, re-read what I wrote:
There will be a NEED into the FAR future, a NEED for small arms weapons as they exist NOW.

GooseGestapo said:

Realistically, we're at the apex of cartridge form ammunition firearms.

Due to rapidly advancing technology; either energy beam weapons (lasers) and/or electromagnetic pulse projection kinetic weapons will overtake chemical/pyrotechnic weaponry.

There will be far into the future a place and need for small arms as they presently exist But so far, caseless ammo hasn't proven to be "battle field" ready. Either too fragile, or not impervious to environmental challenges (i.e.: heat, humidity, shock, vibration, long term storage.).

Already, the U.S. Navy has operational 35mw Laser weapons in use, and already demonstrated in hostile encounters. It's also being used to augment the CIWS close missle defense system. A much more powerful 135mw weapon is in development and is 3-5yrs off.
The first EMP "launcher" , firing a 650lb "sabot" dart, is to be fielded in 2018. it will have a range of 80-100mi. and a guided projectile is in final development. Miniaturization is quickly following. A back pack power supply shoulder fired megawatt weapon is being tested. NOT CLASSIFIED TECHNOLOGY.
Available info off the net.

Click to expand...

To put it dramatically, we are heading toward the "ray gun". Cartridges as we know them will go the way of the VHS.

I would say its not so much about laser or rail gun tech as its about battery storage tech. At the heart of the matter projectile weapon tech has been about energy storage since the bow and arrow. Back then and now the bow stores the energy. Then we went to fire arms and we stored energy to be released when gun powder is ignited. I sort of think we are going to develop weapons that work but we can't power at the Infantry soldier's level and that may be a very long wait before every private can carry one.

There are evidences of anecdotal use of mW weapons already. How did the tunnels used by North Korea to protect their nuclear research get demolished? None of the reports indicate a "bunker buster" type weapon was employed. If anything that absence of commentary indicated something else which remains unspoken.

As for caseless, the absence of one part of the cyclic feeding process is offset by the lack of a case sealing the chamber, as noted above. That was where a lot of the development in the LSAT went - the rest of the gun is "normal." Getting a shuttle door to seal on ignition was new territory. And another facet of the conversation is simply substituting other materials for brass. Polymer cases have been on and off the market for 25 years, with the price being the biggest obstacle. Nobody wants to pay commercial for ammo that needs to sell at less than government surplus rates - it's not reloadable, therefore the value of the brass case is deducted in the mind of the buyer. It has to be priced at steel case rates and yet be better ammo overall. Tough act.

On the other hand we now have stainless cases for those who plan to reload them, with the commensurate task of recovering them. That is exactly the opposite direction the Army intended, as caseless also offered the huge logistical benefit of shoot and forget. Not have to scrounge another pound of cases off the firing line to meet turn in requirements at the ASP is a significant improvement in unit actions coming off the range. Those of us who have been Ammo or Range officers would go caseless in a heartbeat for just that reason alone. Then there is the accumulation and sale for scrap of the brass, which adds more expense to operations on post, and requires taxpayer money to administer.

Who benefits from caseless? First, the soldier if he can carry more ammo for the same weight. No cases underfoot on the battle ground is another advantage, no cases to recover on ranges helps the Army, and in a contrary spirit, no cases to sell surplus means the anti gunners support it, too. But a telescoped case that still weighs the same, in a larger cartridge reducing the combat load? No incremental advantage up front, and a decidedly arguable advantage in the field. It still takes an effective hit to stop an enemy soldier, and if it's accomplished by a hi speed .22 which randomly does the job vs fewer large projectiles, the numbers go to the smaller cartridge. More are fired, giving more hits regardless, intentional or not. It would be nice to fire one round and get over 85% assurance of a hit - that kind of economy is a good goal - but realistically an integrated IR sight connected to the trigger could do that. Red bloom in the scope equals red bloom on the ground, independently of human error. I don't see that working well with low intensity conflict on crowded streets, tho, or with troops who forget to take their finger off the trigger when pointing at friendlies. It would require IFF respondence to keep from lighting up our own good guys.

The dynamics of battle actually superceded the typical ego enhancement of having "cool" bullets so don't be looking for any of this to get adopted soon. It's why a directed energy weapon at this time still requires human assessment and a decision to activate it's discharge. God help us if we equip autonomous devices. Do we not still dig up bombs in London, or have land mines yet to recover worldwide? We can't handle what we already used.

hdwhit said:

But you don't eliminate the need to open the bolt and feed the next round; operations that occur nearly simultaneously with the extraction/ejection cycle.

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Heh, yeah but maybe. You get the luxury of a fresh sheet of paper for your drawing board with caseless. Unsealing the breech, introducing a new round and then resealing doesn't have to look like what we're used to. There doesn't even have to be a bolt. It is an opportunity for designers to let out their inner Rube Goldberg and try stuff.

That is assuming we're gonna seal the breech...

All of the above caseless designs have breeches that are separate from the barrel. This means that the tolerances must be exceptionally small if combustion gases are to be prevented from feeding back into the action of the gun.

One possible failure mode would be enough gas leakage to feed back into the magazine and push rounds deeper into the magazine, causing a feeding failure.

Another would be the very close tolerances simply getting gummed up and stuck.

Lastly, how reliable is the ejection of a dud round? It appears that each of the designs have ejection ports but none of them illustrate ejection.

Thanks for the vids Kendal!

GooseGestapo wrote:
hdwhit, not a 35mw, but 1mw is entirely different.

Click to expand...

First of all, 35Mw was the figure you cited in the post to which I was replying. If you can suddenly get 35Mw of energy out of 1Mw of power, then I'd like to know how you propose to achieve that.

Second, even if we drop from 35Mw to 1Mw, that means the increase in portable power densities only needs to increase by Eight rather than Nine orders of magnitude (100,000,000 times rather than 1,000,000,000 times) either level of improvement is still a long way off. In the meantime what we're left with are "lasermen" (nee "riflemen") tethered by firehose-size cable to trucks carrying the gas turbine generators needed to powder their weapons.

Kendal Black wrote:
Unsealing the breech, introducing a new round and then resealing doesn't have to look like what we're used to.

Click to expand...

Whether it looks like "what we're used to" or not, the fact remains that whatever obturates the breech of the barrel has to move out of the way to allow the fresh caseless cartridge to move into the chamber; the same action - and effectively the same time - that is now used to extract and eject the cartridge case. And since this time is less than the human reaction time required to release and re-pull the trigger on a semi-automatic weapon, the only savings in time from moving to caseless ammunition would impact fully automatic firing - something that most assault rifle currently limit by using three-round burst mechanisms so as to not exhaust the limited ammunition supply carried by the individual soldier.

Tirod wrote:
There are evidences of anecdotal use of mW weapons already.

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We've been using energy weapons since at least the 1970's when the entire output of FPL's Turkey Point reactors were diverted to power such a weapon to "blind" a Soviet satellite.

The existence of energy weapons is not the issue, whether - and when - we will see man-portable energy weapons (a'la Star Trek and Star Wars) remains the open question.

As noted in my prior post, power densities fort whatever is powering such energy weapons needs to rise by something on the order of 10 to 100 BILLION percent before they are practical. To translate that, it's the equivalent of creating a cell phone battery that would powder your smart phone for nearly 2,000 years before needing to be recharged.

The breakthrough could come tomorrow, but I'm not holding my breath.

JohnBlitz wrote:
I would say its not so much about laser or rail gun tech as its about battery storage tech.

Click to expand...

Give that man a cigar.

Unless we envision soldiers dragging firehose-size extension cords across the battlefield, energy weapons will only become practical as man-portable devices when the power densities of storage technologies improves by something on the order of 10 to 100 BILLION percent.

Looks like feeding problems waiting to happen. But who knows, maybe. I've seen a lot of things I didn't think would work that surprised me. It would be a big advantage to be able to reliably use polymer cases. The cost savings would be enormous. It's always kind of surprised me that militaries still use brass, lead, and copper for general issue after what happened in WWII. It's really not smart at all.

There were some problems with caseless guns overheating IIRC being as the ejected brass takes a considerable amount of heat with it out of the chamber. Brass or steel cases are still being used because they work.