Telescoping ammunition

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"Traditional bullet cartridges have a bullet seated roughly halfway inside a brass shell casing,"

The guy who wrote that doesn't know a baseplate from a bourellet. :)
 
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.:)

I remember HK having this issue, especially on full auto.
 
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.

Also the safety of such a gun comes into question. What happens when an enemy's bullet hits your super-high-charged-battery pack?

Batteries have been known to explode...
 
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.
However, you have not mentioned the drawbacks to caseless ammo....

1) The cartridge case extracts a majority of the heat generated by the propellant when it is extracted and ejected.

2) The cartridge insulates the propellant from the heat of the chamber.

3) The cartridge case provides breech obturation.

(1) and (2) have cause all previous caseless designs submitted for military testing to fail the minimum cook-off requirements. (3), as many a gun bunny may know, makes the breech of caseless (or bag) gun more complicated and increase the maintenance requirements. After so many rounds, you have to clean the obturation ring and breech seal.

Also, brass, steel, and aluminum are pretty tough, the self-contained, metallic cartridge is a water-proof, durable, almost "wooden" object, it's hard to beat...
 
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.
The Russians use steel, steel and steel....
 
"Traditional bullet cartridges have a bullet seated roughly halfway inside a brass shell casing,"

The guy who wrote that doesn't know a baseplate from a bourellet. :)
Poorly written, but sort'a accurate.

A better sentence would be:

"Traditional cartridges have only about half of the projectile seated inside the neck of a brass cartridge case, . . . ."
 
I'm surprised that the Dardick system hasn't been mentioned. (I've always thought that he had something there, a three chambered cylinder fed by a magazine with no reciprocal motion involved. Just if the guns weren't so butt ugly....). The cases are reloadable and can even be designed to handle current ammunition.

Just a thought.....
 
The Russians use steel, steel and steel....
Exactly, and with great success all around. All it requires is a slightly increased taper, a generous chamber, and of course coating the rounds in something to protect them. A lot of people think the lead and brass shortages of WWII only applied to Germany, but it was a worldwide shortage. The US was better off in that regard, but even we were being forced into using steel. And like Germany, our weapons weren't designed to handle it, plus neither one of us had worked out the kinks, leading to horrible reliability problems by the end of the war. One would think we would have learned our lesson, but the first thing we did after the war was sideline all steel ammo development and go right back to brass, copper, and lead. Just doesn't make any sense for most small arms, with the exception of sniper rifles.
 
However, you have not mentioned the drawbacks to caseless ammo....

1) The cartridge case extracts a majority of the heat generated by the propellant when it is extracted and ejected.

2) The cartridge insulates the propellant from the heat of the chamber.

3) The cartridge case provides breech obturation.

(1) and (2) have cause all previous caseless designs submitted for military testing to fail the minimum cook-off requirements. (3), as many a gun bunny may know, makes the breech of caseless (or bag) gun more complicated and increase the maintenance requirements. After so many rounds, you have to clean the obturation ring and breech seal.

Also, brass, steel, and aluminum are pretty tough, the self-contained, metallic cartridge is a water-proof, durable, almost "wooden" object, it's hard to beat...

I am guessing that the big problems with caseless, which are durability of the cartridges and residual heat in the weapon, are things that can be sorted out with enough R&D. A promising approach to the heat problem is to have more than one chamber, so that while one is firing the others are cooling. The current weaponry and its brass cases are the results of long development, so it is tempting to stay with old answers that mostly work. Of course we bid adieu to some old problems if we switch, such as stuck, bulged and split cases, broken extractors and ejectors, and fired case obstructing the feedway.
 
They've been trying to work out caseless ammo for about fifty years now, and there's not been any new technology that would make it any more viable today than it was back then. Basically it would require some kind of alloy that dissipated heat much, much faster than anything we have currently, or some kind of compact cooling system.

Even with three chambers, the heat would still be a problem, as the chambers would be close enough together that the heat wouldn't dissipate but rather spread to the neighboring chambers. Plus you can imagine how heavy it would be having a three chamber cylinder, not to mention the bulk, or the extra mechanical stuff going on with having a rotating chamber that will of course have to seal itself, which is fine if it's a shotgun, but much more difficult when you're dealing with 65k psi. Then when you did get a cookoff just imagine a high pressure rifle round going off during transport from the magazine, before the chamber lines up and seals with the barrel. A simple cookoff would mean a really bad catastrophic failure.
 
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.

The problem with caseless ammo that I have read about is that the gun requires a battery for the electronic ignition, in other words, a computer. That makes them about as useful as a "smart" gun. :barf:
 
They've been trying to work out caseless ammo for about fifty years now, and there's not been any new technology that would make it any more viable today than it was back then. Basically it would require some kind of alloy that dissipated heat much, much faster than anything we have currently, or some kind of compact cooling system.
You forgot the other way...develop a propellant that has a higher ignition temp. This path has had the highest success to date.
 
Metal Storm is very interesting.

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It is an interesting concept but the promo video doesn’t talk about some potential issues.

First, I can see difficulty in rapid reloading since the entire barrel is per-loaded. With such a high firing rate means you could be out of ammunition in seconds.

Second, how do they keep the first rounds fired not damage the rounds in the barrel directly behind it? They obviously have developed some sort of solution. Is there a danger to this method?

Third, each round will travel a different effective barrel length. How does this effect muzzle velocity and accuracy?

None of these might be show stoppers but they must introduce new issues not mentioned.
 
Ain't nothin' to these here newfangled breechloaders. Why, how many years it-a goin' to be before there's a breechloader good as the 1861 Springfield? Ptooi!

military-war-reenactor-civil_war_reenaction-combat-wars-jhen110_low.jpg
 
develop a propellant that has a higher ignition temp.
Solves the cookoff problem (some), but does not seal (obturate) the chamber.

Which is why several prototypes used electronic ignition--no firing pin hole in the chamber.

Now, I remember a notional design which had a bartial chamber on the face of the bolt, which then engaged the rear of the barrel, which chamber was reamed that the rounds's "shoulder" truck it on the way home, creating as form of Advanced Primer Ignition. Last I heard, the full size tests did not go well, as it required more precision than a Ross Mk III
 
Ain't nothin' to these here newfangled breechloaders. Why, how many years it-a goin' to be before there's a breechloader good as the 1861 Springfield? Ptooi!

View attachment 769926
In 1861, the U.S. was twenty years behind the power curve.

In 1841 The Prussian army adopted the Dreyse breech-loading, bolt-action, rifle.
BB.jpg

Which incidentally, also used a caseless cartridge . . .
 
They've been trying to work out caseless ammo for about fifty years now, and there's not been any new technology that would make it any more viable today than it was back then. Basically it would require some kind of alloy that dissipated heat much, much faster than anything we have currently, or some kind of compact cooling system.

Even with three chambers, the heat would still be a problem, as the chambers would be close enough together that the heat wouldn't dissipate but rather spread to the neighboring chambers. Plus you can imagine how heavy it would be having a three chamber cylinder, not to mention the bulk, or the extra mechanical stuff going on with having a rotating chamber that will of course have to seal itself, which is fine if it's a shotgun, but much more difficult when you're dealing with 65k psi. Then when you did get a cookoff just imagine a high pressure rifle round going off during transport from the magazine, before the chamber lines up and seals with the barrel. A simple cookoff would mean a really bad catastrophic failure.
With the Dartick 'tround' you actually exacerbate the sealing problem. Now, instead of a simple, easily sealable round hole, you have a rectangular opening.
 
With the Dartick 'tround' you actually exacerbate the sealing problem. Now, instead of a simple, easily sealable round hole, you have a rectangular opening.
Actually not. The Dardick "tround" was a triangular extrusion (usually of aluminium) with a hole drilled through it lengthwise and chambered for the .38 Special. A cartridge was chambered in the tround, and it was fed through the magazine. The "chamber" in the pistol was in two parts -- a V notch in a cylinder matching with the top strap. The face o the tround was pressed to the breech, and there was probably less gas escaping on firing than you would expect with a conventional revolver.
 
No, it used a paper cartridge. The "case" was just waxed paper. Which had to be penetrable by the needle in the bolt.
The Dardick gun is different from the Dreuse "needle gun" and was designed more than a hundred years later. The Dardick is a 3-chambered revolver, with the outer wall missing from each triangular chamber (the top strap forms the third wall when the gun is in battery.)
 
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